This Vegas Act Warmup Proves the Stakes Are High

The beautiful thing about Las Vegas is it can accommodate any agenda, be it gamblers, a group of young Lakers looking to establish themselves, bachelorette partyers, a Phoenix Suns team hoping a star can make a full recovery from injury and a league that’s ready to make the unprecedented move of bringing the NBA All-Star game to Sin City.

They all came together this weekend, the conclusion being ... we’ll get back to you.

There’s not much to evaluate for the Lakers on a night Kobe Bryant, Kwame Brown and Chris Mihm didn’t play, Vladimir Radmanovic was limited by an injury to his shooting hand and the guy whose opinion matters the most, Phil Jackson, wasn’t around to offer his views.

The Lakers already are pleased with the younger players’ development and Lamar Odom’s ability to focus after the tragic death of his infant son this summer. And Andrew Bynum is showing signs of developing court sense, including interior passing.

Really, the player to watch Sunday was Phoenix’s Amare Stoudemire, who is back after a season wasted by knee injuries. His play will determine whether the Suns break through to the NBA Finals or the Lakers can entertain thoughts of ending Phoenix’s two-year reign as Pacific Division champions. Running with the Suns’ second unit, Stoudemire had a quick dunk on Ronny Turiaf and elevated to volleyball spike a Lamar Odom shot, smacking it so hard the ball bounced over the Lakers bench and into the crowd.

“I can’t put a percentage on it, but I definitely feel great,” Stoudemire said. “I definitely feel my legs coming back, how they were before the injury.”

The explosive leaping is back. The positioning isn’t. He often seemed out of place on offense and defense.

“The hardest thing is just getting my feel back, just for the offensive game,” Stoudemire said.

It was the NBA who had the most to gain from this exhibition and the Lakers’ game against Sacramento here Tuesday. Kevin Dobstaff, the NBA’s senior director for live programming and entertainment, brought a team with him to work on the logistics of staging the three-day All-Star event here.

Like so many other things in Las Vegas, 23-year-old Thomas & Mack Center will be augmented.

“Coming into an arena that’s a little older, it’s going to require a little bit more massaging to try to get the production that we would normally do into this building,” Dobstaff said. “That’s what we’re here working on.”

At a nearby table, his colleagues pored over architectural drawings, trying to determine the best way to run lines to supply power to the extra lights and speakers that will be installed for All-Star weekend.

There’s so much work to be done, with steps as drastic as removing the arena’s center scoreboard and replacing it with four larger video screens. The league will take over the building the week before the game, one day ahead of the normal schedule.

Dobstaff said the entertainment will definitely have a Vegas flavor to it. Maybe showgirls for the player intros. They’re exploring performers such as Penn and Teller, Blue Man Group, pretty much everyone you see on the billboards is in play.

But I’m wondering what will happen outside the arena. This could either turn into the single greatest party weekend of all time ... or Armageddon.

There are no limits on the availability of alcohol and strip clubs, and those are just the legal options.

I’m picturing taxi lines backed into casinos. Random groupings such as Diddy, Mariah Carey, Al Sharpton and Smush Parker sharing a table at Pure. This weekend I saw a guy drop $21,000 on bottle service at a nightclub, so just imagine the tabs when the NBA hits town.

If Stephen Jackson can squabble and fire shots outside a strip club during the first week of training camp in Indianapolis, I wondered, “What’s going to happen to these guys in Vegas on All-Star weekend?”

Then I thought about something: Sure, celebrities might wind up getting a quickie marriage or get photographed dancing on tables, but how often do you read about them being arrested in Vegas? The Malibu stretch of Pacific Coast Highway is responsible for more police mug shots than the Strip. So much is permissible here, you would have to try exceptionally hard to get arrested. Maybe they could make that a competition, with cameras, then show the highlights Saturday night. It would be better than the dunk contest, which is only memorable every four years now.

I’m doing my due diligence, checking out the new Playboy Club and Moon nightclub at the Palms. The Playboy Club is, in a word, dark. Black walls and black bunny costumes for the dealers at the $100 minimum blackjack tables. So dark that there are people whose sole responsibility is shining flashlights so people don’t slip going down the black marble steps. That’s not a problem upstairs at Moon, where parts of the floor light up. The top story of the Palms’ new tower also features a retractable roof.

Everywhere I went, people’s eyes light up at the thought of February’s All-Star game. “Crazy” is a word that came up a lot. So was “Money,” as in the Playboy Club waitress who said, “Hopefully I’ll make a lot of money!”

“The entire town’s going to be excited about it because it can put Vegas on the map for this event,” said Marklen Kennedy, a vice president for the group that runs the Bellagio’s Light and Mirage’s Jet nightclubs.

“It’s not like the town is going to skip a beat. All of Vegas is a machine. The reason [the NBA] is going here is they know Vegas will handle it and deliver.”

In fact, it’s going to make the whole first 3 1/2 months of the season feel like this weekend: a warmup for the main event.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande, go to latimes.com/adandeblog.