HOOPS HEAVEN: Olympic prelims Vegas bound
City chosen to host basketball qualifier for '08 Beijing Games
The trip for Team USA to qualify for the 2008 Olympics grew considerably shorter Sunday when the Thomas & Mack Center was named as host of the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship.
The 10-team tournament will be played here from Aug. 22 to Sept. 2. The top two finishers automatically will qualify for the Olympics in Beijing.
Las Vegas beat out San Juan, Puerto Rico, the only other bidder for the tournament. The FIBA event originally was awarded to Caracas, Venezuela. However, the bidding was reopened after that country failed to make required hosting fees to FIBA and because of security concerns.
According to information posted Sunday on FIBA Americas' Web site, USA Basketball paid $3 million for the rights to host the tournament.
In a statement released Sunday night by USA Basketball, Team USA program managing director Jerry Colangelo said: "We're excited and honored to have been selected to host this prestigious and important international basketball competition. Holding it in Las Vegas will help make this a memorable championship. This will be an incredible international event for basketball fans in Las Vegas and the surrounding areas."
Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors said of having the home-court advantage: "It will give us a big edge. The exhibition game we played this summer (in Las Vegas) was like a home game, it was so loud. The crowd was really into it."
Other teams in Las Vegas field will be Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Panama, U.S. Virgin Islands and Uruguay.
The Americans were forced into the qualify tournament after finishing third at the FIBA World Basketball Championships in Japan in September.
A decision on a new location was initially scheduled Oct. 2. That was pushed back to Oct. 9, then to Oct. 19. Finally, after further study of the bids, the decision was made to bring the event to Las Vegas.
Though Puerto Rico was the host country for the past two Americas Zone qualifying tournaments, that might have worked against it trying to land the event for a third consecutive time.
USA Basketball still needs to finalize a deal with Las Vegas Events to secure hotel rooms, market the event and take care of the many lesser issues that come with putting on such a tournament.
"It's great," Pat Christenson, president of Las Vegas Events, said Sunday night. "But right now we don't have any agreement with USA Basketball. We don't know what the costs are, or what the expenses are.
"But having said that, based on what we did with them this past summer, we should be able to make a deal. The first thing was to get the bid. That was the biggest obstacle and that has now been cleared. Now we have to sit down and work something out."
The Thomas & Mack Center had set aside dates in case USA Basketball won the bid, and facility director Daren Libonati said the building will be ready.
"That's good news," he said. "We've got the dates on hold and we were just waiting to hear. Now we can move forward and anchor this thing down."
Libonati and his staff are already preparing for the Thomas & Mack to host NBA All Star Weekend Feb. 16 to 18.
"It's a lot of work," he said. "But we've been working very closely with the NBA for the past few months and we understand what goes into putting on a big event.
"The only different dynamic (for the FIBA event) will be dealing with the foreign teams and whatever special requests they may have. We'll have to find practice times and we may be asked to move a couple of the early-round games to the Cox (Pavilion). But at least we know where we're at and we'll be ready."
The tournament will be conducted in three phases. The first phase features the 10 teams divided into two groups of five for the first round. The teams will play round-robin within their groups for five days, with each team scheduled for one off-day.
In the second phase, the top four teams from each group will form a single group and play the four teams they didn't face in the first round. The last phase is the semifinals and finals. In all, 40 games will be played over the 12-day span.
Besides the top two teams moving on to the Olympics, the third-, fourth- and fifth-place finishers here will qualify for the 12-team FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament. That event, which will produce three more Olympic qualifiers, will be held June 7-13, 2008, at a site to be determined.
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