Some former players

Jerry Tarkanian

Monday, March 2, 2009 | 11:04 a.m.

I’ve been asked about what some of my former players are up to, and I can say that I am so proud of the vast majority of them.

Travis Bice is very successful in Arizona, Leon Symanski is an attorney in Las Vegas and doing well, and Stacey Cvijanovich is one of the top guys in hotel management, I think in food and beverage, at Caesars Palace.

John Flowers is doing well with Wynn. He’s been there for a long time. I hear from most all of them.

One guy I’m so proud of is Michael “Spiderman” Burns. I might be more proud of him than all of them.

Spiderman was a real mess when he was in college. We thought he’d be hopeless. I helped him all I could, but I was worried about him.

He came in one day and said, Coach, I have my life in order. Please help me with a job. We got him a job, and he’s working and has his whole life in order. It’s absolutely wonderful.

He’s at the Wynn. He’s been there more than 20 years and they tell me he’s one of the top people in his area. Doing great. He’s totally straightened out, got off some bad habits.

Richard Box is a minister. Jackie Robinson, Flintie Ray Williams and Michael Loyd own a bunch of Pizza Huts together.

One guy I haven’t seen much is David Butler, but he came out this year to our pre-season get-together, the golf tournament and banquet, that Lon Kruger started.

David just hasn’t been back to town. He told some friends of mine that he was so upset about that picture in that hot tub. It wasn’t like he did something wrong. He did nothing wrong.

The guy (Richard “The Fixer” Perry) was a friend of Moses Scurry, and the guy (Perry) only talked to them about doing well in school. He seemed like a real good person. David was very upset about that.

Someone asked me about Leroy Byrd, who played for me in 1981-82. He was a little guy from Lexington, Ky. I had a friend in Lexington, and I always wanted to get a player out of the state of Kentucky.

We had recruited some good ones, but never got them. If they were from Louisville, they went to Louisville. I realized you can’t get them out of Kentucky, out of Lexington or Louisville.

Impossible.

Leroy was 5-foot-6. No one recruited him. He was not a great player. He played hard. He was quicker than heck. But how many 5-6 guys are doing great in college? He might have been shorter, too.

I like Leroy. He used to keep me up on all the Kentucky guys and tell me about the University of Kentucky. I’ve always been enamored with stories about the University of Kentucky.

Those are some great stories.

I love Joe B. Hall. I don’t tell a lot of those stories. He’s a great friend of mine.

Someone asked if Richie Adams was one of my all-time best. He had a down year or two, but that’s on him.

He’s probably as talented as anyone we ever had, but Richie’s concentration span was so small. He’d screw up in practice. His mind would just wander.

When he did that, I‘d say, Get him out of practice. We’d put him at the other end to shoot free throws or work on the timing of his dunks, stuff like that.

Or we’d tell him to sit on a ball and watch practice. We didn’t want him to screw up practice for everyone. In games, he’d be absolutely great. Boyd Grant from Fresno State believed he was the best player he ever saw in the Big West Conference.

I’ll touch on a few more of my former players next time.