Thomas and Mack Center

Address:4505 S Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, Nevada

For an arena whose only home team is a college basketball squad and is actually located on a college campus, the Thomas & Mack Center certainly has the feel of a top professional arena. While the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' men's basketball team is the Thomas & Mack Center's only permanent tenant, the arena still attracts rodeo, college basketball, concerts, hockey, boxing, conventions, and much more.

UNLV plays about 20 games a year at the T&M Center, in addition to their Mountain West Conference Tournament games, which returned to Vegas in 2007 after a four-year absence. Previously, the arena also was the home of Big West and Western Athletic Conference tournaments in the mid 1990s, the ArenaBowl in 2005 and 2006, two different Arena Football teams, and a minor league hockey team. The other annual sporting event still at the Thomas and Mack Center is the National Finals Rodeo, held for 10 days in the beginning of each December. This is the last and most important rodeo event of the year, and brings in a huge crowd of rodeo fans and families.

The most notorious event in the arena's history was the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, the first such event held outside of an NBA city. While the game itself passed without note, there were a number of crimes committed in the city over the weekend that slightly diminished Vegas' chances of getting a professional sports team. However, the Thomas & Mack Center still gets all sorts of events that are commonplace in professional arenas in other cities. It even had another major basketball event later the same year – the FIBA Americas Championships.

The Thomas & Mack Center is located on UNLV's campus in downtown Las Vegas, just minutes from McCarran International Airport.