SOURCE: MSNBC

With the NBA in Las Vegas these next two weeks for the Tournament of the Americas to try to win a place in the 2008 Olympics (the top two teams earn the berths), I'm reminded of Lloyd Bridges' scenes in the 1980 spoof movie Airplane with the plane in trouble.

With the crisis increasing, traffic controller Bridges says it looks like he picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Then he mentions how it was the wrong week to quit drinking.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines," he goes on, and then adds: "Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue."

It looks like the NBA picked the wrong year to be playing Olympic qualifying games in Las Vegas, the world's gambling capital.

The NBA didn't actually select Las Vegas, which was done by FIBA, but in the wake of referee Tim Donaghy's gambling admissions and names still to come involving gambling with the NBA now hiring an independent prosecutor, having its top players spend almost a month in Las Vegas makes for, at least, some wincing at league headquarters.

This is the third time in a year, with last summer's training for the World Championships and the 2007 All Star game, that the NBA is in Las Vegas.

It seemed like a good idea: Growing city hungry for a professional sports franchise, an appealing rights feel that could earn each owner upwards of $10 million.

But that's over: The NBA is not coming to Las Vegas. Not soon and probably never.

I was one who thought in David Stern's knight-like quest for continued new revenues, putting a franchise in Las Vegas was inevitable.

Now, it seems ridiculous, though not only in light of the referee gambling scandal.

Although the NBA played its All-Star game at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus, Stern made it clear last February that arena was not suitable for an NBA team and a new arena would have to be built. The mayor was optimistic, but there seems to be obvious issues with the casinos which, effectively, run Las Vegas.

Most of the big casinos have their own large theaters or facilities. If a new arena is a built-and no one knows where the money would come from as Las Vegas doesn't yet have a rich population base and even its local monorail is in financial trouble-a basketball season would not provide enough dates to justify a major new arena. So the new arena would go into competition with the casinos for shows and concerts and events, and it seems unlikely the casinos would support or want to help build such competition.

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