The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [109]
What made the article so credible was that it included photographs, including one now legendary shot of the three UNLV players sitting in a hot tub with Perry. Another shot showed the three players playing basketball with Perry on Perry’s home court. Though it was impossible to verify, the photos were believed to have been taken in the fall of 1989, before UNLV’s first championship run.
A few months before that, in April of 1989, Ted Gup and Brian Doyle of Time magazine reported in an article titled “Playing to Win in Vegas” that Butler and Scurry accepted money and a free lunch from Perry at Caesar’s Palace the previous fall. Other reports indicated that Perry had often been seen at UNLV games sitting in seats originally provided to the coach. Perry had also been seen at the 1991 Final Four sitting in floor-level seats allotted to NCAA coaches, though there was no way to determine whether or not those seats had been given to Tarkanian.
Further evidence of a fix was revealed in February of 1992 when the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that a federal investigation had been launched in an attempt to determine whether or not UNLV shaved points in games during the 1990-91 season, including the Final Four loss to Duke. The report also indicated that the authorities had inquired about surveillance tapes at Trump Plaza hotel in Atlantic City that may contain visual evidence of Augmon associating with Perry shortly after the loss.
Though he vehemently denied any involvement with Perry or any other gamblers, Tarkanian resigned as head coach of the Runnin’ Rebels in March of 1992, citing an inability to recruit in the wake of the scandal.
EVIDENCE AGAINST CONSPIRACY
The most compelling argument against the existence of a fixed game is that in 1991, before the rise of online sportsbooks, there was no way to legally bet on the game. Because of the law that prohibits the sportsbooks of Nevada casinos from taking bets or posting lines on events or games involving Nevada teams (put in place to avoid game fixes), there was no official line on the semi-final game (reports vary on the issue, but it is generally agreed that the illegal line on the game was six and seven points). Bookmakers in the UK, where sports gambling is legal, have never paid much attention to the NCAA basketball tournament and there is no evidence that the 1991 tournament marked an exception. That left all of the action to illegal bookmaking operations, most of which are mob run.
Perry had a documented relationship with the Lucchese crime family dating back to his race fixing in New York in the 1970s, but none of the investigations turned up any evidence of Perry or any of the UNLV players associating with mobsters in 1991. It seems unlikely that players like Johnson and Augmon (who combined for only nineteen points in the loss) would risk associating with mobsters for a payday that would pale in comparison to the one awaiting them in the NBA (as previously mentioned, both were selected within the first nine picks of the 1991 NBA Draft).
UNLV players like guard Anderson Hunt, who was not destined to become an NBA lottery pick (in fact, he was undrafted) might seem like a more likely candidate to shave points. After all, Hunt was one of the three players pictured in the infamous hot tub photo. But that argument falls apart when one takes a look at the game’s box score and sees that Hunt led all scorers that night with twenty-nine points. Knowing the likely repercussions he’d face for crossing the mob, it is unlikely that Hunt (who shot 11 for 20 from the field, including 4 for 11 from behind the arc) would have been part of any fix.
Box Score
DUKE 79, UNLV 77
Another argument against the fix is the spectacle of the game. Most of history’s more notable college basketball point-shaving scandals (CCNY, Boston College, Arizona State, Northwestern) have occurred far from the national