Can Josh Pastner reignite the spark for UNLV basketball fans this season?

If the Thomas & Mack Center were an electronic control panel board, empty lower bowl seats would’ve stood out like a plethora of flashing red warning lights at UNLV men’s basketball games during the 2024-25 season.

With the Rebels struggling to keep even the student section filled, the program’s need for an injection of new energy was apparent.

UNLV athletic director Erick Harper needed to find a frontman who could sell tickets. One who could make people buy into the idea that the excitement surrounding the “Runnin’ Rebels” of the 1990s might not be so impossible to reach again.

Enter new coach Josh Pastner. He’s been an inadvertent salesman his entire life. And If you ask anyone who knows the 48-year-old, they’ll tell you his ability to get people excited is a natural one.

Pastner most recently worked as a TV analyst after serving as Georgia Tech’s coach from 2016 to 2023. Before that, he was the coach at Memphis for five years.

His unique acumen worked for recruiting a brand new class of players from the NCAA transfer portal this offseason.

“His energy is different,” 7-foot Nigerian center Emmanuel Stephen said before UNLV’s first official practice in September. “Everyone should want to play for him. He doesn’t curse. He’s just business all the time.”

With the Rebels’ season starting Tuesday against Tennessee-Martin at the Thomas & Mack Center, Pastner is embracing the expectation that he’ll use his approach to rebuild UNLV into a winning team with a dedicated fan base.

It’s a task he’s attacking with an almost gleeful air.

That much was evident as Pastner followed Stephen’s comments with a showcase of the high-energy, all-business approach he’s trademarked.

“By the way, let me tell you about the best ticket in town,” Pastner said in a segue attempt that turned his media availability into a commercial for his new-look team. “I think it’s a heck of a deal.”

Pastner went on to use the phrase “free parking” 12 times in a nearly 30-minute span — an attempt to entice anyone who might be listening to consider spending their dollar at UNLVtickets.com.

He replaces Kevin Kruger, fired in March after four seasons. Kruger went 76-55 during his tenure, which saw the program’s drought without an NCAA Tournament appearance since 2013 continue.

But maybe, to start, Pastner doesn’t need to sell a dream to succeed in Las Vegas.

“First of all, I hope to win a bunch,” he said. “The team is really good if we’re fully healthy, and we might not hit our stride until we get to Mountain West play. To me, our North Star should be trying to win that. It’s hard to win a regular-season conference championship, which I’ve done.”

Marketing himself

Pastner could always sell his passion.

His father, Hal Pastner, keeps a collection of media memorabilia that proves it.

The stash includes a 2003 Sports Illustrated issue. Former NFL star Barry Sanders was on the cover, but a blurb teased a story on Josh Pastner that was nestled in the magazine’s pages. “A Whiz-kid coach at age 25, hoops obsessed Arizona Assistant is on the fast track to a top job,” it read.

Six years later, Pastner was being featured on covers of his own, leading the September 2009 issue of Basketball Times as a “Boy Wonder.”

For Hal Pastner, they’re tangible reminders of the path that saw his son go from spearheading a top AAU program to marketing himself onto Arizona’s 1997 national championship team. He would go on to work under two Hall of Fame coaches, spending six seasons as one of Lute Olson’s assistants at Arizona, then joining John Calipari’s staff at Memphis before taking over as head coach.

Long before the early stardom, Pastner was a fifth grader who made a promise to his dad after watching the Los Angeles Lakers versus the Boston Celtics on national TV:

“He told me he’d be in basketball the rest of his life, and he has never lost that focus since that day,” Hal said.

Josh Pastner worked toward that goal early by spending hours in high school gyms around the suburb he grew up in near Houston, researching for the “Josh Pastner Scouting Report,” which first began circulating when he was 13.

“For every tournament, he would put together a book of every player, and then he would use physical mail to get it to every coach in the country,” Hal said. “I’d get calls from college coaches, saying, ‘This is great. How do I subscribe? This is great information.’ I’d have to say, ‘No. That’s my son. He’s just sending it to you. There’s no money.’ ”

Pastner’s drive was enough for Hal to establish Houston Hoops, an AAU team that Josh served as coach, player and recruiter for by the time he was 16.

The path hasn’t necessarily looked like what the young Pastner imagined.

“I thought I was going to be the next Steve Kerr,” he said with a chuckle. “I was a good shooter. I could move without the basketball.”

Hal knew that was never in the cards, but still watched his son write to coaches, attempting to essentially recruit himself to college programs in a separate endeavor from his scouting outreach.

“He got himself to be the best player on his high school team, the team captain and the MVP,” Hal said. “He wasn’t good enough for the next level. No way. He was slow and couldn’t jump. But he had a passion. He kept writing to all the college coaches, and nobody was interested.”

That all changed when Olson saw Hal in Las Vegas during his AAU duties and asked to talk with him.

“I want your son on my team,” Olson told Hal. “He’s probably never going to play, but there’s something he can do to help.”

Not always the first option

Even when people aren’t immediately sold on Pastner, he’s found ways to convert them into believers.

Once he got to Arizona, Pastner’s dream of being a star player was quickly met with reality, as he walked onto a roster that boasted a legendary backcourt in Miles Simon and Mike Bibby.

Pastner quickly pivoted to trying to add value wherever he could, spending hours rebounding for his teammates and pointing out all the ways they could win a national title.

“I was like, ‘Who’s this guy?’ He’s talking a lot, he’s a freshman. He’s not great at basketball. But he made his intentions on why he was there very clear,” Simon said.

Pastner’s constant assertion that Arizona would win the national championship seemed lofty at first.

“Dude, you’re 18. You’ve never even played a college game at this point. How do you know?” Simon recalled thinking. “But he just has this positive attitude and self-belief. And then he instills that positivity and this great attitude into the people that he’s around. He makes you feel like you’re just the most important person in the world.”

It’s safe to say Pastner sold his teammates on the dream of a national title.

“It all came true,” said Simon, the Most Outstanding Player of the championship run. “We won the national championship like six or seven months later. And he was saying that from day one. He was like a player development coach before there were really player development coaches.”

Simon and Pastner are still close friends, which meant that Simon, an assistant coach for the Miami Heat, couldn’t miss an opportunity to watch Pastner’s Rebels practice at UNLV during the NBA Summer League.

“They’re going to be a very hard-playing team,” Simon said. “And he’s going to have his team prepared for each and every opponent.”

That’s the kind of competition that Bibby, now the coach at Sacramento State after starring for the Sacramento Kings, told Pastner he wanted his team to go up against in the preseason.

“Mike, I’m not playing you,” Pastner told Bibby. “I see the guys you’re getting, man. No chance in heck.”

But Bibby will still be watching.

“Josh has always been one of the hardest-working and most passionate guys I’ve been around,” he said. “UNLV is getting a coach who will pour everything into the program, and I’m excited to see what he does there.”

Pastner’s persistence despite not always having the initial buy-in is a through line in his journey.

On the day Pastner accepted the UNLV job, sources confirmed that Arkansas State coach Bryan Hodgson was taking the job. But Hodgson took the South Florida job instead.

“I don’t know if I was the first choice. Probably not,” Pastner said. “I wasn’t the first choice in Memphis, I can tell you that. I was probably the 850th choice. I don’t think I was the first choice at Georgia Tech. And that’s OK. All I know is that I wanted to be here.”

Pastner’s shot at Memphis came when Calipari left for Kentucky unexpectedly. He took a star-studded recruiting class with him that Pastner expected to follow as an assistant coach.

He was covered in sweat after having just loaded up his car for the move to Lexington when he got a call summoning him to then-Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson’s home.

Pastner came out of that meeting with a job that no one really wanted, having to rebuild the roster in the wake of a NCAA investigation that forced Memphis to vacate its 38-win season in 2007-08 because of a test-taking violation involving star player Derrick Rose.

Despite those hurdles, Pastner led Memphis to four NCAA Tournaments in seven seasons. He won Conference USA regular-season titles in 2012 and 2013, with the 2013 season boasting an undefeated conference record.

Accessibility to fans

At a fundraising event in Las Vegas in the offseason, Pastner happily gave out his email address to everyone in attendance.

When asked about that decision, he said he also plans to encourage UNLV fans to reach out to him during his weekly radio show.

It’s a choice that beckons a second look when paired with an awareness of just how dangerous accessibility to fans has proved to be for Pastner in the past.

After accepting a buyout following two seasons without a postseason appearance with Memphis, Pastner landed at Georgia Tech in 2016. He led the Yellow Jackets to the ACC tournament championship, an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2021 and won the ACC Coach of the Year award in 2017, but his tenure included allegations from an extortionist who posed as a fan to gain access to Pastner and accuse him of recruiting violations.

The man’s girlfriend also joined the scheme and alleged that Pastner sexually assaulted her. It wasn’t until 2023 that the couple were sentenced to jail time despite an NCAA infractions appeals committee overturning several of the sanctions against Georgia Tech two years prior.

Pastner doesn’t like to talk about the saga, but admits that it started because he simply responded to an email from what appeared to be a fan saying he had cancer. The fan told Pastner his responses were saving his life, so Pastner invited him to a game and kept the lines of communication open.

“All I did was just try to be a good human being,” Pastner said. “That was an awful time period. So, yes, I’m an open book, and I’m very transparent, but I’m also very guarded. I learned a lot through that time. I just got hit by two criminals.”

Pastner’s tenure at Georgia Tech didn’t end in 2023 because of his legal battle with the extortionists. His summary of the ouster is simple: He didn’t win enough.

But all of the winning that brought him to that point took a toll.

During his time at Memphis, he prided himself on not taking back-to-back losses. His health depended on it.

“If we lost, I wouldn’t go out to eat for days. I would be at home, sitting in the same chair. I would just beat myself up,” Pastner said.

By the time he was out at Memphis, his doctors were warning him about the dangers of the pressure he was putting on himself.

“I was going down a bad path, heartwise. Just the stress. It was eating at me,” he said. “When I went and saw (a cardiologist), it wasn’t good.”

At Memphis and even at Georgia Tech, Pastner thought that basketball success meant everything to the local fan base.

“It was really intense. And I think there’s a lot of the same parallels here to UNLV as in terms of the intensity of the job, which I love,” Pastner said. “I’m more seasoned and older now. I’m a better coach with more clarity in this time period than ever before. And I’m happy about that.”

Are you buying?

Pastner doesn’t want to be known as a salesman.

There’s a slimy connotation to the archetype with which he doesn’t identify.

“Where I’m coming from is authentic. I’m speaking from the heart,” he said. “I’m not trying to sell. I’m trying to have people understand the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

But even his wholesome nature stands out to the people who essentially serve as his customers.

Pastner, outspoken about his Jewish faith, said he has never had a sip of alcohol, coffee or carbonation. In addition to not cursing, he forbids his assistants and players from using foul language on the court.

During a closed practice, one of his players was fed up with the amount of running required and let out some expletives. Pastner punished him with more running.

A UNLV booster saw the scene unfold and relished it.

“He treats every player the same,” the booster said.

Getting people with money invested in the program isn’t something Pastner has attacked only through the lens of his team.

He’s even worked with accomplished women’s basketball coach Lindy La Rocque, whom he’s known since they were young on the Las Vegas basketball scene.

“We text each other all the time,” La Rocque said. “We’ve partnered with marketing to do more things on campus, to make more appearances, to show a united front together for our donors, students and fans. I think the more we can be united, the more people will want to support. He’s breathed a lot of life just into our building, and it makes me want to work harder.”

It’s all part of Pastner’s effort to fill UNLV’s stands again.

“The Mountain West is flooded with great home-court advantages. We need to get that back,” he said. “Yes, I get it. We need to win and people will come. But also, on the other hand, I need you in the stadium as well to help us win.”

Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X.