Columnist Dean Juipe: Bandits change for the better

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 | 9:36 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Better late than never.

As trite as that introduction may seem, it's an appropriate view of the newly upgraded status of the Las Vegas Silver Bandits of the International Basketball League. For all the mistakes the franchise appeared to make a year ago, the bulk of them may have been corrected Monday when the team formally announced wholesale front-office personnel changes that have a positive impact on its credibility.

When the curtain went up on the Bandits a year ago, the team had no owner, no general manager and an old coach from UNLV. No disrespect to Rolland Todd, who coached the Rebels from 1965-70, but his presence on the Bandits' bench wasn't going to sell any tickets.

The Bandits, in their original incarnation, were something of a rudderless ship. The league put the team into the explosive Las Vegas market and hoped for the best.

But that was then.

"If the Las Vegas franchise was down at the bottom initially, it's at the top today," IBL president Thaxter Trafton said at a press conference where former UNLV athletic director Brad Rothermel was introduced as CEO and former NBA star Lionel Hollins, a native of North Las Vegas, was presented as the team's new head coach.

Add in a more comfortable Jackie Robinson -- the ex-Rebel who assumed the team's ownership reins earlier this year -- and some other periphery improvements and the Bandits, one year after being thrust upon us, appear to have the right people in the right places. They're solvent and on the upswing.

"We're poised to be a great franchise," Robinson said, and there is a little less hyperbole in that remark today than had he made it a month, let alone a year, ago. "We're going to have the type of excitement we used to have in the glory days."

The "glory days" he's referring to, of course, were UNLV's glory days. While that era may never be recaptured, the Silver Bandits may be able to find a niche and make ends meet.

That wasn't the case during their first season, when "crowds" of 250 were all too commonplace in the spacious Thomas & Mack Center. The franchise appeared to be doomed.

But this influx of recognizable and respected front-office talent is a huge plus for an organization that is just now coming out of its infancy. It took a few steps and wobbled, yet it is progressing and deserves renewed consideration.

Rothermel and Hollins make that much difference. One is a long-admired administrator, the other a former player who was the head coach of the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies last season and who has spent 12 seasons coaching the world's greatest players.

The Silver Bandits will not have the world's greatest players on their roster this season, or ever, for that matter. The IBL remains a developmental league and that will never change.

But within that framework lies the possibility of decent games in a professional environment, and enough Las Vegans may find that appealing to keep the team afloat.

Once considered a long shot to survive, the Bandits now have to be viewed in a different light.

As dismal as their outlook once was, it seems to have reversed just in the last few days.

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