It didn't take long for the Feb. 17 NBA All-Star practice session at Mandalay Bay Convention Center to sell out Wednesday.

In five minutes, the 2,200 tickets were gone, leaving local fans to scramble to get what will likely be their lone opportunity to see the league's best in person. The Feb. 18 All-Star Game at the Thomas & Mack Center will not have a public sale as the NBA controls the 18,500 seats.

"It's amazing," an NBA spokesperson said of the huge demand for tickets just to watch practice. "Houston sold out in three hours, but this is incredible."

Just as quickly as the tickets were bought, they began to surface for re-sale through various online services. The tickets, which have a face value of $35 apiece, were going for $250 a pair on craigslist.org.

Admission to the practice is separate from the NBA All-Star Jam Session, which also will be held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Advance sale for the Jam Session, a fan interactive basketball experience, will begin Jan. 15 through Ticketmaster and the Mandalay Bay box office. Tickets for the Jam session are $20 and do not include admission to the practice at the Events Center.

For those fortunate enough to have secured tickets to the Saturday practice, it will be a chance to see the participants prep for the All-Star Game in what is essentially a glorified shootaround. Whether they'll see Allen Iverson as a starter for the Western Conference will depend on how the second round of voting goes when the NBA releases the figures today.

Iverson, a seven-time All-Star, was traded last week from the Eastern Conference Philadelphia 76ers to the Denver Nuggets. Iverson, who was second in the fan voting among Eastern Conference players prior to the deal, took his votes with him to the Western Conference. However, his 595,200 votes placed him third in the West among guards as he trailed the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant (720,385) and Houston's Tracy McGrady (668,130).

The other interesting voting scenarios concern the center for both conferences. Houston's Yao Ming, the overall leading vote-getter so far with 836,392 votes, is likely to miss the All-Star Game after breaking a bone below his knee last week. Yao is expected to miss at least six weeks.

Miami's Shaquille O'Neal, who leads the Eastern Conference centers with 522,815 votes, has been out since mid-November following knee surgery.

If neither can go, it would move Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire and Orlando's Dwight Howard into starting roles. Stoudemire is a distant second to Yao with 281,051 votes, while Howard is 107,107 votes behind Shaq with 415,708.

Voting continues until Jan. 21. The starters will be announced on Jan. 25 with the reserves named on Feb. 1.