Ex-UNLV assistant heads for Sweden

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 | 9:54 a.m.

Deane Martin had been in China barely long enough to adapt to the time change three weeks ago when he was confronted with a truly foreign basketball dilemma.

During a pre-game technical meeting with the Big Boss Brewery owner in Nantong, 60 miles north of Shanghai, game officials were introduced, lineups were exchanged and uniforms with Big Boss logos were tossed to one team.

That, however, wasn't the team Martin, a former UNLV assistant, coached that night. The squad earmarked for victory was coached by Chris Daleo, who has guided the CBA's Rockford (Ill.) Lightning the past few seasons.

"We nodded 'hello' to the officials, and toward the end of that meeting the director, a Mr. Wong, said, 'Oh, by the way, the sponsored team needs to win the game tonight,' " Martin said. "We all looked at each other and kind of laughed.

"We told them we couldn't guarantee that, and (Mr. Wong) said, 'We'll make sure the officials understand who is supposed to win the game.' We just sat there laughing. I said that all sounds good, but when the game starts the players will be competitive and they'll all want to win, no matter what."

At halftime, Martin's team trailed by only five points despite having a slew of whistles aimed at it.

"I told the players, 'Hey, let's make this competitive, but toward the end the sponsored team is supposed to win the game,' " Martin said. "They all looked at me and said the (heck) with the (stuff) ... we won by three."

Mr. Wong and the rest of the Big Boss brass were appeased, Martin said, when he and Daleo, and all of the players, raised big bottles of Big Boss high when posing with brewery executives during a post-game photograph session.

The two-week barnstorming tour, arranged by Atlanta-based agent Neil Vaswani and wildly received in all eight cities in which games were played, was Martin's first trip overseas.

Tuesday morning, Martin committed to the further broadening of his horizons when he signed a contract to coach Sallen Basket, of the Swedish Basketball League (Basketligan), for the 2004-05 season.

"It will definitely make him more marketable," said Western Illinois coach Derek Thomas, who served as an assistant with Martin on coach Charlie Spoonhour's UNLV staff in 2001-02 and '02-03.

"Now people can't say he has never called a timeout, he'll see a different brand of basketball, and it will make his recruiting and evaluating techniques better. That's great."

Martin, 40, became the second casualty of UNLV's springtime regime change, which led to the hiring of Lon Kruger, to land on his feet. Dave Rice, a longtime Rebels assistant, gained quick employment on Utah State coach Stew Morrill's staff.

Jay Spoonhour, who ran the Rebels on an interim basis after Charlie, his father, resigned for health reasons in February, has had several interviews, according to sources, but no offers.

Martin had several offers and leads from Division I coaches, but directing his own team for the first time, in such a unique environment, proved too enticing.

European teams can have two Americans on their rosters, and Martin said former Rebels J.K. Edwards and James Peters are among the candidates he is considering for Sallen.

"When they first approached me, I knew it would be something I'd be interested in," Martin said. "It's something I haven't done. For 15 years, I've been an assistant at every level, from junior college to Division II to lower D-I to higher D-I.

"The real thing is trying to get a head job, so it will be good experience. A lot of the people I've talked with said it's a good league."

He might enjoy the seafood in Uppsala, Sweden, where Sallen is based 40 miles north of Stockholm, more than China, too. At the start of his adventure in the Orient, Martin figured eel would be the safest local delicacy to eat.

"Then, driving around the country, I saw the water, and I quit eating anything that had been in the water," Martin said. "The water is so dirty. After a while, our host arranged for us to get McDonald's and KFC when possible. He went out of his way to be accommodating."

After Nantong, the tour made stops in Changzhou, Yangzhou, Yancheng, Dafeng, Huaibei, Huainan and Hefei. Every arena, which varied in capacity from 3,500 to 7,000 or 8,000, was filled to its capacity for the games.

The two American teams played before audiences on outdoor courts in a recreational area on the Big Boss grounds, for brewery workers, then at a park, for rabid fans who could not get to the sold-out, nightly games.

Both of those informal sessions consisted of layup drills, dunks and general shooting, but the second one drew an impressive gathering.

"There had to be 4,000 people jammed around the court, with military security all the way around it to keep the people off the court," Martin said. "After that, we signed autographs on T-shirts, hands, anywhere on their body that they wanted.

"A security guard had to grab me by the arm to yank me out of there, it got so hairy. We got mobbed."

The entourage's chartered bus received police escorts within five miles of entering a city and for five miles after its departure.

The entourage included players from Southern Alabama, Tulane, Minnesota and Tennessee Tech. Former Colorado State center Darian Burke regaled other players with stories about UNLV's pre-game fireworks show at the Thomas & Mack Center.

The Great Wall, more than 500 miles to the north near Beijing, was never within reasonable sight-seeing distance, but one dinner exchange piqued Martin's curiosity about the Communist country. A few seats away, a host was persistent with a line of questions.

"I think it was about cloning," Martin said. "I leaned over to the guy next to me and said, 'You know, he's asking a lot of questions.' It was the only time I thought, maybe the (Chinese) government placed us out here to get information.

"But you know what? None of us had any information to give. I never felt unsafe there. The people were so nice, it really was a great experience."