Their Only Similarity Ends Tonight

From Hoover Dam to Death Valley, from Lake Mead to the Mojave Desert, from Nellis Air Force Base to the Chicken Ranch, heartfelt greetings and go-get-’ems go out today to Jerry Tarkanian, pit boss of the Runnin’ Rebels of Nevada Las Vegas, a bald little man with a towel in his mouth, a college basketball coach for close to 30 years, out to win his first national championship.

His hotel room is full of roses. His desk is swamped with telegrams. Well-wishers from the local branch of the Xerox corporation and from Tony Roma’s rib joint volunteered to purchase airplane tickets for the parents of UNLV’s players, who couldn’t afford to fly on their own money. Tarkanian had to say thanks but no thanks, since the last thing he needed was another nosy NCAA inquiry into who’s paying for what.

Nevada is on the verge of nirvana. “The problem with Vegas,” says Tarkanian, “is that people drop in on a three-day tourist package, lay by the pool, go to the shows, play the slots and then say, ‘I’ve had enough.’ After four days, they’re anxious to get home. They don’t appreciate that there are something like 700,000 people who live in Las Vegas permanently, that there are 14 high schools and three more in the works, that there’s a whole community that has nothing to do with the Strip, the hotels.

“I never gamble. I go eat once in a while at the hotels. My wife goes to two or three shows a year. Our team doesn’t go to the hotels. You live a totally different life than what people perceive. We’ve got a clear blue sky every day. Our university is a very difficult university academically. And there’s the whole state of Nevada around us that has nothing to do with the idea of ‘Vegas’ that everyone has, except for the fact that they’re pulling for this basketball team.”

No such situation exists in North Carolina tonight. In Chapel Hill, in Raleigh, in Charlotte, not every basketball lover will be behind Duke in its national title game against UNLV. There will, of course, be some who support Duke simply because it is not UNLV, because they think of this confrontation as the Law Students vs. the Law Breakers, because they think of Blue Devils as the sort of scholars who would never be so inarticulate as to drop the “g” in “Runnin’,” were they Rebels.

And there is sufficient reason to believe that some would like to see a proper reward for the hard work of Mike Krzyzewski, the guy with the Scrabble-board surname who, just like Tarkanian, is out to annex his and his school’s first national championship. That’s the conflict tonight, Coach K versus Coach T, an attraction of total opposites.

Wiseguys are having fun with this one, addressing their wildly different methods, wardrobes, even faces. OK, yes, the gaunt Polish guy in the black business suit looks nothing like the sleepy-eyed Armenian guy in the short-sleeved shirt. OK, yes, it’s Fredo Corleone versus Elmer Fudd. OK, yes, it’s a coach who can’t always keep his players eligible versus a coach whose players leave with degrees in political science. Are they so dissimilar?

Tarkanian’s wife, Lois, went to church Sunday morning.

“Guess who was right behind me in Mass?” she later yelled at her husband.

“Who?” he yelled back.

“Mike Krzyzewski!” she said. “And he was praying very hard!”

The coaches enjoy a mutual respect. They notice no differences. Tarkanian knows Moses Scurry and David Butler of his squad were academically ineligible to begin the season, but he knows Phil Henderson of Duke hasn’t exactly made straight A’s. Krzyzewski knows his university’s alumni include a staunch old Republican, Richard M. Nixon, but he also knows that Greg Anthony of UNLV is a card-carrying Young Republican who worked last summer on Capitol Hill.

“Last time we played Vegas, I think we were made out to be Cinderella or Snow White,” Krzyzewski said. “But we’ve been pretty bad, too. I don’t look at Las Vegas as the bad guys and us the good guys. They’ve got players I’d be thrilled to have. I would love to have recruited Larry Johnson. Vegas has had a lot of fine kids.

“Reputations are really tough to get rid of--either way. At Duke, sometimes it gets to the point where you feel like you can’t belch, can’t have a pimple, can’t pass gas, can’t be a human being. Even so, it’s probably been easier for me than it has been for Tark.”

Indeed, Tark occasionally feels like throwing in that towel of his. At times this season, he scarcely had five players to send onto the floor. Bad grades. Overdue phone bills. Trouble with the law. “A couple of them ate some of the nuts at the hotel, out of the nut bar,” Tarkanian said, his way of referring to an in-room refreshment mini-bar. “Checked out without paying for them. For nuts!

“One time I found out a couple of guys weren’t eligible 10 minutes before we went to the airport. Their luggage already was on the plane. I found out Anderson Hunt couldn’t play at midnight in Philadelphia before a Saturday morning game with Temple. Anderson didn’t know until we had breakfast.

“It got so I’d see the athletic director coming into the gym and I’d say: ‘Oh my God, what happened now?’ We were going to play Oklahoma on national TV on a weekend, and on Tuesday I had five guys who could play, two of them walk-ons! A lesser group of kids would have folded. That’s why I really, truly love the kids on this team. They didn’t let nothing stop them!”

Neither did Coach T, nor did Coach K. What they have in common wouldn’t fill the back of a Caesars Palace picture postcard. What they share is a love of their game, much love from their fans, a determination to do things their own way and a portfolio that includes everything but a national championship. Tonight, that final bond breaks.