Vegas, Baby. Vegas.

LAS VEGAS - Welcome to sunny scorching hot Las Vegas, where your Seattle SuperSonics are one of 21 NBA teams competing in the NBA Summer League. For the first time, SUPERSONICS.COM has sent a reporter to summer league, and after missing Friday's opener I'll be here through the duration of the league, blogging and posting stories.

As a Seattle native who's rarely ventured too far outside the Emerald City, this is the hottest weather I've ever experienced. Players have been asked not to go outside on game days lest the sun sap their energy.

This is the closest thing the NBA has to a league-wide "convention," with 2/3 of the league's teams participating. There are, I think, seven teams including the Sonics here at The Palms (naturally, the Sacramento Kings, owned like Palms by the Maloofs, are here as well), and it's impossible to walk around for more than a couple of minutes without seeing either a player or an employee of an NBA team, like Ron Artest taking his kids back from the pool.

Waiting for the Sonics to complete their shootaround this morning at a local basketball complex founded by former UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian, I saw a couple more NBA guys working out, Sebastian Telfair and Michael Ruffin. So this is all a little surreal.

After taking the weekend off, the summer Sonics are back in action tonight against the New York Knicks (featuring former UW standouts Nate Robinson and Tre Simmons) at 7:00 p.m. We'll be on the scene and live blogging, if perhaps not quite as fervently as for a regular-season Live From the Press Box. Mickael Gelabale is expected to play after missing Friday's game with a sprained ankle.

For more coverage of the NBA Summer League, head to NBA.com, which has put together an excellent homepage for the league.