Jerry Tarkanian - Runnin Rebel: Shark Tales of Extra Benefits, Frank Sinatra, and Winning It All

If you are fascinated by recruiting wars, then you will absolutely love Tark s stories. In Runnin Rebel, the Father Flannigan of college hoops, a master at coaching second chance kids into champions, tells about all his successes and failures.

D ICK V ITALE , ESPN/ABC

The way that Barry Switzer laid it all out there in Bootleggers Boy, here comes Tark with the memoir that will make them queasy in the ivory towers of the NCAA. When you re finished with the wildest college basketball story ever told, youll be left to reconsider what you thought about who the good guys and bad guys are in the sport.

A DRIAN W OJNAROWSKI, AUTHOR OF T HE N EW Y ORK T IMES BEST-SELLING

T HE M IRACLE OF S T . A NTHONY

UNLV has been one of the premier programs in college basketball, and one of its most colorful and controversial. Dan Wetzel, one of the brightest and most perceptive basketball writers in the business, captures perfectly the Runnin Rebels and fleshes out what is perception and what is reality. A great read.

J AY B ILAS , ESPN

Regardless of your opinion on Tark, hes always been a good quote, and there is no coachspeak in Runnin Rebel. Dan Wetzel was able to elicit the stories to let the public understand one of the more intriguing figures in college basketball history.

A NDY K ATZ , ESPN

No writer has a greater appreciation for basketballs many characters than Dan Wetzel, and there has been no greater character in the game than Jerry Tarkanian. Whether you come down on the NCAAs side of things or Tarks doesnt matter. There are laughs to be found in every direction.

M IKE D E C OURCY , SENIOR WRITER , T HE S PORTING N EWS

Oh. My. GOSH. Damn what a book.

G REGG D OYEL , SENIOR WRITER , CBS S PORTSLINE

Wow! If you thought the NCAA had troubles before, waitll you read Jerry Tarkanians Runnin Rebel! Jerry fast breaks his way through a storied career that names names and kicks backsides. We even learn where that towel came from!

J IM B OHANNON , RADIO TALK SHOW HOST OF T HE J IM B OHANNON S HOW , A MERICA IN THE M ORNING , A MERICA T HIS W EEK , AND O FFBEAT

JERRY TARKANIAN

with Dan Wetzel

Commentary by
Bob Knight and Greg Anthony

Copyright 2005, 2006, 2012 by Jerry Tarkanian and Dan Wetzel

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61321-214-1

Printed in the United States of America

For my wife, Lois; my four children, Pam, Jodie, Danny, and George;
and my 10 grandchildren all of whom make every day a great day.

J.T.

For the men and women of the United States military, thanks for selflessly doing the dirty work for all of us.

D.W.

B asketball is a game that can be played many different ways. There are a wide variety of approaches to defense and all kinds of things a coach can choose to do on the offensive end of the floor. However, there are two things that really stand out in my mind as essential for a coach to get his team to do if it is going to be successful over the long haul of a season.

These two ingredients are getting players to play as hard as they can play each possession of the game at both ends of the floor and doing it as intelligently as possible. I simply try to tell our players that they have to play hard and they have to play smart if were going to win. I also tell them that my definition of playing hard carries with it a much higher standard than their own definitions would have. Getting players to match my definition of playing hard as a coach is probably the most singular difficult overall skill there is in teaching the game of basketball.

There is no one I have observed in my 40 years of coaching who has been able to do a better job of this consistently than Jerry Tarkanian.

There are three phases of the game where playing hard or not doing so is most noticeable. They are rebounding at both ends of the floor, playing defense, and running the floor to the offensive as well as defensive end. I have always felt that left on their own, players want to play the game as comfortably as they possibly can. That is why to be successful a coach must have much higher standards in regard to playing hard than the players may think possible. Playing hard seems to be a very simple thing, but it is not, and that goes back to the comfort level that the players themselves basically want throughout the game.

Jerrys record at University of NevadaLas Vegas is one of the outstanding coaching records in the history of college basketball. Lets take a look at how I think he compiled this record through what he taught his teams.

First of all, they exerted great pressure in taking the ball to the offensive end of the floor. They were looking to beat the defense down the floor on every possession, and this was done from the first possession to the last possession of each game they played. Thinking that all kids enjoy the fast break and want to run is a real fallacy in coaching. Again, they want to stay within their comfort level in all that they do on the floor.

The real trick is to get your team to get back.

The key to Tarks success in all that his teams did was his ability to push them way beyond their comfort level, and this was always apparent in the offensive pressure that they placed on the other team. Now the real trick is to get your team to get back on defense with as much energy and concentration as they take the ball to the basket. This is the most difficult thing in basketball for players to learn.

Jerrys teams never failed to make it as difficult as possible for the other team to apply the same kind of pressure as they themselves exerted. Not giving up easy baskets is the direct result of a coach instilling in his players the idea that going to the defensive end of the floor is every bit as important as going to the offensive end of the floor, and Tark was a superb teacher of this concept. So that first ingredient that I think is necessary to success in basketballrunning the floorwas taught by Jerry Tarkanian as well as anybody who has ever coached the game.

Second, Tarks teams played both backboards with an energy and a determination that every coach I have ever known would like to see in his own teams. You knew when playing UNLV that if you did not keep them off the offensive boards, you were going to be in for a long night with your defense. At the other end of the floor you were going to really have to work to get good shots. Then not only was your problem in preventing the Rebels from turning a missed shot quickly into a basket at the other end of the floor, but you had to be able to get something off your own offensive board to be in the game.