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Is New Orleans the new Vegas?

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Submitted by SHNS on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 14:12

NEW ORLEANS -- Walk through the doors to the visiting locker room at New Orleans Arena, and it feels like stumbling through a wormhole to the Las Vegas Strip.Massive purple ads for Harrah's Hotel and Casino paper the walls featuring slogans like "Game on" and "Get more playing time." More Harrah's logo stickers adorn each individual locker. Even in the hallway outside the locker room, there's another Harrah's sign encouraging passersby to "Run the floor. Then run the tables."At a time when the NBA is cracking down on gambling in the wake of a betting scandal that tarnished the integrity of the league, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson said before Wednesday night's win over the Hornets that the advertising sends the wrong signals to players and coaches."One side of it is saying don't gamble and the other side is an advertisement for it," he said. "But this is a franchise that's led by a great Christian leader (George Shinn). He has prayer before the games. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."The Harrah's signage appears in the visiting locker room and in other parts of the arena because the New Orleans casino is a longtime corporate sponsor, a Hornets spokesman said. The team has received no complaints about the advertising and does not plan to remove it.Gambling has been a hot-button issue in the NBA since July 2007, when the FBI began investigating whether veteran referee Tim Donaghy made calls to affect the point spread in games he was working. Donaghy is now serving a 15-month sentence for conspiring with gamblers.Even with the Donaghy scandal still fresh in their minds, the Lakers players said didn't seem bothered by the pervasive casino advertisements. In fact, both Derek Fisher and Vladimir Radmanovic said they didn't even notice until a reporter brought it to their attention."I'm not a gambler, so it doesn't really tickle my fancy," Fisher said. "I guess if you have an issue, maybe it makes you think about it."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)