FanHouse David Stern

You have to give Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman an "A" for persistence. Neither the bad economy, nor the bad publicity from the All-Star Game in 2007 -- or even the stepped-up anti-gambling push after the snake-like Tim Donaghy raised his head -- has deterred Goodman from continuing his push for an NBA franchise.

He does make a lot of sense. Las Vegas really would be NBA heaven.

Goodman at his weekly press conference Thursday brought up the issue again of moving forward with plans for a new downtown arena in hopes of luring an NBA franchise to his city.

The uber-rich are people, too, right? Well, they may put their pants on one leg at a time, but they certainly don't eat meals like we do.

Consider this: Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire expected to purchase a majority stake in the New Jersey Nets, recently celebrated a positive meeting with the NBA's governors by having lunch with a half dozen friends. What's the big deal, right?

Well, according to the New York Post, his tab for lunch at Nello's, a tony restaurant in New York's Upper East Side, was nearly $19,000. How exactly does one eat the cost equivalent of a mid-size sedan? Keep reading to find out.

Fans can wave goodbye in these last few exhibition games to the replacement officials who will disappear quietly at the end of the week.

The NBA's regular, locked-out referees will be back on the job for the start of the season Tuesday after a labor agreement was reached this week between the league and the union's executive committee.

It won't become official until Friday when the 57 tenured referees ratify the deal in a union meeting, but they all are making arrangements today to attend a training camp Saturday, Sunday and Monday in New Jersey.

"Yes, it's done,'' said one source very close to the negotiations who asked that his name not be used. "They're coming back to work. That was the goal all along.''

The labor dispute between the NBA and its referees may come to an end later this week, and the regular season may start with the regular referees calling the games.

According to a report from Howard Beck of the New York Times, negotiators for both sides agreed to the basics of a new deal on Tuesday, and it's one that's expected to be ratified by the referees' union when they vote on it later this week.

I don't believe David Stern has jurisdiction over the entire basketball world; it just seems like that's the case occasionally. It'd be silly to think, however, that Stern won't have words with leaders of Euroleague and the Israeli Basketball Association after Maccabi Tel Aviv coach Pini Gershon held up his team's exhibition game against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden for nearly 10 minutes by refusing to leave the court when an NBA replacement referee ejected him.

Every preseason when a handful of NBA teams jump the pond to play ball in the Old Word's great cities, NBA commissioner David Stern discusses his dream of bringing a real life NBA franchise to Europe. Globalizing the game has been one of Stern's most impressive victories, and introducing the "London Gobsmackers" or some such would be some serious icing.

But Stern is now dampening expectations for when this all might happen. The commish told Bill Wilson of BBC News that while the league would like to schedule a regular season game at London's (reportedly spectacular) O2 Arena before the 2012 Olympics, placing a franchise in Europe will take at least another decade. The logistics, Stern admits, are nightmarish. I'd also note that so long as there are domestic arenas in want of NBA tenants (such as Kansas City's Sprint Center), American expansion might be a more pragmatic move in the near term.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Friday, there are 25 days remaining.

No one -- not Wilt, not MJ, not Red, not Magic or Bird, not Kobe or LeBron -- no one has had more impact on the NBA than a 5'9 lawyer from Teaneck, N.J., named David Stern. You'd think that'd be a sad commentary on the game, that it has been defined in the board room rather than on the hardwood.

But there's no doubt that if Stern had worked for Major League Baseball or the National Football League after earning his J.D. at Columbia, it'd be the same story. Like Wilt, like MJ and Magic and Bird and Kobe and LeBron, Stern is one of the rare stars who -- with his undeniable talent and incredible work ethic -- could not have failed.

The latest details from the again broken-down referee labor negotiation come from ESPN's Chris Sheridan and Howard Beck of the New York Times. Beck reports that the executive board of the refs union initially approved the latest offer from the NBA on Sunday with a 3-2 vote, effectively endorsing the plan for the fuller population of refs.

But an impassioned plea from the two exec board dissenters -- identified by Sheridan as Bennett Salvatore and Steve Javie -- flipped a third exec board member -- identified as Bill Spooner -- and led to the eventual defeat of the deal on a vote by the full union.

When you take a look at just who makes up the leadership of the union, and you see what's at stake in these negotiations, you begin to realize why these negotiations are getting nowhere fast.

After failing to negotiate a new contract with the referees union, the NBA locked out its officials Friday and began making plans to start the season with a group of replacement referees.

The league has been asking for significant concessions from the union, most notably a reduction in pension benefits. The league has said that it wants the union to accept a deal that is more in line with the compensation awarded its office employees and administrative staff.

In responses to the league's demands, Julie Davis, the wife of veteran NBA official Marc Davis, wrote this letter to the National Basketball Referees Association executive board to provide a family's perspective.

The NBA and its referee union got together again this week to negotiate by phone. Lamell McMorris, the spokesman and chief negotiator for the union, told the New York Times that the NBA concluded talks by saying there was no need to talk further, which implies to McMoriss that the referee lockout feared over the past few weeks will come to pass.

Ref training camp was supposed to begin Sunday in Chicago. At this point, the league is expected to instead use D-League and WNBA refs once the preseason begins October 1.