His Specialty Is Runnin’ a Show

This could be the life for Jerry Tarkanian come next March. No more UNLV teams to coach. No more NCAA charges to take. Just Tark and a microphone and a few hundred coaches sitting in the audience, listening to the meaning of life according to Tark, meaning the act of pushing a basketball up a hardwood floor and putting it through a hoop.

“It’s good to be here,” Tarkanian says as he stands at midcourt inside UC Irvine’s Bren Center, launching into another 90-minute bit at another basketball coaches’ clinic. “I’ve been dodging bullets in Vegas for so long, it’s nice to get out of town.”

You listen to Tarkanian for a while, and one by one, your questions are answered. Why has Tark put up with Las Vegas for so long? Why has Las Vegas put up with Tark for so long, for the first 18 seasons anyway, until the UNLV athletic department began sneaking camcorders into basketball conditioning classes for extra credit?

Why?

Because one couldn’t put the other down. Tarkanian is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is Tarkanian. Tackiness? It’s the way things get done there. Schtick? Whether you speak softly or not, everybody has to carry one.

Tarkanian can work a room. By now, at this point in his career, it’s not a talent, it’s a means for survival.

Dazzle ‘em with your footwork.

Always keep ‘em laughing.

And check for all the side exits.

“Runnin’ Rebel Basketball” was Tarkanian’s topic Saturday. Simplicity was his theme. “I think more guys have screwed up their players with tricky plays, tricky defenses and all that other stuff,” Tarkanian said. “We have a simple philosophy: The more you put into a kid’s head, the slower his feet get. The more plays you run, the worse they shoot the ball.”

Case in point: Anderson Hunt, Rebel shooting guard, Class of ’91.

“Anderson Hunt, a lot of people thought he was the best shooter in the country last year,” Tarkanian said. “He was just cut by the Celtics, and you know why? They said he couldn’t shoot. ‘He’s a good defender, but he can’t shoot.’ In exhibition games, he shot 31%.

“That’s because they got Anderson thinking. I told Anderson, ‘Just shoot.’ I cleared his mind. They threw too many plays at him. They start thinking too much, and they get confused.”

Shooting, Tarkanian told the coaches, is little more than “a mind game.”

“We had a kid, Gary Graham, who played his first three years for us shooting with a crooked elbow. To me, that’s the worst thing for a shooter. Shoot with a crooked elbow, you’ll never be a good shooter.

“So for three years, we yelled at Gary, ‘Pass the damn ball! Pass the damn ball!’ His senior year, we had no shooters, so we had to talk Gary into thinking he was a shooter. Every time I saw him, I’d say, ‘Gary, you must’ve been working all summer on that shot. I’ve never seen a kid improve so much.’ I had my assistants go tell Gary how good he’s shooting.

“We BSed Gary into thinking he was a shooter, and he did a pretty good job for us. That year in the (preseason) NIT against Western Kentucky, he made three three-pointers for us. The previous year, if he’d have taken one of those, I’d have shot him.”

Every player in Tarkanian’s system has one role, he said. That’s it. Only one. The point guard, for instance, has to run the offense, which entails passing the ball. Shooting the ball. Uh-uh. “My best teams are the ones where the point guard doesn’t shoot the ball,” Tarkanian said. “The role of the point guard is to keep everybody else happy. You get your players motivated, you tell them to run, run, run, work like hell--and then on the break, the point guard doesn’t give them the ball. You get to January, and your players are saying, ‘Hell, I’m not running anymore . . .

“The other night, we played the Cubans, and my two point guards went zero for zero and one for one from the field, and I thought they played a great game. I wish to hell that one guy hadn’t taken that one shot.”

Pet peeves? Why, Tark’s got a million of ‘em.

Excluding the NCAA infractions committee, here’s a short list:

--Pregame stretching. “In 1987 we gave up stretching. Why? Because we started practicing on Oct. 15, and by Oct. 19, everybody’s got ice on their groins, ice all over their bodies, ice everywhere. I’m gonna tell you, someday a doctor is going to prove that stretching causes injuries, and you’re gonna say, ‘Tark is the first one who told me.’ ”

--”Loose” players. “A lot of coaches come in to play Vegas and say ‘Vegas has a great team, but we feel good because our guys are loose.’ I don’t want my guys loose. I want them tight. I want their hands sweating, their muscles quivering, their eyes real big.

“How many coaches say they play music in the locker room to keep their guys loose? We don’t play music. It’s like you having dinner with your family, and a guy calls you on the phone and says, ‘I’m gonna come over at 8 o’clock and kick your butt right in front of your family.’ What are you going to do, sit around and put on music?”

--Coaches who don’t play it simple. ACC coaches, basically. “One of my best friends in coaching is Jim Valvano, and we go to these clinics, and he’s always talking about box-and-ones and triangle-and-twos. That’s the ACC for you. Everybody’s got a signal. Go to the bathroom, they’ve got a signal. They do it because it looks good. ‘Damn, he must be coaching the hell out of that team.’ ”

You listen to Tarkanian for a while, and you get the feeling he could go on for hours like this. Or years. After this season, he’ll probably have the chance, because after this season, he’ll probably be out of coaching.

“I don’t even know what I’m gonna do after this year,” he said. “Coaching is so much fun when you win, and it’s so miserable when you lose--and this year, we’re going to lose, and I just might not enjoy it. So I’m going to wait till the end of the year to decide what I’m going to do.”

He could do this. Retire to Clinic City. Play to crowd, play it for laughs.

As he stands now, a coach on a countdown, waiting for UNLV’s door to hit him on the way out, it only hurts when he doesn’t laugh.