The old saying is, "What Happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". Not in this case. I've got some stories to share from my 24 hours in Sin City.

First of all, it was HOT. Ridiculously hot. Dante is running around that city somewhere. Vegas has plenty of air conditioning, misters and swim pools though, so as long as you stay near one of those amenities, its bearable.

Its been 3 years since I was in Vegas last. Some things have changed and others haven't. When we walked through the airport, I couldn't help but notice there are more useless stores in the Las Vegas airport than in any other airport in America - and I've seen almost all of them. Who stops to buy gucci bags, expensive watches, PGA apparel or jewlery in an airport??! And then the city of Las Vegas can't even wait for you to get to the casino before they start tempting you to lose your money. There are slot machines everywhere. Geesh. (for the record, I didn't place a single bet until 8 hours after my arrival in Vegas - that's an all-time record for me).

After we arrived, we went to the Cox Pavilion, home of the NBA Vegas Summer League. The facility holds about 2,000 people and the 1pm Trail Blazers vs Mavericks game was 75% sold and about 25% of the fans were Trail Blazers fans. Blazermania is definitely back. From 2004-2006, you couldn't get most people in Portland to attend at Trail Blazers game if you gave them the tickets for free. Now you have season ticket holders and other Portlanders who can't even wait for the regular season to start, so they made the journey to Las Vegas to see the team play. Before last season, nobody wore Trail Blazers jerseys except for the players. Now there are Brandon Roy and Greg Oden jerseys on fans all over the place. Really an amazing transformation.

I saw a number of familiar faces at the arena. From Joe and Gavin Maloof sitting courtside to former shoe executive Sonny Vacarro to numerous NBA GM's, coaches and scouts, it was a who's who at Cox Pavilion. The person I was most excited to see? NBA-TV play by play man and former Trail Blazers TV voice Eddie Doucette. Doucette worked for the Trail Blazers when I worked for the organization and he's a long time broadcaster who now lives in San Diego. I hadn't seen Eddie in several years and he's successfully battled cancer since the last time I saw him. He looks great.

After seeing Eddie, I departed the arena and headed for the ESPN Zone inside the New York, New York hotel and casino. If you've never been to an ESPN Zone, it really is a sports fans dream come true. TV's everywhere (yes, there's even TV's strategically positioned in the restrooms so you don't miss a minute of the action), lots of interactive games and surprisingly, even the food is pretty good......unlike your Planet Hollyoods and Hard Rocks of the world.

Our engineer JP told us that we were the second radio show to use the new studio they built recently. It was a very nice facility and everything came off without a hitch. Whenever you do a radio remote, its always a bit nervewrecking because you've got a much different setup than you do when you are in your regular studio. Everything went very smoothly though, which is a credit to JP at the ESPN Zone and Jeremy Scott, our board op at KXL.

After the show, we headed to our hotel - The Palms, owned by the Maloofs, owners of the NBA's Sacramento Kings. Gavin Maloof stopped by the ESPN Zone for yesterday's show and gave us a preview of his hotel.

So when we arrived, it was again a who's who of NBA folks in the lobby and the casino. Lakers GM Mitch Kupcheck was there. Nuggets Head Coach George Karl was eating with Marcus Camby in the cafe. Kevin Durant was walking through the lobby. Agents like Aaron Goodwin were on the prowl. Then I saw a few familiar faces from my days with the Trail Blazers........Kings President of Basketball Operations Geoff Petrie and Assistant GM Wayne Cooper. Two of the quality guys in all of the NBA.

My business partner Josh Blank and his dad Owen and brother Jared have also known Geoff and Wayne for quite some time, so we all sat for 45 minutes or so and got caught up. It was great. These guys definitely have their work cut out for them trying to get the Kings back amongst the elite teams in the NBA, but if anyone can do it, its Petrie and Cooper.

During our conversation, Petrie told us a priceless story that I had not heard before. Petrie, who was a college star at Princeton, was the co-rookie of the year in the NBA in 1971 with Boston Celtics center Dave Cowens. He was one of Nike's first athlete endorsers. He told us the story of how in the early days of Nike, before they were the multi-billion dollar company they are today, the company was sometimes late with his endorsement payment. After Nike fell several months behind and owed Petrie about $40,000, they offered him stock in the company in lieu of the money they owed him. Petrie and his agent decided they wanted the money instead of the stock options, which at the time weren't worth much at all. Ouch. There's no telling how much that $40,000 worth of Nike stock would be worth today, some 36 years later, but we had a chuckle and decided it would be a considerable amount of money. Who knew Nike was going to turn in to the juggernaut they are today? Certainly not Petrie and his agent unfortunately.

The last note about Petrie, Cooper and really any Kings employee that walks through The Palms.......they are treated like royalty. As soon as Petrie and Cooper sat down, their order was taken and delivered in less than a minute. Whatever these guys want, the hotel staff delivered promptly. Overall the customer service at The Palms was excellent as far as I could tell.

Earlier in the day, I caught up with a few people who confirmed some of the recent insight I've been given with the ongoing Kevin Durant shoe saga. As you know, Nike and adidas have both made their pitches to Durant and his agent Aaron Goodwin in an effort to sign the reigning NCAA College Basketball player of the year. As I've stated recently on Sports Business Radio, its ridiculous that its taken this long for Goodwin to get a shoe deal done for his client. It should have been done before the NBA Draft - just like Greg Oden's shoe deal was with Nike (which was first reported right here on this very blog!).

Why is this taking so long? According to my well informed sources, Goodwin and Durant have an agreement that Goodwin only gets paid on a shoe deal that is greater than $40M. Anything less than that and he doesn't get a dime. If this is in fact true, its a shrewd move by the 18-year old Durant or whomever is advising him. The numbers being thrown around early in the Durant shoe negotiations were all north of $40M and some people even predicted that Durant could get as much as $60M for his shoe deal. So if you're Goodwin, you're probably thinking that $40M is a pretty darn reasonable target.

Well things started to drag on and the offers from Nike and adidas certainly weren't becoming more lucrative. According to my sources, adidas has a $40M deal on the table for Durant right now if he wants it. Nike's deal is reportedly in the $30M range. Durant, who has known members of the Nike staff since he was in 8th grade, feels loyal to them and wants to take the $30M deal. Goodwin and Durant's mom want him to take the $40M adidas deal. Goodwin obviously wants to get paid. Durant's mom probably would like her son to have a few million dollars more in his pocket.

adidas would make Durant one of their core basketball athletes and he'd be a future fixture of the company along with young studs Gilbert Arenas and Dwight Howard (recently re-signed with adidas for a reported 6-year, $36M). Nike, who already has LeBron and Kobe, may not make Durant the priority adidas would.

How this gets resolved is anyone's guess because you've got an internal standoff taking place with Durant on one side and his agent and mother on the other side. My guess is that unless Kevin Durant puts his foot down and reminds Goodwin that he works for him and not vice-versa, this thing could drag out for weeks.

Moving on to later in night after we returned from dinner, we took a tour of some of the bars and clubs upstairs. We visited the 52nd floor of the tower and its easily the best view of Las Vegas that I've ever seen. The clubs and bars were amazing. I can only imagine how packed those places were during NBA All-Star weekend last February when The Palms served as the official hotel of the all-star teams.

Before I turned in for the night (I had an early flight back to Portland), I did a bit of gaming. Just a bit. I don't throw the money around like I did back in my single days before I was married and had a child. My gaming story from last night is one I will always remember though.

I'm a big Phoenix Suns fan. I love the way they play and Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire are two of my favorite players to watch. Well, I was playing craps last night and who comes to the table but Suns Head Coach Mike D'Antoni accompanied by a few of his assistant coaches. These guys were smiling and they wanted to win some money. I wanted to win some money too after a bit of a slow start at the tables. I figured that my luck was bound to change now that D'Antoni and company had arrived. Then it happened. Several people on my side of the table passed on throwing the dice and the table bossed passed the dice to me. Listen, I used to play ball back in my high school days and I like being the guy to take the last shot and I like the pressure situations. I wanted the dice. I wanted to win some money and I wanted my rolls to make D'Antoni a happy camper. This was my chance to bond with the coaches for my favorite team and put some money in their pockets at the same time......always a quick way to make friends.

I took the dice, shook them up a bit and then lightly tossed them towards the other end of the table. Six. Not a bad number when you are playing craps. As a matter of fact, the odds are pretty decent that you will throw a 6 before a 7, which would score a point for our table and make me and the Suns coaches some money. My next roll resulted in a 4. OK. I was throwing numbers. In craps, you want to throw as many numbers as possible before you throw a 7 once you've gotten past the come out roll. I threw three more numbers other than 6 or 7 before it happened. I threw the dice a bit harder than I had previously. What I was thinking I'm not sure. Maybe I was losing patience because I wanted to see that 6 so badly. Maybe I was getting greedy by trying to throw a hard 6 (double 3's). I just don't know what happened. But the horror on the faces of D'Antoni and the others at the table told the story. I had just rolled a 7 and everyone at the table lost. Coach D'Antoni and his party walked away. I had blown my chance to make my mark with the Suns coaching staff. D'Antoni hadn't had a break this bad since Stoudemire and Diaw were suspended for Game 5 of the Suns -Spurs series this year. And I was the reason.

Tough way to end the night. For all of us.

All in all though, my trip to Vegas was action packed and successful. I may just have to return next summer to host Sports Business Radio from the ESPN Zone again. And in the meantime, I'll brush up on my dice rolling skills.