Right now, Las Vegas is closer than ever to having a professional sports team. Headlines and rumors have swirled constantly this year, with multiple developments in multiple sports fueling the fire. Findlay Sports & Entertainment is working with Mayor Carolyn Goodman and the Cordish Companies to court an MLS expansion team to play soccer in a potential new stadium in Symphony Park. How about hockey in the desert? The Maloof family is part of an ownership group working to bring an NHL expansion team to Vegas.

Of course, these kinds of efforts are nothing new. Local sports fans have heard it all before. But there’s one simple fact that’s impossible to ignore and instantly escalates standard rumors into serious consideration: We’ve got an arena. MGM Resorts and AEG are building a 20,000-seat arena, right now, right behind New York-New York, set to open in 2016.

Could that hockey team slide into that arena? Sure. The Downtown soccer thing could happen, too, but no professional sport makes as much sense in Las Vegas as basketball does. There’s no better fit than an NBA team in that MGM arena.

We are a basketball city. The sports identity of Las Vegas has traditionally been tied to boxing (and, more recently, mixed martial arts), and that whole legal sports betting thing has fashioned Vegas into a fun football destination. But the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels national championship in 1990 remains our city’s defining sports moment. The Thomas & Mack Center still buzzes from that era’s all-encompassing energy, nearly 25 years later. Tark is still God. Hoops still rules.

Hockey or soccer or anything else wouldn’t be able to capture us as easily, because our most glorious sports moment happened on the hardwood. And that’s far from the only big basketball connection. Las Vegas infamously hosted NBA All-Star Weekend in 2007 and is a frequent home for the star-studded USA Basketball Men’s National Team. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke the league’s all-time scoring record in 1984 during a Lakers-Jazz game at Thomas & Mack, which has also been home to the NBA Summer League since 2004.

As recently illustrated in The Sunday, high school hoops in Las Vegas have come a long way in recent years, further proving the sport is in our DNA. Four of the top prep prospects in the nation live and play here, and it sure would be cool to see them go pro one day, playing on the Strip.

Or maybe our NBA team will play at the All Net Arena, which also broke ground on the Strip this year. A planned $1.4 billion arena and hotel project adjacent to SLS, All Net is led by former UNLV and NBA basketball player Jackie Robinson, who still needs to reach a development agreement with Clark County and line up additional financing before this local sports dream becomes reality.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s recent New York Times editorial calling for the legalization of sports betting across the country adds an outsized straw to this camel’s back. His predecessor David Stern softened in his anti-Vegas stance over the years, but new boss Silver is decidedly pro-Vegas. Today’s NBA has a great relationship with Las Vegas—unlike the NFL, for example—with no argument against a potential pro basketball team based here.

Let’s face it: Las Vegas doesn’t need a team. The idea that one of the most exciting, unique and recognizable places in the world needs pro sports to climb into world-class status—a concept former Mayor Oscar Goodman used to repeat ad nauseam—is nuts. Anyone who buys into that hyperbole does so because he or she has a personal stake in the game.

But we still want a team. We live here and work here and grow here, and we’ve been ready for this for a long time. Las Vegas is a big-event city, and we know we can count on tourism to fill some of those seats. Yet even with that important weapon in the arsenal, support from the locals will be essential to the success of a Las Vegas pro sports franchise. Will we get behind our team? If it’s basketball, the odds are stacked higher.