The game’s not the thing when All-Stars hit Vegas

Silly you, sitting at home in front of your TV thinking NBA All-Star Weekend has anything to do with basketball. It might for the 70 or so players competing either in the game Sunday night or the various Saturday competitions, including the three-point shootout and dunk contest. But for everybody else, “The Biggest Party in NBA History” began Thursday, and basketball is simply the excuse that got ‘em here.

The Pro Bowl is serious stuff compared to the NBA All-Star game, especially this first one in Las Vegas. While a great many NFL players will do anything to get out of going to the Pro Bowl, even the injured NBA All-Stars show up in Vegas. Just because you can’t find Allen Iverson in uniform Sunday doesn’t mean you can’t find him here. You can see plenty of A.I. if you can convince Ice Nightclub to let you into the Allen Iverson-LeBron James All-Star Weekend Celebration with, among others, Ashanti and Ja Rule.

If you missed A.I. Thursday night, don’t worry, he and LeBron have Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Ice on lock as well.

OK, it’s not like Vegas doesn’t see parties all the time, and it’s not like Vegas hasn’t hosted huge sports events. There was never anything, nor will there ever be anything in my lifetime, like a Mike Tyson championship fight in Vegas and all the crazies it attracted. The NBA all-star sycophants, while all fancied up, won’t be nearly as, well, colorful as Tyson’s fans. I managed to walk a mile or so up Las Vegas Boulevard (a.k.a. the Strip) early Thursday afternoon and didn’t see a single person I would immediately and unmistakably identify as a pimp.

Nonetheless, one police official is quoted on LasVegasNow.com as saying that on normal days 150 officers work overtime for special events in Vegas, but this weekend 1,000 additional officers will be used each day in and around the Strip.

Why? Because Thomas & Mack, the arena where the All-Star festivities will be held, holds about 17,000, while police, local government and casino officials here estimate 200,000 people are coming to Las Vegas because of All-Star Weekend. Do the math.

To most of them, only two results will have mattered by Sunday night: Did they get into a party being hosted by an NBA star, and who won Saturday’s match-race between Charles Barkley and 67-year-old NBA referee Dick Bavetta?

Meanwhile, to help make certain everybody has a good, safe time, local and federal law enforcement agents hurriedly implemented something called “Operation Slam Dunk,” which was designed to get as many fugitive felons off the Las Vegas streets as possible. So, last week they reportedly hunted down and arrested 140 fugitives who had warrants out for drug dealing, gun running and -- I love this next phrase -- “violent beatings.”

There was no count on how many of the fugitives had VIP passes for this weekend’s parties. Super Bowl week, as party crazed as it’s becoming, is like a 6-year-old’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s compared with NBA All-Star Weekend. While the mayor of Las Vegas and influential local business people stress over whether Commissioner David Stern and NBA club owners will like the city enough to consider moving a team here despite the gambling issues, the players will essentially host what I began calling “Black Thanksgiving” some years ago.

NBA All-Star Weekend merges two of the three most popular cultural components of Blackworld: basketball and music (church is the other). Sadly, for people my age, the great jazz musicians who kept the casino lounges jumping into the wee hours have mostly disappeared and given way to rappers, whose musical skills are mostly nonexistent, but who along with basketballers are the urban icons of the day. When they’re together, it’s magnetic -- and to people who are white, brown and yellow as well.

Pro football is America’s No. 1 attraction, without question. Pro basketball is black America’s No. 1 obsession, without question, but All-Star Weekend has always been inclusive.

As of Tuesday, Southwest Airlines flashed a message on its Web site saying there were no more seats available on Thursday or Friday from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Goodness knows how many homies, playaz, slimmies, shorties, pimps, juicies and jeezys are on the interstate driving from Oakland. And lest you think this is exclusively a West Coast affair, consider that Love nightclub in D.C., the people who hosted the big bash for Gilbert Arenas’s 25th birthday, are throwing parties here in conjunction with LeBron and TNT’s Kenny Smith that are open to regular folks for $100 general admission, in advance.

Thursday night, very late of course, Diddy and Tracy McGrady were hosting a party. Shaq has not only a party scheduled for Friday night at Mix, but comes back Saturday night at rumjungle to co-host with LaDanian Tomlinson. Magic’s party on Saturday with Iverson (who clearly has too much time on his hands) features hip-hoppers Biz Markie and Kid Capri. Magic’s after-party features Flavor Flav.

But the biggest star of the weekend -- and this will surprise some people -- is already Dwyane Wade. Right across from “Carrot Top at the Luxor” and an enormous billboard for “Microsurgical Vasectomy Reversal” is a stunningly large ad for Wade selling T-Mobile Sidekick 3 that spans 28 floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. It’s twice as tall as any building in D.C.

Yes, there are huge ads covering domes and pyramids along the Strip, featuring Kevin Garnett and Dwight Howard, a medium-size poster here and there with Gilbert Arenas. But Wade is the big deal. It was Wade’s Thursday night party at the Mirage, thrown by Converse, and Wade’s party at rumjungle Saturday night featuring performances by Rich Boy and Slim Thug that were the most sought-after invites of all.

So is the NBA seriously considering putting a team here?

Ghalib Ghallab, the revered jazz musician who has lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years, talked Thursday morning about basketball’s place here in Las Vegas. “It’s always been a basketball town,” he said. “For the longest time it was UNLV and Jerry Tarkanian. Tark now has a basketball academy here. Basketball is still alive and thriving locally, though not to the level as when UNLV was the flagship. I’d love to see a pro team here.

“Most people would. The All-Star game every year? That would be great, too. But we know that gaming is the issue. The mayor is trying every angle, and the town is jacked up. I don’t care what the sport is; they bring it to Vegas to see if it will work.”