Shark Bar, Coach K and altitude

Jerry Tarkanian

Friday, Feb. 13, 2009 | 10:32 a.m.

A lot of quick-hit questions have been sent to me, so I’ll address those and start with that “Shark” bar that used to be near the school.

Actually, it was closer to the Strip. I don’t remember a tank with actual sharks in it, as someone suggested. They just used my name. I was supposed to get a percentage of the profits.

But the only thing I got was free food and drinks every month. They said they didn’t make any money. So I never got any money, but we had a good time.

Someone asked me why J.R. Rider always had so much trouble playing by the rules, how such a talented player could waste such a promising career.

Well, he did make about $26 million in the NBA. But I think I know what you’re saying.

J.R. isn’t a bad guy. Even his teammates in the NBA said that. The problem with J.R. is he didn’t care about time. He’d come late at more stuff. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was a helluva player. Clutch.

A great athlete, maybe as good as we had at UNLV.

Some fans really can’t stomach me saying good things about Duke and Mike Krzyzewski, with the rivalry and big games we had. But I’ll tell you what, he’s genuinely a nice man.

I’ve never seen him lose a game and not congratulate the other team and say great things about them. He’s a real good man. He isn’t a phony in any way.

He’s a good man. He’s on my radio show every year and he does a great job. On that show, over and over, he says how our two teams resembled each other.

People said we were different, but we resembled each other.

Someone else was curious if I ever made a push to get out of the Big West Conference.

No. I never did. Where would we go? The Pac-10? You don’t do that. You don’t get into the Pac-10. They invite you. It would be harder than hell to get in there.

Someone else remembered something funny, about me telling my kids after a bad game “Go pick up your scholarship checks with a gun and a mask, because you’re stealing!”

Yeah, that’s right. I did that every now and then. I would. I don’t know if it got their attention or not.

I got an inquiry about jump-starting the players when they were in a funk.

Well, we worked on their minds all year long. There are three aspects to your team – the physical, the mental and the emotional.

Physical isn’t going to change much. You aren’t going to grow much, physically. You might get stronger. But mentally and emotionally, you can change 180 degrees. We worked on the mental and emotional.

We’d get them to be totally conscious, to be real intense. That’s why we had no talking in the pregame meal, on the team bus and in the locker room. Silence broke that tension. It was about concentration.

We were one of the first to do that.

There was nothing I hated more than to go into a locker room and see guys laughing or screwing around, with music on.

I had a kid, Earl Evans, a transfer from USC. He says, Coach, I can’t play when it’s so quiet. We used to have music at ’SC. It loosens you up. Why can’t we have music.

I said, Earl, it’s no different than in the summer time, if an opponent said he was coming over to beat you up in front of your family. Are you going to invite them with music? No, you’re going to concentrate.

So start concentrating.

Someone wanted to know about a statement I once made about playing at altitude, that I’d tell the players it’s indoors, so the altitude won’t make a difference.

Damn right that’s true. In Laramie, Wyo., there’s a sign. “Welcome to Laramie, Home of the Cowboys, altitude 7,200 feet.”

Michael Johnson said, Coach, it’s 7,200 feet up here? He was a little worried. I said, Michael, don’t worry about that. That’s outside. We’re playing indoors.

We were 0-3 up there, but we always played our asses off. That’s the only time someone asked me about altitude.