Today we visit the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, and their amazing Thomas & Mack Center!

History:

Thomas & Mack Center is an arena located on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada. It is home to the UNLV Runnin' Rebels basketball team of the Mountain West Conference. The facility was first opened in the summer of 1983. The gala grand opening was held on December 16, 1983, featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Diana Ross. The facility hosts numerous events, such as concerts, music festivals, conventions, and boxing cards. For ring events, the capacity is 19,522; for basketball, the capacity is 18,000. The facility is named after two prominent Nevada bankers, E. Parry Thomas and Jerome D. Mack, who donated the original funds for the feasibility and land studies.

The arena underwent a major interior and exterior renovation in 1999. 2008 saw the installation of all-new visual equipment, which included a 4-sided new center-hung LED widescreen scoreboard, which includes four LED advertising/scoring boards above it and a LED advertising ring below it to replace the one installed in 1995, a partial LED ring beam display covering 80% of the balcony's rim, a new 50' LED scorer's table display, a new shot clock system for the backboards, six wall-mounted locker room game clocks, two new custom scoreboards with fixed digital scoring and complete player stats and a new outdoor marquee LED video billboard. In 2001, a smaller arena, Cox Pavilion, was added to the complex; the two arenas are directly connected. Cox Pavilion is used for smaller events; its main tenants are the UNLV women's basketball and volleyball programs.

The center's primary tenant is the UNLV men's basketball team since 1983. The arena was nicknamed "the Shark Tank" after UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, whose nickname was Tark the Shark. He won a national championship in 1990 and took the team to three additional Final Fours (four Final Fours overall). The arena ranked 4th highest in college basketball attendance during the 2012-2013 season. The facility also hosted the Las Vegas Thunder of the now-defunct International Hockey League. It was also hosted of the Los Angeles Lakers preseason games annually in October through 2013. In 2014 and 2015 their games were played at MGM Grand, and from 2016 onward at T-Mobile Arena.

It was the former home of the Arena Football League's Las Vegas Sting, Las Vegas Gladiators, and Las Vegas Outlaws. In 2005 and 2006, the arena hosted the Arena Football League's ArenaBowl. ArenaBowl XIX and ArenaBowl XX were the first two ArenaBowls to be held at a neutral site arena. In the past, the games had been played at the site of the highest seed in the playoffs. In ArenaBowl XIX in 2005, the Colorado Crush, owned by John Elway defeated the Georgia Force on a field goal on the final play of the game. The game was ranked as one of the AFL's 20 best games ever in league history. The following year, 2006, the Chicago Rush, owned by Mike Ditka defeated the Orlando Predators 69-61 for the Rush's first championship in franchise history.

The venue hosted the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, marking the first time that this game was held in a city without a National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise. For the first time in NBA history, an on-campus college sports arena served as the venue of an NBA All-Star Game. However, the arena had previously hosted home games for two NBA teams, the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Lakers. The Utah Jazz used the arena in the mid-1980s, and it was where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke Wilt Chamberlain's record for points in a career in 1984. The Lakers used the arena in 1992 for Game 4 of their first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers, in which Portland won 102–76. The NBA moved the game as a result of the Los Angeles riots.

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