Making

By Tom Callahan

None of the country's choice basketball players ever arrive at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on the fly, though a few have come in on one bounce. Jerry Tarkanian, a coach who looks like an all-night poker game, is the best rebounder in college basketball. At the moment, five of his first seven players are junior-college transfers. Three of the starters, including Star Forward Armon ("the Hammer") Gilliam, had no other scholarship offers at all. They are merely the top-ranked team in the nation.

Neglecting to win only one game in 29, Tarkanian is still deliberating over "whether we're really a great team" or just quite a good one "that plays awfully hard." Six-Foot Guard Mark Wade, a selfless passer unnoticed at his first stop, Oklahoma, operates the offense. An outside shooter named Gerald Paddio has come along to encourage opponents to emulate Tarkanian's bedrock man-to-man defense. "The only ones crying about the ((new three-point)) 19- ft. rule are the coaches who like to play zone. If anything's hurting college basketball, it's zone defenses."

While several statuesque thyroid cases share the Las Vegas pivot, the team is fundamentally centered if not completely built upon the solid 6-ft. 9-in. soft shooter and rugged rebounder Gilliam. A high school wrestler from Pittsburgh, he toyed with the notion of playing football at Clemson and embraced basketball last. "When you mention Las Vegas, people think of glitter," Gilliam says, "but glitter wears off."

The thought of college basketball thriving in Las Vegas is slightly chilling. Of all the extracurricular activities, basketball might be the most worrisome to universities today. Chances are, at the bottom of the Iran-contra scandal is a basketball coach in a checkered jacket and plaid pants. As bleak history shows, the potential for corruption, particularly of a gambling kind, is potent enough in places like Kentucky and New York without putting a franchise in Gomorrah.

Games begin in Las Vegas much the way they do in small towns everywhere, with indoor fireworks and Wayne Newton singing the national anthem. Several times this season, the home attendance record has been broken. "We've had live television and 20,000 people," Tarkanian sighs. "Our fans are going crazy."

Guard Freddie Banks, who was actually born and raised in Las Vegas, mentions that "the hotel owners, the really big-time people, all sit in the front row. Now and then, Jimmie Walker -- you know, J.J. on Good Times? -- plays with our band." But, generally, Banks has kept his hometown in perspective. "It's a good place to lose money, and it never snows." Banks' father is a bellman at the Hacienda, his mother a housekeeper at the Union Plaza. "Everyone's dream here is the N.B.A.," he says, but a few have ended up at the M.G.M. Banks says, "It's my dream too," though he is preparing to fall back on the city's second leading industry, social work.

A Runnin' Rebel of 1980, Flintie Ray Williams has worked his way up in the years since, from blackjack dealer to pit boss at the Golden Nugget. "It's not a hard profession to break into," he explains. "All you have to do is count to 21." Among Williams' old college playmates, Eddie Owens is dealing at Caesars Palace and Sam Smith is valeting cars. Williams is quick to add that "at a hundred and a half a night, a lot of people would park cars. You can be a porter in this town and make $60 or $70 a day."

In Williams' light, the image of the outlaw team brightens. "The old man ((Tarkanian)) runs a straight deal," he says firmly, "and the whole community is protective of it." Betting on UNLV games is not only illegal, it appears to be that rarest thing in town, immoral. "If a player so much as walked into a casino," Williams declares, "everyone would rise up and say, 'No, no, uh-uh, forget it.' I mean, just the idea of it is offensive. That's like our one normal thing: college basketball. The word would get back to Tark in about seven minutes."

As the N.C.A.A. used to waste its time asserting in courtrooms, Tarkanian is not precisely a saint, though in 14 Nevada winters he has provided Father Flanagan with a run for his money. There is no such thing as a bad boy who can shoot a 19-ft. jump shot, and one of the most promising recruits in years is warming up right now in a Los Angeles detention home. Another standby, Brooklyn Street Legend Lloyd Daniels, was busted for an alleged cocaine offense two weeks ago, bringing shame on his four high schools. "We don't get the McDonald's or Parade All-Americas," Tarkanian says, "but no program in the country has better kids." Of late, the Rebels are even starting to graduate, though Tarkanian thinks they have always learned something, each according to his own capacity.

By Flintie Ray Williams' calculation, "the basic thing every college basketball player needs to learn is that everyone can't end up in the N.B.A. It took me about a year and a half after I quit playing to fully grasp that. In another place, I think I might have been lost after basketball. Coach Tarkanian helps the players get to that point where they're real with themselves, and then the town generally offers them a living. It's not such a terrible deal." Stars parking cars may not be the jackpot, but they know when to fold 'em.