Wayman Tisdale will be missed

Jerry Tarkanian

Friday, May 22, 2009 | 10:06 a.m.

I was so sad when I heard about the passing of Wayman Tisdale, at 44, last week from cancer.

It shows how many people he touched, and what so many thought about him, that more than 4,000 attended his memorial Thursday in Tulsa.

He was a freshman when we opened the 1982-83 season against his Oklahoma Sooners team, but we tried to get him. We almost thought we could get him, or so I thought.

North Carolina tried getting in on him, too. I once asked his Sooners coach, Billy Tubbs, if there was any chance he won’t go to Oklahoma? If there was a chance, we’d try to get him.

Billy said, “Coach, let me tell you. You’re wasting your time. There isn’t enough oil in the rest of the country to get him out of Oklahoma.”

Billy just scared everyone off. Nobody felt they had a shot at him. Billy even changed his practice time on Sundays for Wayman, so he could play his bass guitar in his father’s church.

I followed Wayman through his time at Oklahoma and I thought he was a great, great player. He was an All-American as a freshman.

We were not supposed to be very good that season. I think we were picked to finish fourth or fifth in the Big West Conference. It was our first year in that league.

It was Fresno State’s league. We had been in the NIT the previous year, where we beat Murray State before losing to Tulane to finish 20-10. Nobody thought we’d be any good in the Big West.

Danny, my son, was our point guard. Jeff Collins was our shooting guard. Paul Brozovich was our power forward. Larry Anderson and Sid Green were our scorers. That was our team.

Wayman came in – I don’t think he started – and had an incredible game. He had 26 or 28 points and played a great, great game. We beat them, 65-54, and that launched us to a great streak.

We won our next 23 games and were ranked No. 1 in the country for the first time. Then we had a bye in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and we lost our first game to North Carolina State.

The following season, we played at Oklahoma right before our league tournament and the Sooners beat us, 78-70.

That’s how we got Mark Wade. He was third-string on Oklahoma’s depth chart at the point, behind Mookie Blaylock and Billy Tubbs’s son. Mark came up to me and said, Coach, I want to transfer. I want to go to Vegas.

I said, Mark, I can’t even talk to you. Talk to me after the season’s over. He really wanted to come to UNLV.

So we were 1-1 against Tisdale. I kept my eye on Wayman throughout his career.

In the pros, he played 12 years and he was very good. He wasn’t a real big guy for an inside player, but he was strong. He’d get lob passes and dunks, and he had a great turn-around jump shot.

I remember watching him train for the Olympic team in San Diego in 1984. C.M. Newton was on the staff, and I called him to ask Bobby Knight, who was coaching the team, if I could come to a practice.

Bobby always had closed practices. C.M. told me Bobby would like to have me come by, but I had to come through a side door. And there was no talking in the gym.

Bobby was strange. There was no talking from anybody who came in the gym. You had to be quiet. And he was all over Tisdale and Leon Wood, a guard from Cal State Fullerton.

Bobby was all over Wayman for some reason, just jumped all over him. Billy Tubbs would get madder than hell. And Wayman took it personally. It affected his play.

He didn’t play as well in the Olympics as he should have in Los Angeles, where the U.S. beat Spain for the gold medal.

Billy said Wayman was one of the best guys he’d ever been around. Billy thought of him like I think of Larry Johnson.

When I heard Wayman passed, I was sick. He was so positive and gentle, and he always wore a big smile. And with eight jazz albums, he was talented beyond the basketball court.

Many, many people will miss him.