LAS VEGAS — All right, Las Vegas, here’s your big shot.

As the NBA gets ready to tip off its All-Star Weekend in Sin City, the running subplot will be whether the city is in position to nab a pro basketball franchise for good. And with Vegas hosting the game as only Vegas can — about the first sight coming in from the airport is a giant hologram of Dwyane Wade on the side of the Mandalay Bay casino — it’s clear the city is trying to put its best foot forward.

Las Vegas is becoming a hot attraction for pro sports because of its continuing rampant growth. No longer a lonely outpost in the desert with some garish casinos surrounded by miles of tumbleweeds, Vegas now has nearly two million people in its metropolitan area. That total increases by tens of thousands every year, plus it gets a whopping 40 million tourists per annum too. No wonder the NBA chose it as the site of this year’s All-Star Game — the first time in 56 years a non-NBA city hosted the event.

Yet Las Vegas has never had a pro sports team (rivals of UNLV in the early ’90s may argue this point) and is far and away the most promising market without one of the “big four” of the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball.

The obvious reason is gambling.

Pro sports leagues are reluctant to take the plunge into Vegas because the casinos in the city take bets on their games. The general perception is that having players in such close proximity to gamblers is tempting fate a little too strongly, and certainly there have been a few examples through the years (especially in college hoops) of scandals resulting.

This has made the NFL, in particular, a reluctant partner, a situation that is rich with irony considering the NFL wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is without gambling.

But gambling isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for the NBA the way it is for football. For one, sports books see far less action on the NBA than with the NFL or even college basketball. Already one casino is forbidden from taking any NBA bets — the Palms, which is owned by Sacramento Kings co-owner Gavin Maloof — and they don’t appear to be in dire poverty because of it.

That said, the city’s other casinos would be reluctant to green-light a total ban on NBA bets just so Las Vegas could get a basketball team. This is where changing attitudes may help the city. Commissioner David Stern has said in the past that the city’s sports books would have to remove all NBA betting before the city could be considered for a franchise, but his recent rhetoric has been softer on this subject — perhaps because legalized gambling has become so geographically widespread in the past two decades.

Though Stern hasn’t said so publicly, one wonders if the league would be amenable merely to limiting gambling on the Las Vegas team’s games, much as sports books do for UNLV in college hoops, but allow it for the rest of the league.

Nonetheless, all this talk about gambling may be putting the cart before the horse. While an extremely attractive market, Las Vegas needs two things before it can have the NBA: 1) an arena, and 2) a team.

Of the two, the arena is the more difficult task, because it might have to be built on a wing and a prayer — much like Kansas City and Oklahoma City built NBAready arenas in recent years, and then hoped for a tenant to arrive. It would probably work out better for Vegas than those other two cities, simply because the market is so alluring. But it’s still unclear where the financing for such a project would come from, and the most obvious source — the casinos — may be reluctant to invest in an attraction that could lure people away from the Strip.

Even if it accomplished the first part, the city would need a team. With the NBA having all but ruled out expansion in the near future, it pretty much leaves the city looking for an existing team to persuade to come to Sin City.

Of the existing teams, three good candidates come to mind, but each has major reasons to stay put or go elsewhere:

• Sacramento is undoubtedly at the top of the list. Not only does the Maloof connection establish a link, but the Kings have also struggled to get approval for a new facility to replaced the outdated Arco Arena. However, the league will be reluctant to sign off on abandoning a market that has supported it so rabidly over the past two decades.

• Seattle is a more distant possibility. The Sonics’ arena is a dinosaur and the team’s efforts at getting a new one haven’t borne much fruit yet. But if Seattle relocates most handicappers have their money on Oklahoma City, the home city of the investor group that recently purchased the team.

• Finally, there’s the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. They’re moving back to New Orleans next season, but nobody is expecting the move to be permanent in light of the Big Easy’s struggle to repopulate. However, their first choice would be a return to Oklahoma, where they’ve played much of the past two years. Only a move there by the Sonics would make them consider Las Vegas.

So enjoy your weekend in the sun, Sin City (literally — it’s sunny and 70 degrees here. Eat your heart out Big Apple). I have no doubt that Las Vegas will put on a great show and make its strongest possible case for a pro team. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t expect the NBA to pass back through for a while. Yes, the gambling is the forefront issue, but even if that gets resolved the city faces some other serious questions that stand between it and an NBA franchise.

In fact, instead of giving it an expansion team, how about something more realistic that might better fit the city’s mojo: Anybody else up for making this the permanent home of the NBA All-Star Game?

jhollinger@nysun.com