First met Billy Tubbs in 1978 when he was the head coach at Lamar. He was tossing drinks back at the old MGM Grand Hotel following Lamar’s near upset over a top 10 Rebel squad. Got a call from a contact there who said you got to come and try and meet this guy.
He was a riot and was unfiltered. He went on and on about how great the pre-game light show at the Convention Center was. At the time he said he thought it was worth a 10 point advantage. I remember him saying how “damn inspirational” it was and how when he went back to Beaumont, TX where the school is located no one was going to believe him when described it. I left around 1:30am - 2:00am, and heard he was around a while longer.
Billy was an interesting coach who like many of the best knew how to get the best out of his players on a consistent basis. His variations of full court press particularly in the late 80’s was something else. Just like Jerry, Billy believed everything began by setting the tone at the defensive end. He ran a pretty loose ship, gave his players quite a bit of freedom on and off the court.
The night before the game in 78 we learned several of the Lamar players where out at Tony Orlando’s midnight performance at the RIviera until the early hours of the morning. On top of that Lamar did not arrive until late that evening before the game and didn’t get a practice in.
Jerry never took anything for granted but even he was surprised to hear it. We were the ones who ended up surprised as Lamar almost pulled off the upset. Took a long jumper from Tony Smith with about 15-20 seconds to hold them off.
Not long before the 89 game at the Thomas & Mack Center several Sooner players where playing slots and roulette at Caesars Palace. Wasn’t how Jerry ran things but it worked for Billy.
The two were friends but awfully competitive. At the game in Maui both almost got ejected piling up technicals. After losing in the 86 NIT, Billy accused UNLV of buying the game to get it at the Thomas & Mack.
Then there was the recruitment of Wayman Tisdale. Tisdale was part of one of the early Vegas summer league powerhouse AAU programs the Oklahoma Rams which also featured Darryl Kennedy and Mark Price. Jerry was impressed seeing him and called Billy about him, if they were recruiting him. Billy told Jerry, “there isn’t enough oil outside of Oklahoma to afford him.” Jerry stopped recruiting him.
But they were quite close. Tubbs sent Jerry a tie with silhouettes of swimming sharks that Jerry really liked. Jerry kept it on a table in his office.
Maybe my favorite memory of the two was shortly after Jerry left UNLV, he went to work for Sportschannel Los Angeles as a part of the Clippers broadcast team. The idea was to do a Wayne’s World parody ad and Jerry wanted Billy to participate. He would say, "this is going to cost a lot." Took a lot to get Billy to participate but they had a good time together.
