Graney: Marvel at the sports mecca Las Vegas has become

Take a deep breath. Maybe have a rest. It won’t be this way for long.

A few days. Tops.

Don’t panic.

You can’t find many places on the calendar any longer when Las Vegas isn’t overtaken by several sporting events. When such little is happening around town.

(Yes, we know the Lights played Tuesday.)

The NBA Summer League begins Friday. We’re a few weeks away from the Raiders opening training camp. Then everything starts anew. It never stops.

And that’s a wonderful thing.

Nothing like it

I came to Las Vegas 17 years ago to take this job as sports columnist, back when UNLV basketball was considered the pro team around these parts. There was Triple-A baseball, of course. A staple for sure. NASCAR. Major boxing and UFC cards. Some minor league hockey.

But nothing like now. Nothing like what we’ve become.

The idea was to write here for a few years and then jump to a newspaper in a market with professional teams. (Yes, I know. There are some who absolutely wished such a move occurred. I have read all your emails over the years. All my best to each of you.)

But never could I have imagined how this place would change in relation to sports. Never would I have believed then that there would come a time when a Las Vegas-based team was hoisting the Stanley Cup or an NFL team was playing at a state-of-the-art stadium or that such a wondrous Triple-A ballpark would have been raised.

Or that Major League Baseball, or whatever the A’s are considered nowadays, would be a fastball away from arriving. Or that an NBA expansion team is in all likelihood part of our future.

Conference basketball tournaments?

A Super Bowl?

A WNBA champion?

NCAA Tournament games?

A Final Four?

An F1 race?

I would have laughed at all of it. Wouldn’t have bought a word.

But it happened, and here we are. And it’s good for tourism. It’s good for growth. It’s good for the perception of Las Vegas. Suburbs have been revitalized as pristine practice and game facilities were born.

“All I can think about are the days the NFL wouldn’t even allow us to advertise as a town during the Super Bowl,” said Marc Ratner, senior vice president of the UFC who arrived in Las Vegas in 1958 and is a past executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. “That tells me how far we have come.

“I thought the NBA would come first, but the Golden Knights were the catalyst to all this in a way. They showed we are a major league sports town. Then, the Raiders came.”

Ratner loves the idea of pro teams in the valley, but hopes those at the collegiate level won’t get lost in the shuffle of so many other options. He doesn’t want UNLV football and basketball to get hurt by such interest elsewhere.

He will tell you UNLV beating Duke for the national championship in 1990 was as or more special than what the Golden Knights accomplished this season.

‘Something else happens’

“I really believe that,” Ratner said. “There were times when you couldn’t get into the Thomas &Mack Center. And don’t forget about the big-time boxing here throughout the years. Look how long we’ve had that.

“I’m not surprised we have handled so many new teams as well as we have. All these things have us becoming a big league town. We are one now. Every time I said that I’ve (seen it all), something else happens.”

Never would I have imagined or believed any of it.

Never would I have bought into the idea that the Entertainment Capital of the World could one day be flirting with being known as the Sports Capital of the World.

Seventeen years later, I often still don’t recognize all that has occurred with sports in Las Vegas.

And that’s a wonderful thing.

Oh, yes. Keep the emails coming. Those never get old.

Ed Graney, a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing, can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.