NBA All-Star Game Weekend in Las Vegas

The proverbial stops have been pulled. This might be the most decked-out I’ve seen Las Vegas since I moved here a little over three years ago. There are special bus wraps regarding the All-Star Game, many buildings have reprographic wraps on them, including, but not limited to Mandalay Bay, the Luxor, and MGM. The Lion in front of MGM and the Statue of Liberty in front of New York, New York are even wearing two-story tall East and West basketball jerseys. In typical Las Vegas “which way is north?” style, the MGM Lion is wearing West (on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard) and Lady Liberty (on the west side) is wearing East. The lion’s cute, though! It looks like his jersey is one of those onesie things little babies wear - looks like it fastens on his rump hehe

There are a lot of people here. I don’t have any idea how many but it’s a lot. One thing that is going to be interesting to see is what the numbers are after the weekend is over. If you walk through a casino, like Mandalay Bay last night, for example, you see tons and tons of people standing around. What you don’t see are tons and tons of people drinking and gambling, which, if you hadn’t heard, is how we keep the lights on ’round here…

I know that a lot of people have been in town the last couple of days doing some of the pre-game exhibitions put on by the NBA and wandering around trying to see celebrities. As the game approaches on Sunday, I would expect that more of the serious gaming type of clientele would start arriving and that will change… hopefully. I’m going out today to take an assessment of the poker tables and see what’s what. Hopefully the gamblers started to arrive last night and are ready to rumble today.

“While Las Vegas Sleeps” has moved here…