The floor that will be used for the All-Star game arrived by truck earlier this week, having been driven all the way from Dollar Bay, Mich., the home base of Horner Floors. Instead of using the existing floor at local arenas, the NBA each year spends approximately $60,000 to build a new floor that is designed just for that year's All-Star game.
According to an NBA spokesman, when the event is finished, the floor is shipped back to Michigan, refinished and then sold. "There's some mystique in a floor that was used for the All-Star Game," he says. Last year's All-Star floor is now in the Georgia Dome.*****
For the average fan, having the All-Star game in town isn't much different than having it elsewhere. Either way, he'll probably have to watch it on TV. That's because relatively few tickets are sold to the general public.
According to Jazz publicist Dave Allred, approximately 8,000 seats go to the NBA's corporate sponsors. The rest of the tickets are offered to season ticketholders in the host city (in this case, there are 5,000 season ticketholders who own 16,000 season tickets). What all this means is that only about 1,000 tickets were left to sell to the general public this year for Saturday's and Sunday's events.
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To involve more local fans in the All-Star event, the NBA is offering, for the first time, the so-called Jam Session this year. The event, which will run for four days (Thursday through Sunday) in the Salt Palace, will consist of three-on-three tournaments, card shows, three-point shootouts, dunk contests, autograph sessions with celebs, fantasy broadcast booths (do play by play while watching a videotaped game), and so on.
The NBA is following the lead of the NFL and Major League Baseball, which have similar events.
For more elite (and richer) fans, there is another plan: For $3,000, you can buy a ticket that not only buys prime seats at the events, but will gain admittance to various parties and functions, where they can rub shoulders with players and other celebs. The proceeds from the sale of the tickets will be used to cover part of the $250,000 Salt Lake City paid to host the All-Star Game.
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Jazz President Frank Layden isn't surprised that the Utah Jazz have become an institution in Salt Lake City as well as a model franchise around the National Basketball Association. But he is surprised that Utah basketball fans are having no difficulty paying what he calls "Broadway prices."
"That's the biggest surprise about what's happened here," says the man who served as the Jazz's first general manager when they moved from New Orleans to Utah in 1979. "This is a town that has survived, and quite happily, on a smaller budget. Everything is here - the Arts, the Theatre, college sports, you name it - and the ticket prices for all of them are low. I can go to all those things for what it costs to go to the Jazz.
"And yet, people are lining up in droves for the Jazz and for this (the All-Star game). I have to be honest. In the beginning I saw that as a big drawback. It hasn't turned out to be one."
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Brian McIntyre, the NBA's vice president in charge of public relations, wouldn't mind having an encore All-Star event in Salt Lake.
"The cooperation from everyone we've dealt with has been great," said McIntyre, "from the building staff to the people in the Jazz organization to the Convention Bureau to you name it. The spirit has been phenomenal. We get good cooperation most everywhere we go, but to paraphrase George Orwell, "Some are greater than others." This has been an exceptional display of hospitality. We'd come back here anytime."
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A record 55 countries outside the United States will see Sunday's All-Star game via television. The All-Star broadcast will be translated into some 23 different languages and a record eight separate foreign language broadcast teams will be courtside in the Delta Center. The game's various dunks, three-point shots, cross-court passes and blocked shots will be described and analyzed simultaneously by broadcasters from the countries of Argentina, Brazil, France, Poland, Romania, Russia, Uruguay, Venezuela, and New York.
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A few rare copies of the game program from the ABA's 1973 All-Star Game held in Salt Lake City have been circulating around the Delta Center. That game, the ABA's 6th annual, was played on Feb. 6, a Tuesday, in the Salt Palace.
Twenty years doesn't seem that long ago, until it's noted that among the full-page ads in the game program is one for the Tri-Arc TraveLodge - "Home to the All-Stars" and another for the "Beautifully Renovated Hotel Newhouse" in downtown Salt Lake.
The Tri-Arc has gone through a change of business, a name-change and is no longer home to the All-Stars, while the Newhouse no longer exists. A similar fate befell the ABA and another item advertised prominently in that '73 program: Eight-track tapes.
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There will be plenty of jamming by NBA players during All-Star Weekend, but none of them will do it quite the way Sacramento Kings forward Wayman Tisdale will.
The eight-year veteran - and accomplished bass player - will bring his band, Fifth Quarter, to Salt Lake on Friday to entertain the more than 5,000 guests expected to turn out for the NBA Welcome Reception at the Salt Palace.
Highlights of Tisdale's performance, and the rest of the NBA Welcome Reception held during the NBA Jam Session will be broadcast nationally on TNT during a one-hour telecast beginning at 8 p.m. MST
Tisdale and his six-piece band play a combination of jazz and funk and have played together for several years. The group has recorded two singles, "Fifth Quarter" and "Don't Give Up."
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Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Lanier, one of the top players in the history of the Detroit Pistons franchise and chairman of the NBA's Stay in School program, has been named the winner of the 1993 Schick Achievement Award honoring a former NBA coach or player who has gone on to prominence in his chosen career after basketball.
As part of the award, Schick will donate $10,000 to the Bog Lanier Center for Educational, Physical and Cultural Development in Buffalo, N.Y. on Lanier's behalf. The award will be presented at halftime of the Schick Legends Classic on Saturday night at the Delta Center.
In addition to his work with the NBA Stay in School program, Lanier is also an active member of the Board of Directors of the Milwaukee Council on Alcoholism, the Board of Trustees of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee, and is honorary chairperson of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.