They Say No Dice to Convention

Goodbye to all this. Thanks for the memories.

Welcome to the 2006 NBA All-Star game, showcasing the league’s great artistry, skill, compassion, internationalism, commitment to cutting-edge technology, etc.

Or, as this one is known, “364 Days Until Vegas.”

This will be the NBA’s last conventional gala in a league city for a while. Next season’s is in Las Vegas and the 2008 game is expected to go to New Orleans, which is still officially in the league but may not be by then.

With thoughts of foreign capitals dancing in Commissioner David Stern’s head spawned by memories of the rock-star treatment accorded his players overseas, and with fewer league cities big enough to hold this event, which now requires 6,000 hotel rooms, and with fewer owners who want it, there’s speculation it may begin traveling the country, or the world, like a circus.

League officials say such speculation is premature. Of course, if everyone has a good time on the Strip and in the French Quarter, it may be not be all that premature.

Russ Granik, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, said it was “unlikely” that this would be the last conventional All-Star Game, noting that there “are discussions in place” out past 2008 with NBA owners who want to be hosts.

“But I don’t want to suggest we wouldn’t have unconventional ones, either, going forward,” he added. “I think we’ll see how these two go.”

The possibility of New Orleans following Las Vegas is already being hailed as the best news surrounding this event since the days when Dominique Wilkins was dunking it out with Michael Jordan or 19-year-old Kobe Bryant was shooting nine times in his first 11 touches.

Popular destinations may revitalize this event that is, at once, bigger than ever, more important as a showcase than ever, and of less general interest than ever.

The time and energy the NBA puts into what is now a sprawling three-day festival dwarfs any of its other endeavors, including the Finals. Several league officials take up residence in the host city months in advance. Stern and his top lieutenants fly in for meetings with city officials and media outlets. For the big weekend, the entire league office comes in from New York on a chartered plane.

The Jam Session opens the event up (or gives part of it back) to the little people. Thousands more come streaming into town just for the parties, selling out all the high-end hotels, overflowing the best restaurants and snarling downtown traffic. (When the event was here in 2004, the downtown it tied up was not Los Angeles, of course, but Beverly Hills.)

Nevertheless, in the NBA as everywhere else, ratings for the game itself are way down and dropping ever lower.

At least Stern isn’t asked about putting his game on cable TV three years ago anymore, since the mighty NFL has since done the same thing with the Pro Bowl.

Baseball, which started this art form, has the last one televised over the air. Arch Ward’s “Midsummer Classic,” so named by the Chicago Tribune sports editor who created it in 1933, peaked with a 28.5 TV rating in 1980 but by last summer was down to an 8.1, its seventh consecutive low.

The NBA game began humbly but grew in popularity, peaking at a 14.3 rating in 1993 when the West won a 135-132 shootout in Salt Lake City with Karl Malone and John Stockton as co-MVPs. By last season, it was down to a 4.9 cable rating.

By then, the NBA had pioneered the notion of a “weekend,” which was no longer fun for all concerned. So many players claimed injury to get out of it the league enacted a rule that anyone who played in his team’s last game had to come.

Magic Johnson, who talked about “the torch” he got from Julius Erving, tried to pass it to Jordan but the new torchbearer was skipping the Friday media session. When Stern moved his own news conference from Friday to Saturday, there was speculation he did it just to low-key the questions about Jordan’s absence.

Instead of two afternoon sessions, with the dunk and three-point contests on Saturday, it became three nights, moving into prime time for TNT with the rookies playing the sophomores Friday (replacing the legends game, which was canceled after several legends blew out knees amid fear one might succumb to cardiac arrest).

Unfortunately, the rookies and sophomores never mastered the art of competing just enough to make it interesting. Likewise, the storied dunk contest went from marquee event to lounge act.

In 1988, Wilkins, the former champion, returned from dunking retirement to challenge Jordan, the reigning champ, in a duel of jamming legends. Jordan won -- no surprise since ‘Nique might not have been able to beat Michael in Chicago if he had flown a figure eight.

As late as 2000 Vince Carter put on an eye-popping show. But since, no self-respecting NBA star has set foot in the competition. The league finally turned it over to its apprentices, making it the Fast Risers Dunk Contest, but it’s beneath even some of them, including the fastest riser whom the league wanted most, LeBron James.

Worse, host teams were allotted only about 2,500 tickets, obliging Stern to annually point out this was the only chance to entertain corporate sponsors and it was preferable to taking a real event away from the fans, as the NFL does at its Super Bowl.

If you were Jack Nicholson, you might still be courtside at the 2004 game. However, if you were just one of the $210-a-game proletariat paying $18,000 a year for two season tickets in the lower bowl ... and you were lucky enough to win the Lakers’ lottery so you could attend ... well, this was your chance to see what it looked like from the upper deck.

In 2002, new Philadelphia 76er chairman Ed Snider, an NHL owner who got his title when Comcast bought both teams and put him in charge, complained publicly, saying he’d never have the game back.

Said an official from one of the Los Angeles teams: “If Snider was right about anything in his life, he was right about that. You don’t want this event.”

In 2004, the Lakers turned it down, but the league was so keen to come here it ran the event itself.

Now this why-bother sentiment is often voiced privately, although Dallas’ gadfly owner, Mark Cuban, says it publicly.

“I can’t tell 14,000 season-ticket holders, who have invested in the Mavs, they can’t have tickets for the game,” Cuban wrote in an e-mail. “Won’t have the game here.”

On the other hand, there was Sacramento, which wanted the game but didn’t have enough luxury hotel rooms. That started King owners Joe and Gavin Maloof thinking about their Las Vegas home.

“Joe and I were sitting around one morning,” Gavin recalled, “and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to have the game in Las Vegas?’ So we went and saw the mayor and everyone got excited.”

Selling it was easy. The casino owners, who weren’t willing to take NBA games off the board in their sportsbooks to get a franchise, were happy to do it for one game. The NBA was delighted. In a twinkling, the game was on.

“It just presented kind of a unique opportunity.” Granik said. “It’s such a great entertainment capital. They were very, very eager to host it, and I think David felt it would be a great experiment.”

In the meantime, it’s business as usual. Where are we again? Oh yeah, Houston.