Time for spiteful voters to wise up

Clifford Carlson is in. He supposedly invented the Figure 8 offense back in the early 1920s, which I believe Mike Brown was going to install with the Lakers before deciding on the Princeton attack.

Frank Keaney is in. He led the University of Rhode Island to four National Invitation Tournament berths and has a gym dedicated in his honor. He is credited with designing the modern-age "run-and-shoot" system, which I prefer to call, "What Andre Ware would have excelled in had he chosen basketball."

Ward Lambert is in. He won the Helms Foundation championship with Purdue in 1932 while at the same time coaching Wally and the Beaver to a grade-school title.

Dutch Lonborg is in. He coached Washburn to an AAU championship and was a manager for the 1960 Olympic team, meaning he picked up towels and handed water cups to Jerry West and Walt Bellamy.

Harold Anderson is in. He led a college team to a third-place NIT finish.

Did we mention he led a college team to a third-place NIT finish?

Jerry Tarkanian is still not in.

The farce that remains the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame when it comes to the former UNLV coach lives and breathes and continues to bypass a man who deserves to be among its inductees as much as most who have been honored from the coaching ranks since 1959.

I'm not suggesting those mentioned above don't belong or that their accomplishments aren't notable. I am suggesting - insisting - that the reasoning against Tarkanian not yet being welcomed into the Hall of Fame grows more ignorant each year.

I wrote about the Hall and its Honors Committee and its sanctimonious voting approach in 2007, when Las Vegas hosted the NBA All-Star Game and Tarkanian was again left off a list of finalists then being considered for induction.

Five years later, he is back on the ballot.

It is the fourth time he has appeared.

It's time to right a terrible wrong.

His place on the outside looking in can't be about numbers. Tarkanian compiled a 990-228 all-divisions record in college, reached four Final Fours, won a national championship, created a style of defense and transition offense that are the very fabric of how college basketball is defined then and now.

No one coached better when the shot clock and 3-point line didn't exist. No team pressed like Tarkanian's when others stalled. He is one of the best defensive minds ever to draw an X and O, a man whose accomplishments makes many of those already in the Hall of Fame appear, well, incredibly unworthy.

I trust enough in others to believe there aren't that many idiots on the 24-member Honors Committee - which apparently changes faces by 33 percent each year - who don't think Tarkanian is worthy based solely on his record. It goes far beyond the needed conditions for election and easily trumps countless coaches who have been enshrined.

It has to be about Tarkanian's transgressions, about Long Beach State and UNLV and Fresno State all eventually finding themselves on NCAA probation following his departure.

A word for those who buy into that theory: spiteful.

There is no moral clause included in the bylaws for election and those on the Honors Committee are told to analyze only someone's on-court achievements.

But voters are human and, in the case of those who have voted against Tarkanian in the past, hypocritical fools.

Believe it: If those voting over the years had honestly looked with an intense and focused eye at every coach before casting Hall of Fame ballots and judged them as they have Tarkanian, the only one left would be Sandro Gamba, and only because the NCAA Committee on Infractions doesn't yet have a satellite office in Italy.

I despise those who make moral interpretations as part of their voting process in such matters, who have no problem navigating outside the parameters of what is fair in judging a candidate to justify their own holier-than-thou positions.

If he is able to pass a vote by the Screening Committee, Tarkanian will be among the finalists voted on by the Honors Committee in March. In April, at the Final Four in Atlanta, those selected for induction will be introduced at halftime of the national championship game.

Jerry Tarkanian needs to be among those on the court that evening.

It's the right thing to do.

There are people who still understand that concept, yes?

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.