Sports

[25th Anniversary of a Championship]

UNLV’s championship changed everything, even if we were too young to understand

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Photo: Greg Cava

There were six of us, brothers and friends and rivals, and we were at that point of adolescence when we could only be obsessed with something—not just enthralled with it, but truly obsessed. That something was basketball.

For years, or what seemed like years, we woke up at 6 a.m. every Saturday, carpooled to Helen Marie Smith Elementary School and took over its blacktop. We went early to beat as much of the desert heat as we could, and we played until we couldn’t play anymore. Full-court three-on-three, first team to 100. Then, 7-Eleven for Big Gulps or Slurpees or Gatorade, then back home to play video games, usually basketball-themed.

I was the second-youngest of the six, a 13-year-old runt/point guard, but I felt like a king if my team won those Saturday-morning games. Each of us had a favorite NBA team, too, and mine, the over-achieving Detroit Pistons, was right in the middle of back-to-back world championships in the winter-to-spring of 1990. So there was that.

But NBA glory was distant. We couldn’t touch it. It was TV and those T-shirts with caricatures of players we thought we loved. It wasn’t ours. We had Saturday mornings, the heat off the pavement, blackened hands and the drinking fountain that was so far away. That was until March, and then April 2. Monday night. A 30-point blowout, in the championship game, against Duke.

The Runnin’ Rebels’ championship win was too good to be true. Even as the team—our own team—notched big wins in the West Regional and handled exciting Georgia Tech in the Final Four, we couldn’t believe it could happen. I was too young to understand the significance of this little team from Vegas, a defiant crew led by a true rebel, bringing home a national title and what it would mean for the school and the city. All I saw was celebration, messages on Strip casino marquees and parades and a big party at the Thomas & Mack. Maryland Parkway was closed along the campus when the Rebels won. Can you imagine something happening that was bigger than Las Vegas? That’s what it was.

For the six of us, it was an immeasurable explosion. We’d gone to UNLV games and even post-practice meet-and-greets at the North Gym where we got autographs from Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon and shook hands with Jerry Tarkanian and told him we wanted to play for him in a few years. This was not distant. It was as real as the ball in our hands and our court at HMS. We didn’t have to root for NBA teams in other cities, because we had the Rebels and they were the best. There isn’t anything else that feels like that.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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