Jerry Tarkanian (b. August 8, 1930, Euclid, Ohio – d. February 11, 2015, Las Vegas, Nevada) was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools. He spent the majority of his career coaching with the UNLV (University of Nevada at Las Vegas) Runnin' Rebels, leading them four times to the Final Four of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, winning the national championship in 1990. Tarkanian revolutionized the college game at UNLV, utilizing a pressing defense to fuel its fast-paced offense. Overall, he won over 700 games in his college coaching career, only twice failing to win 20 games, while never having a losing season. Tarkanian was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.
Tarkanian studied at Pasadena City College and later Fresno State University, earning a bachelor's degree while playing basketball. He was a head coach at the high school level before becoming a successful junior college coach at Riverside City College winning three state championships. He then returned to Pasadena City College and led them to a state championship.
In 1968, Tarkanian moved to a four-year college at Long Beach State College. Tarkanian established a successful program built on former junior college players, who were typically considered second-rate by other four-year programs. He was also the rare coach who dared to start a predominantly black lineup. He compiled a 122–20 record over five years at Long Beach before moving to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He transformed the small program into a national powerhouse while granting his players the freedom to express themselves. Known for his colorful behavior and affectionately referred to as "Tark the Shark", Tarkanian became a celebrity in Las Vegas. He left the Runnin' Rebels for a brief stint coaching professionally with the San Antonio Spurs in the National Basketball Association (NBA) before finishing his career at his alma mater, Fresno State.
Throughout his career, Tarkanian battled accusations of rules violations from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), with each of his three universities suffering penalties. Tarkanian responded by challenging the organization to also investigate larger and more powerful universities.
The NCAA ordered UNLV to suspend Tarkanian in 1977, but he sued the NCAA and continued coaching while the case was pending. The Supreme Court ruled against Tarkanian in 1988, but he remained UNLV's coach after a settlement with the NCAA. Tarkanian sued them again in 1992, and the case was settled when he received $2.5 million in 1998.
Tarkanian was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, an honor that fellow coaches had been saying was overdue. "Time has a way of healing things. And in this case, time worked in his favor," said Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo. The controversy from his NCAA dealings was widely believed to have contributed to the delay. Tarkanian helped revolutionize the way the college game was played. Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown said that Tarkanian "influenced a lot of coaches", and Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski added that Tarkanian "taught pressure man-to-man defense as well as anyone has ever done." Upon Tarkanian's retirement, future Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun proclaimed that Tarkanian was "one of the best teachers of defense in the last 25 to 30 years of basketball." In 31 years of coaching over five decades at three Division I schools, he compiled a career record of 729–201. At UNLV, 39 of his players were selected in the NBA draft; Larry Johnson was the first overall pick in 1991, and Armen Gilliam was No. 2 overall in 1987.
Tarkanian was an innovator who had his teams play a pressing defense that forced turnovers to trigger its run-and-gun offense. He was one of the few early coaches to effectively use the three-point shot, which was added by the NCAA in 1986. Tarkanian recruited players that his peers often passed over, taking chances on junior college students or those with a troubled past. His players hailed predominately from urban areas, and he allowed his team the freedom to express themselves. While some of those players were high-maintenance, he was the rare coach who was able to blend multiple personalities together into a team, and they played with a unique swagger. Tarkanian's teams changed the style and image of college basketball in a way that predated the impact the Fab Five of Michigan had in the 1990s. "He made the players more important than him. He made the players the show. It was about the players first," said former UNLV assistant Mark Warkentien. According to Fab Five member Jalen Rose, "We were considered rough-and-tumble at Michigan, but it started with UNLV."
UNLV was transformed by Tarkanian from a small commuter college into a national powerhouse. Demand for UNLV sweatshirts grew across the nation. Tarkanian became a celebrity, and tickets to UNLV games became hot items with regulars, including Las Vegas headliners Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby and Don Rickles. With no professional teams in the city, the Rebels became the center of attention for Las Vegas, and their pregame ceremonies included light shows and fireworks during player introductions. Tarkanian's success at UNLV paved the way for other successful mid-major college basketball programs.
The floor of UNLV's home arena at the Thomas & Mack Center was named "Jerry Tarkanian Court" in 2005. A bronze life-size statue of Tarkanian was added outside the arena in 2013. Beginning in 2012, Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas held the Tarkanian Classic, a high school tournament featuring some of the top teams in the country. In 2014, Fresno State retired Tarkanian's No. 2 jersey from his college playing days.
Tarkanian also has a middle school located in Southern Highlands, Nevada, named after him and his wife Lois.
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Jerry Tarkanian, 84, N.C.A.A. Foe and College Basketball Force, Dies
Jerry Tarkanian, who built Nevada-Las Vegas into a national powerhouse in college basketball with an insatiable will to win, created the persona of Tark the Shark and ignited a long-running feud with the N.C.A.A. over accusations that he ran outlaw programs at three universities, died on Wednesday in Las Vegas. He was 84.
His son Danny announced his death via Twitter.
Tarkanian was taken to Valley Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas on Monday with low blood pressure and an infection, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. He had a second heart attack in April 2014 and was treated for pneumonia in November.
Tarkanian was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in September 2013, two months after he had heart surgery. His induction speech, read largely by his wife, Lois, was recorded in advance. He spoke briefly, in a weak voice, when he appeared on stage at the ceremony, using a walker.
Tarkanian was one of the college game’s most successful and colorful coaches in his 19 seasons at U.N.L.V., a baldheaded, sunken-eyed presence on the bench known for nervously chewing on towels during games. In his 31 years as a major college coach, he won more than 700 games, fashioning a high-scoring running game to go with smothering defensive play while recruiting junior college players that other coaches had ignored.
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Tarkanian took U.N.L.V. to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s Final Four four times, winning the championship in 1990 with the largest margin of victory in a title game, a 103-73 rout of Duke behind the future N.B.A. players Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony and Stacey Augmon. His teams won at least 20 games in all but one of his seasons in Las Vegas.
His death came just days after that of another coaching legend, Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina.
“Heaven is fielding an unbelievable coaching roster,” Reggie Miller, a former U.C.L.A. and Indiana Pacers star, said on Twitter. “RIP Coach Jerry Tarkanian, one of the best.”
When Tarkanian was named the coach at U.N.L.V. in 1973, its basketball team played home games at a convention center with a capacity of about 6,400 fans. Ten years later, U.N.L.V. opened the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack Center to showcase the Runnin’ Rebels. The student mascot paid tribute to Tarkanian by wearing a shark costume.
But Tarkanian was targeted by the N.C.A.A. as a rebel in his own right for recruiting players with questionable academic qualifications. All three universities where he coached — Long Beach State, U.N.L.V. and Fresno State, his alma mater — were placed on probation. Tarkanian fought back with two lawsuits against the N.C.A.A., contending that he had been deprived of due process. In one case he was awarded $2.5 million in a settlement.
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In May 1991, The Review-Journal published photos, believed to have been taken two years earlier, showing three U.N.L.V. players socializing with a convicted sports fixer at his home. After the 1991-92 season, Tarkanian resigned under pressure, and he had a brief, unhappy professional coaching stint in the N.B.A. with the San Antonio Spurs in 1992.
He had a 509-105 record at U.N.L.V. (There are varying formulations of his overall record because some of the games from his days at Long Beach State and Fresno State were forfeited or not counted by the N.C.A.A. because of sanctions it had imposed.)
When Tarkanian retired from college coaching in 2002 after seven seasons at Fresno State, he was still embittered by the N.C.A.A.
“They’ve been my tormentors my whole life,” he said at a news conference. “I’ve fought them the whole way. I’ve never backed down. And they never stopped.”
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Tarkanian was “fearless in taking on the brutal N.C.A.A., and he put U.N.L.V. on the map,” Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
Jerry Tarkanian, who died Wednesday at 84, built Nevada-Las Vegas into a basketball power and a national champion. In 2005, the court at the Runnin’ Rebels’ Thomas & Mack Center was named after him.
Isaac Brekken/Associated Press
Upon Tarkanian’s retirement, Jim Calhoun, Connecticut’s coach at the time, called him “one of the best teachers of defense in the last 25 to 30 years of basketball.”
Tarkanian was born on Aug. 8, 1930, in Euclid, Ohio. His mother, Rosie, was a refugee from the genocide of Armenians growing out of World War I.
In his taped Hall of Fame induction speech, Tarkanian said his mother had “fled her homeland on horseback with only the clothes on her back after her father and eldest brother were beheaded by Turkish soldiers.”
He was 13 when his father died, and his stepfather criticized his love of sports.
“I would never amount to anything — so much was sports all the time,” Tarkanian recalled his stepfather saying. “I should look into becoming a barber.”
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But his mother encouraged him, and he went on to play basketball for Fresno State, in a city with a large population of Armenian descent, graduating in 1955. He coached high school and junior college basketball in California before becoming Long Beach State’s coach in 1968. He took it to the N.C.A.A. tournament four times in his five seasons there.
The N.C.A.A began investigating Tarkanian for recruiting violations while he was at Long Beach State and placed it on probation for rule-breaking 10 months after he had left for U.N.L.V.
In 1977, the N.C.A.A. placed U.N.L.V. on probation for rule-breaking, barred it from postseason play for two seasons and ordered the university to suspend Tarkanian for two years. He sued and remained the coach while the case dragged on.
The Supreme Court ruled against Tarkanian in 1988, but he remained at U.N.L.V., reaching a settlement that imposed further penalties on his program. His second suit, brought in 1992, after he had left U.N.L.V., was settled in April 1998 when the N.C.A.A. paid him $2.5 million. The agreement avoided a state court trial in Las Vegas, where he was immensely popular.
Tarkanian was named coach of the Spurs in 1992 but was fired after going 9-11. One of his players, Lloyd Daniels, a former New York City high school star, had been recruited by Tarkanian for U.N.L.V. and enrolled there as a full-time student in January 1987 although he did not have a high school diploma. He never played at U.N.L.V. because of academic problems and his arrest in a cocaine raid, a highly publicized episode bringing yet another N.C.A.A. inquiry.
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Tarkanian returned to coaching at Fresno State in 1995. He produced winning teams and then retired for good after the 2001-2 season. The N.C.A.A. put the university’s basketball program on probation in September 2003 for past violations involving academic fraud, recruiting and eligibility.
Tarkanian stayed in Las Vegas during his retirement and opened a basketball academy. The court at the Thomas & Mack Center was named for him in 2005.
In addition to his wife and his son Danny, who played for him at U.N.L.V., his survivors include another son, George; his daughters Pamela Tarkanian and Jodie Diamant; a sister, Alice; a brother, Myron; and 11 grandchildren.
Tarkanian attacked the N.C.A.A.’s rules as unfathomable and arcane and defended himself in the face of criticism over his players’ low graduation rate.
In February 1983, he acknowledged that only six U.N.L.V. basketball players who had enrolled since 1974 had graduated, but he cited weak scholastic preparation of “inner city” young men and the inability of his many junior college transfers to arrive with enough credits to graduate in four years.
He added that “90 percent of our former players remain in Las Vegas in hotel management or as dealers in casinos, where they make very good money.”
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