Friday, March 28, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
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THERE WAS A flower blooming in the Nevada desert back in 1977, but not many outside of Las Vegas knew about it.
It was a basketball team that pressured you all over the court, ran like mad on offense and could shoot the lights out. And even though the American Basketball Association was dead and buried, its legacy was being sustained by a bunch of college guys from Vegas.
In my Brooklyn neighborhood, Las Vegas meant one thing -- a place to gamble and get lucky. The only time Vegas came up in discussion was when word got out that "Shreddy" Eddie Schindler would make one of his junkets, call his wife Denise from Caesars Palace and tell her to sell the furniture, so he could get back in action after going Tap City at the craps tables.
Back then, there was no ESPN, no USA Today, no satellite dishes, no syndicated late-night radio sports talk shows. If you wanted to know how UNLV did, you waited two days for the newspaper to list the score in agate type. Or you asked Rocky, the neighborhood bookie who had the score the next day for his customers who had action.
Yeah, we knew about the coach with the dark, sad eyes. We had seen Jerry Tarkanian work his stuff at Madison Square Garden in the early '70s when he was at Long Beach State and his team beat Jacksonville with Artis Gilmore in the Holiday Festival. But hardly anyone knew about his players. A few guys named Smith. A guy named Theus who was supposed to be a gunner. A white guy named Gondosomething.
Mostly, it was a bunch of guys in Afros who thought they were the next Dr. J. Nobody back east knew how good they were. UNLV was never on TV.
But in early February, we got our first peek at this team. And everyone was hooked. UNLV was playing Rutgers in Philadelphia. This was the remnants of the "Born To Run" Scarlet Knights that went to the Final Four the year before in Philly and lost to Indiana. It was a wild affair that wasn't decided until Robert Smith hit a shot from the top of the key, giving UNLV an 89-88 win.
From then on, everyone in our neighborhood started following Vegas. By the time the NCAAs rolled around, we knew which Smith was which and were trying to figure out how anyone was going to handle Tark's full-court pressure.
After UNLV buried Idaho State to make it to the Final Four, virtually everyone was convinced the Rebels were going to win it all. But Larry Moffett broke his nose in the second half and never returned. UNLV shot just five free throws while North Carolina went to the line 28 times, and the Rebels fell a point short of the title game.
Yet, it was the start of an affection for an amazing, exciting team that continues to this day. Tark has long since left and the Rebels are on the road back under Bill Bayno. But for the basketball junkies in my Flatbush neighborhood, they still pull for the Rebels and they remember 1977 as the year they found a team they could identify with and root for. Even if it cost them a few bucks on occasion.
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