A major professional sporting event was awarded to Arizona for the first time since voters approved a Martin Luther King holiday when the NBA said Friday it would play its 1995 All-Star game in Phoenix.
The 1993 Super Bowl had been scheduled for the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, but the NFL decided in 1991 to move that Super Bowl to Pasadena, Calif., after voters rejected a King holiday proposal.Phoenix, host for the 1975 NBA All-Star game, is the first city to have two of the increasingly popular events. The 1994 game is scheduled for the Target Center at Minneapolis. The 1995 game is scheduled for Feb. 12 at the 19,023-seat America West Arena, which opened this season and cost $89 million to construct.
"I guess state-of-the-art is an overused term, but there is no other way to describe this arena but state-of-the-art," said NBA commissioner David Stern, who spent several hours Thursday night looking around the arena with Suns president Jerry Colangelo.
Colangelo said he waited until the successful King Day vote before applying for the 1995 game. Stern said the lack of new buildings hurt Seattle and Boston.