The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [110]
Tarkanian, not surprisingly, was and is the most vocal defender of his players. Asked about the possibility of a fix a few years later, he said, “No one would have [accused us of throwing that game] if we weren’t from Las Vegas. Every March there are upsets—Bucknell over Kansas, George Mason over Connecticut—but when it occurs no one says Kansas or Connecticut was throwing the game. Like the mob couldn’t get to a player at a school outside of Las Vegas. We lost to Duke, a team with three lottery picks and a great coach who goes on to win consecutive national championships, and people questioned whether we threw the game? It’s unbelievable.”
Tarkanian also claimed that until the Time magazine piece ran he only knew Perry as “Sam” and believed he was in the “commodities business.” In a 2008 column he wrote for the Las Vegas Sun, Tarkanian again addressed the infamous hot tub photo, saying, “We didn’t know who [Perry] was. I didn’t. Moses said as a young kid Perry would buy him shoes and bring groceries to the family. I don’t blame Moses. Nothing wrong with that. Moses said Perry talked to him about getting his grades up and doing what’s right. A writer in Dallas came up with that Richard “The Fixer” Perry stuff. I told guys to stay away.”
To add a further sordid wrinkle to the whole ordeal, Tarkanian leveled a rather serious allegation that the photo of his players in the hot tub with Perry had been leaked to the Journal-Review by Dennis Finfrock, UNLV′s interim athletic director at the time, at the behest of University President Robert Maxson. This claim, however, was never substantiated.
MY OPINION
It’s hard for me to believe that the UNLV players didn’t throw this game. “They keep trying to find a reason why we lost to Duke,” Stacey Augmon told the Las Vegas Review-Journal shortly after the game. “But we just lost, period.”
Sorry, Plastic Man, but I just don’t buy it. And it’s not just the hot tub photos that have me convinced.
Sure, the photos are damning. But they themselves aren’t proof of a conspiracy. Of the three UNLV players pictured in the photos, only Anderson Hunt played in the loss to Duke. And as I mentioned, his twenty-nine points led all scorers. To me, the most damning evidence can be found by watching the final twelve seconds of the game. They’re on YouTube if you’re curious.
Tarkanian had called a timeout following Laettner’s second free throw, conceivably to design a play. But when play resumed, the in-bounds pass came in to Johnson, a power forward not known for his ball-handling skills. Instead of passing, Johnson carries the ball up-court. He pulls up around the three-point line on the right side, at about a forty-five degree angle to the basket. Laettner comes out on him, mindful, I’m sure, of Johnson’s ability to drive to the basket, and does not defend aggressively. As Johnson takes a clear look at the basket with seven seconds remaining, Laettner raises his arms but does not leave his feet, careful not to foul the shooter. Johnson, however, decides not to take the shot, instead pulling the ball down and passing it out to Hunt with about four seconds remaining. Defended well by Hurley with help from Laettner, Hunt’s desperation shot at the buzzer is off the mark. The long rebound is gathered by Hurley, and Duke is victorious.
Today, eighteen years later, I still don’t understand why Johnson didn’t take the shot when he had the open look. Some have argued that after missing the mark on both of his three-point attempts earlier in the game, Johnson lacked