Lloyd Daniels : Academic Woes, Drug Arrest --Shooting Star Fouls Out

Lloyd Daniels, one of the most controversial basketball players ever to enroll at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has never played a game for the Runnin’ Rebels and probably never will.

Arrested in a North Las Vegas drug bust last February, Daniels, 19, has entered a three-month drug rehabilitation program and has said he hopes to play professional basketball next year.

UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, who has compared Daniels’ basketball skills to those of Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson and said he would be the best player in UNLV history, now says Daniels will never play for the Las Vegas school.

“Jerry runs one of the strongest anti-drug programs of any school (in the West),” said Tarkanian’s wife, Lois, who helps with academic advising and counseling of basketball players. “Jerry believes very strongly you give everybody a chance, but after the drug arrest, he just couldn’t have Lloyd on the team.”

Many faculty members and others on the Las Vegas campus wonder how Daniels--a poor reader who is two years short of a high school diploma after attending four high schools in three states--could even have been considered for admission.

They wondered even more after the Long Island newspaper Newsday published a story in March that said UNLV coaches and boosters violated National Collegiate Athletic Assn. regulations by providing Daniels with cash, a car, a motorcycle and housing while he was enrolled at a California community college last fall. This followed the court appointment of assistant basketball coach Mark Warkentien as Daniels’ legal guardian.

(UNLV President Robert C. Maxson has appointed a four-member committee to look into the Newsday charges, trying to keep one jump ahead of NCAA investigators. “I formed the committee the day after I read that article,” Maxson said. “We had to look at the questions that were raised--there were too many specifics for me to ignore.”)

Daniels’ basketball credentials were as strong as his academic record was weak. At Andrew Jackson High School in New York City, he averaged 31.2 points, 12.3 rebounds and 10 assists per game before dropping out of school in February, 1986. UNLV coaches and boosters dreamed of the speedy 6-foot, 8-inch player, nicknamed “Sweet Pea,” leading the Runnin’ Rebels to the NCAA Final Four for several years.

There were some problems, however.

For one thing, Daniels could not read very well. An affidavit filed in connection with Warkentien’s request for legal guardianship noted that Daniels read at the second- or third-grade level, partly because of dyslexia, and that he would require academic tutoring “similar to the way a blind or deaf student is provided support.”

‘I Ain’t Allergic’

When Daniels dropped out of his last high school in 1986, he was quoted as saying, “I ain’t allergic to no school; I just don’t want to go.”

In the summer of 1986, however, he entered UNLV as a special-admission non-scholarship student. He completed seven credits between June 9 and July 11, 1986, but the university will not say what subjects he studied.

This performance was not considered strong enough for Daniels to enter UNLV as a regular freshman last fall, so instead he was enrolled at Mount San Antonio Community College in Walnut, Calif. There he earned 12 credits in such courses as “The Black American” and “Recreation and Fundamentals of Sports,” according to the Washington Post. He also was tutored privately in reading.

There, too, he allegedly received money, an automobile and a motorcycle.

In January, 1987, Daniels enrolled at UNLV as a full-time student, hoping to be eligible to play as a transfer student next December. A month later he was arrested, along with 40 other people, when Las Vegas police set up an undercover sting operation at a suspected rock cocaine distribution point.

Daniels later said he was innocent and that he went to the house only to collect game tickets, but earlier this month he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempting to buy rock cocaine, with the stipulation that he enter a drug rehabilitation program and submit to twice-weekly urine tests.

‘Sigh of Relief’

When Daniels announced he would leave school and try to play professional basketball, “that was my sigh of relief for the day,” said James Deacon, professor of biology and former chairman of the UNLV Faculty Senate.

The Daniels affair has raised questions about UNLV’s ability--and its willingness--to break free from the “basketball school” image and establish itself as a university with academic integrity.

“I’ve never believed you have to de-emphasize athletics in order to be strong in academics,” Maxson said in a recent interview. “Schools like North Carolina, Michigan, Stanford and Notre Dame have managed to do both, and so can we.”

Skeptics, meanwhile, say North Carolina, Michigan, Stanford and Notre Dame never would have tried to recruit Lloyd Daniels.