Jerry Tarkanian was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools.
Jerry Tarkanian: Los angeles lakers| Winning time| Who was
Los Angeles Lakers:
Jim Hecht, co-creator of Winning Time, insists it is, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “This murder has never been solved by the police.
I didn’t know, as a huge Lakers fan, that Jerry Tarkanian had been hired! They did the contracts. It was a done deal. I didn’t know about what happened to Victor Weiss, being stuffed into his trunk. It’s all absolutely true.”
In actuality, it’s…mostly true. Tarkanian had, in fact, been hired by the Lakers shortly before Weiss’s murder. (His grief and shock over the death of his friend combined with his desire to stay in Las Vegas ultimately led him to turn down the gig.)
Winning Time:
“A mere three days earlier, on the evening of June 14, Weiss had seemed to be the happiest man on the planet,” Jeff Pearlman writes in Showtime, the book on which Winning Time is based.
“A fifty-one-year-old sports promoter who served as Jerry Tarkanian’s representative, he had bounded out the front entrance of the Beverly-Comstock Hotel, euphoric in the knowledge that his client was about to be named the new coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Those were the words Cooke and Buss had just used during their meeting — ‘We’re excited to have Jerry as the new coach of the Lakers.’”
Who was:
Jerry Tarkanian was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools.
Weiss was, in fact, found dead in the trunk of his car on June 17, 1979, and the June 14 meeting with Buss was the last time he had been seen alive.
He had been shot execution-style in the head twice, and while his wallet and briefcase were gone, his diamond ring and watch had not been taken, leading police to rule out robbery as a motive. Contrary to the Winning Time depiction, however, Buss’s business card was not found on his body.
