Hill: SlamBall in Las Vegas finally ready for prime time

One of the great mysteries of sports broadcasting over the last two decades remains why SlamBall never really took off.

The sport’s creator, Mason Gordon, believes the answer can be found by examining the history of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

“At first, it was dark and violent,” Gordon said in a warehouse near Allegiant Stadium that serves as both a practice facility and the league offices. “They were chopping heads off. There was an audience of people who absolutely loved it, but not enough. Then it finally found its format and became one of the biggest things in the world.”

Gordon is hoping the sport that literally originated in his dreams more than two decades ago is about to turn that same kind of corner. He has a multiyear deal with ESPN that will see more than 30 hours of the sport air over five weekends from July 21 through Aug. 19, with all games to be played at Cox Pavilion.

The sports world is about to get exposed to something the internet has known for awhile: SlamBall is awesome.

It’s essentially full-contact basketball played on a court with trampolines that can propel the action up to 20 feet above the floor, while also bringing in elements of hockey like line changes and the ability to play the ball off the walls.

Gordon’s sport has come and gone in terms of mainstream exposure over the years. There were two seasons on Spike TV back in 2002 and 2003, then brief runs on CSTV (2007) and Versus (2008). There were even some games on Cartoon Network. But a lot of that was pre-packaged, often airing months after the games had actually taken place.

Live sports just work better and the expansion of sports betting can only help a sport like SlamBall quickly find its niche in the market.

There is already a built-in audience from the internet, where SlamBall has never really gone away. In fact, the latest incarnation started to materialize organically when the hashtag #BringBackSlamBall started gaining traction with major social media accounts including Celtics star Jayson Tatum weighing in.

The league will undoubtedly get that same kind of bump from social media once the games are on, but the action will have to be good enough to keep viewers engaged. The coaches and eight teams are hard at work making sure the product will be good enough to do that.

Gordon hopes the new crop of players, a mix of former college football and basketball standouts who are being coached by some of the game’s original stars, are the ones to truly help his sport go from a beloved corner of the internet to global phenomenon. Las Vegas will be a big part of that.

“This has rapidly become the sports epicenter,” he said. “This city has apex sports credibility and apex entertainment credibility and let’s face it, SlamBall is the most entertaining sport on the planet.”

Parade debate

A great debate raged among some in the city in recent weeks about whether the Knights championship parade was bigger for the city than the UNLV national championship parade in 1990.

It’s truly impossible to answer. While there were more people at the Knights event, it’s simply a bigger city now.

And there’s the point. My lean would be to the UNLV parade being more important because it was at a time when the city still had something to prove and the event showed there was a real community around The Strip. We no longer have anything to prove to anyone.

Still undefeated

Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce scoffed at him and Patrick Mahomes being underdogs to Steph Curry and Klay Thompson of the Warriors in their for TV-only golf match this week at Wynn Golf Club.

“We’ve never lost in Vegas,” Kelce said before The Match. “We beat everybody at Justin Timberlake’s golf tournament and then obviously the Raiders. I haven’t lost to the Raiders yet. Well, I don’t even want to say yet. We just never lost in Vegas. So, that’s the bottom line.”

Then Kelce went out and backed it up with a victory. Raiders fans can be upset with the comments, but Kelce wasn’t wrong.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.