It's the first time the NBA has held the annual exhibition in a city that doesn't have a team. Already there's talk about a return All-Star appearance in a few years.

What Las Vegas really wants, though, is something more permanent ¡ª a team of its own. So far, the glitzy city has struck out trying to land one from the four major sports.

Las Vegas may have the biggest hotels in the world, including a $7 billion resort complex under construction that other cities could never match. But it still looks with envy at more sedate places like Indianapolis that have teams ¡ª and titles.

"I think Las Vegas is the next great world city, and a component part of that has to be a major league team, be it NBA, NHL, baseball or football," said Mayor Oscar Goodman. "That's what makes great American cities."

A big part of the problem for Las Vegas is that other American cities weren't built on gambling. Other American cities don't have neighborhood casinos that make it as easy to bet on a game as it is to go to the supermarket for a gallon of milk.

Leagues already wary of betting scandals are even more wary of committing a team to play in a place where betting is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

"It's not about a moral crusade about gambling," NBA commissioner David Stern said when announcing the All-Star game would be in Las Vegas. "It's just about betting on basketball games."

To land the All-Star game, casino sports books agreed not to accept bets on it, a concession easily made since it's an exhibition that hardly anyone bets on anyway. The casinos, though, made it clear they won't do the same for an entire season.

Goodman has made it his mission in recent years to lure some sort of team to town, even going so far as to show up at baseball's winter meetings a few years ago with two showgirls and an Elvis impersonator in tow.

He's been rebuffed for both moral and financial reasons, but the fast-growing city now has a relatively affluent population of 2 million and might eventually prove so attractive that it can't be ignored.

Stern hasn't budged from his insistence that there be no betting on the NBA as a condition for any team to locate in Las Vegas. But he had no problem bringing the All-Star game to town and seems to have softened his stance recently by saying it would be a decision made by the owners.

At least one of those owners believes the NBA will be in Las Vegas in a few years.

"I think within five years," said Gavin Maloof, whose family owns both the Sacramento Kings and the Palms hotel-casino in Las Vegas. "Certainly within the decade, absolutely. The city has too much going for it. It's very large, there's a lot of money here, there's a huge local population, and they love basketball."

The NBA isn't the only league hesitant to commit. Baseball flirted with moving the Montreal Expos to the city, but the betting issue and a better offer prompted the league to choose Washington, D.C., instead.

The NFL, meanwhile, is so unfriendly to the city that it won't even allow Las Vegas to be mentioned during the Super Bowl telecast, much less advertise on it. That policy apparently won't change under new commissioner Roger Goodell.

"I think it's a real issue," Goodell said earlier this month at the Super Bowl. "I have my personal views about gambling, and I don't think it's in the best interests of the NFL to have any association with sports betting."

The city's best hope for the immediate future might be the NHL, which is struggling with both attendance and television ratings and doesn't appear nearly as dogmatic about betting.

"Certainly there has been interest expressed since the lockout ended by people wanting to own a franchise in Las Vegas," deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. "At the appropriate time I think we have to look at that interest."

Daly said he believes an accommodation could be made on the betting issue. More important, he said, would be the willingness to build a new arena since the 19,000-seat UNLV campus arena where the NBA All-Star game will be played wouldn't satisfy a basketball or hockey team.

"It's an intriguing market for a host of reasons. The demographics are strong, there's wealth in the market and interest in the market," Daly said. "But it's essential there be a state-of-the-art arena before we have a franchise there."

That could be more difficult than getting casinos to stop taking sports bets. Local leaders formed a committee to study building a new arena, but there is little appetite for tax money to pay for one.

Casinos, for the most part, see a team as competition for the entertainment dollar, not a lure for tourists.

"There isn't a movie company in Los Angeles that would expect the government to pay another movie company to come to town. And we shouldn't be doing that for a sports team," said Alan Feldman, vice president of public affairs for the powerful MGM Mirage casino operator. "In this state and community we pay for everything. We get no breaks."

Pro teams and big-time athletes are no strangers to Las Vegas. The U.S. Olympic team made up of NBA stars trains in the city and will host an Olympic qualifier this summer, while Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Tiger Woods are regulars in the casinos.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke Wilt Chamberlain's career scoring record in the city in 1984, when the Utah Jazz played 11 games at the UNLV arena, and the Oakland A's played their first six home games of the 1996 regular season in Las Vegas.

Maloof said he isn't planning to move his family's team to Las Vegas, despite arena problems in Sacramento.

Still, he said, he believes the city needs a team to be complete.

"There needs to be one of the four major sports," Maloof said. "All I can say is that Vegas has everything, yet it has nothing when it doesn't have sports. There really is a need for it."