Las Vegas Weekly

March 24, 2009 · 7:28 AM

Exclusive: Planet Hollywood to house Basketball Hall of Fame exhibit

By Robin Leach

HHX, or Hoops Hall Experience, at Planet Hollywood.

Vegas DeLuxe can exclusively reveal and confirm that HHX, or Hoops Hall Experience, is coming to the Strip. Our city still doesn’t have an NBA team or the prospect of one, but the Basketball Hall of Fame’s traveling exhibit will open next week on the second-floor mezzanine level of Planet Hollywood. I’m told a number of legendary NBA players and coaches will be taking part in the excitement!

The interactive experience includes seven zones and takes 90 minutes to more than two hours to fully enjoy. Each is a themed environment and starts with “Bounce,” where visitors pass through giant letters to enjoy a hip-hop soundtrack to an abstract space of light and sound featuring quick-cut videos of a bouncing basketball. Next is ‘Timeline,” featuring the history of basketball that dates back to Dr. James Naismith, who invented the game in 1900. It includes old-time photographs, memorabilia and the passage of basketball up to today’s electronic media coverage on TV and the Internet.

Twelve of basketball’s greatest coaches including John Wooden, Lenny Wilkins and John Sharman appear in the multimedia zone “Pep Talks.” Don’t be surprised if my favorite former New York Knicks coach Pat Riley puts in a surprise appearance while the exhibit is at Planet Hollywood. There’s also a “Greatest Moments Theater” with significant artifacts from the Basketball Hall of Fame, including a clip of when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game! You can test your knowledge of the game at the Wall of Fame featuring every inductee into the Hall of Fame.

There’s a range of interactive games in the “Big Shots Theater,” where visitors can make a DVD of themselves announcing the play-by-play of a famous game. “The Cage” is next, where you can prove your skills at dribbling, passing and rebounding, and there may well be a couple of exhibition games and autograph-signing sessions with the stars of the sport.

It all winds up in the “Circle of Steel,” where there’s basketball merchandise and collectibles including jerseys from the VIPs of the Hall of Fame. Hoop Hall promises to be a unique and exciting addition to the Strip -- and it follows right on the heels of March Madness. So wonderfully appropriate!

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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