The rebuilder

By Rob Miech

Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2004 | 10:12 a.m.

THE GAME: UNLV vs. Saint Mary's.

WHEN: Tonight, 7:30.

WHERE: Thomas & Mack Center.

TV: None.

RADIO: 920-AM.

STORY LINE: Season opener for UNLV against a team already having played five games, including two in New York in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.

Since coming to Las Vegas, Lon Kruger has been accessible and accommodating, welcoming anyone who approaches him with the warm smile of someone who had a Norman Rockwell upbringing in Kansas.

After his five-year, $3.8 million basketball contract was so publicly scrutinized by the 14 members of the university system Board of Regents last spring, Kruger reacted with no degree of personal offense.

Just doing their jobs, he said. That didn't surprise Kevin Kruger, the coach's son who is a sophomore shooting guard at Arizona State.

"He has always enjoyed being personable and easy to speak with, especially with strangers," Kevin said. "I know he takes pride in that."

Atlanta Hawks assistant coach Herb Brown, Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown's older brother who coached Kruger on a European championship team in Tel Aviv 30 years ago, confirmed that Lon Kruger's mild-mannered ways can be disarming.

"But don't be fooled," Brown said. "He'll explain what he wants done and he'll get it done. If players don't do it the right way, he'll go to the next one on the bench. They will understand what he wants and how he wants them to play.

"They'll be plenty disciplined. Nobody will walk over him."

Those who closely watch Kruger walk onto the Thomas & Mack Center court tonight for his official debut, against Saint Mary's, as the Rebels' coach will notice a hitch in his gait.

He appears to slightly favor his right hip, as if from injury. Nothing major, he said. Just a herniated disk from back in the day, and a couple of back surgeries.

"From too many falls," said Kruger, 52. "It looks worse than it is. Just getting old, wearing out."

Again, don't be fooled. The former all-around athlete who caught the interest of at least five teams from three professional leagues in college plays to a 5 handicap on the links. He has made two holes in one.

When Brad Rothermel, a special adviser to UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick, served on the Kansas State administration and Kruger was on basketball coach Jack Hartman's staff, Rothermel taught Kruger how to play Ping-Pong.

Kruger soon had a table in his garage, and Rothermel figures the two played about 10,000 games in that garage that summer.

"We'd line up and get after it," Rothermel said. "We never threw paddles at each other, but the competition was brisk."

Rothermel agreed with Brown's assessment of Kruger.

"Herb is absolutely right," Rothermel said. "Lon has an incredibly competitive spirit. He hasn't even shown that, but he will as the games become more important. You'll see.

"He'll bow his neck, set his jaw and get after people if they're not doing it the right way. He's got a very highly competitive spirit and I know he'll do a super job."

The Heartland

Betty and Don Kruger raised six children -- Lon is the oldest -- in Silver Lake, Kan., a town of about 850 in Lon's youth near the Kansas River and Topeka, smack in between Manhattan and Kansas City.

It was a field-of-dreams childhood. All sports, all the time. The kids chalked the lines of the nearby park, and the elder Krugers worked the concession stand. Lon dreamed of one day playing baseball in the major leagues.

"It always seemed to be a good, positive environment," said Lon's 47-year-old brother Mike. "And he was always a good role model."

It wasn't without tragedy, however. When Lon was 12, 9-year-old brother Dale fell behind a tractor on which he was riding and was killed when the farm vehicle rolled over him.

"It was tough at the time," Lon said. "Of course, as you get older and have kids, you realize how tough it was on the parents. You don't realize that at the time, as a 12-year-old. You don't have the perspective of a parent.

"As you get older, you realize, 'Wow, how does a parent go through that?' "

Mike and his wife named their third and youngest son Dale Jr.

"I don't have a lot of memories about Dale, because Lon was closer to his age," Mike Kruger said. "But I still think about him."

Don, too. Cancer claimed the patriarch of the Kruger family on Jan. 2, 1998, when Donald E. Kruger, a carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Topeka, died at the age of 66 in his Silver Lake home.

Mike, and younger brothers Jerry and David, all live in Silver Lake. Their sister Terry lives in Kansas City. Betty Kruger will welcome her 14th grandchild into the world in about six months.

"They were terrific," Lon Kruger said of his parents. "Everything mom and dad did revolved around their children. Dad coached two or three teams every summer. They created an environment so ideal ... you hope to pass that on."

The Krugers have always devoted themselves to charitable endeavors. Barbara Kruger has taken a special interest in Safe Nest, which operates two Las Vegas-area shelters for domestic abuse victims, since arriving in the valley.

"Coaching at UNLV gives us the opportunity to do some things we love to do," said Lon Kruger. "We do a lot of things involving kids who oftentimes haven't had the same background we grew up with. We've always enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to do that."

The Athlete

Sports Illustrated picked Kruger 32nd on a recent list of the top 50 Sunflower State athletes, and he made the Kansas State All-Century basketball team in a celebration of the school's 100th anniversary.

"He set the standards pretty high," Mike Kruger said. "Watching him was exciting, still is."

At Silver Lake High, Lon excelled in baseball, basketball and football all four years. He helped the Eagles win a state basketball title as a senior, and he was all-state in basketball as a junior and senior, in 1969 and '70.

The Houston Astros drafted him out of high school, but Kruger wanted to play basketball, for the legendary Hartman, and baseball at Kansas State.

Kruger got a third-team all-state nod as a Silver Lake senior after throwing for 2,079 yards and scoring nine touchdowns on the football squad.

At Kansas State, Rothermel said Kruger, a year ahead of Steve Grogan, was the second-best quarterback on campus. Grogan played 16 years in the National Football League.

Even though Kruger did not play football for the Wildcats, the Dallas Cowboys had a scout run him through various drills at Wagner Stadium. In his usual, low-key demeanor, Kruger downplayed the tryout.

"That was nothing," he said. "That was something they did with a lot of 'other-sport' athletes. They had a reputation of checking 'this guy,' who seemed to be a pretty good athlete, or 'that guy.' Like Bob Hayes in track.

"They came down and took a look, worked me out, and I realized I wasn't fast enough or quick enough."

Besides, Kruger still dreamed of baseball stardom when he graduated from Kansas State in 1974. Atlanta had selected him in the NBA draft, but the St. Louis Cardinals had picked him in the baseball draft and he reported to rookie ball in Sarasota, Fla.

With a fastball, curve and slider, he won his first game, 1-0.

"And I thought, 'Shoot, this is easy,' " Kruger said. "But I didn't win another one. I had decent control and could move it around a little bit, but I had nothing overpowering, for sure."

The drought continued when he was sent to Class A St. Petersburg, Fla.

"Typical minor-league stuff," he said. "All baseball. You'd get on the bus to travel, play, come home, sleep, eat and go to the park ... every day of the summer."

Kruger found an invitation from Brown, to try out for the Tel Aviv Sabres during a month-long camp at a country club in the Catskills in upstate New York, when he returned to Kansas after the baseball season.

Future Boston Celtics guard M.L. Carr made the cut with Kruger.

"I got him at a terrific time," Brown said. "He was very focused and very confident. He was a great competitor. He shot the ball off the glass, a great backboard shooter."

Who feared little in embattled Israel. Kruger remembered only one incident, something about a raft in the Mediterranean.

Luggage and body searches, for explosives and other weapons, were then common throughout the country. The Sabres received special attention, like armored-car transportation and thorough tarmac inspections, for their El Al Airlines flights in Europe.

Brown said a bomb went off one night in a bar 20 minutes after Carr had left the establishment. One morning, after having dined with friends up the coast in Haifa, Brown read in the Jerusalem Post that a terrorist plot in Haifa had been thwarted.

"Arabs had stormed in off the Mediterranean Sea and tried to get some hostages in a movie theater, but the Israeli police got them," Brown said. "In Geneva or Frankfurt or Rome, we were always protected.

"Lon was very level-headed, and none of that ever bothered him."

Barbara, Lon's future wife, even visited for stretches, and the Sabres won the European Professional Basketball League championship. "A great experience," Kruger said.

Upon returning to Silver Lake, he found no messages from the St. Louis Cardinals.

"With the basketball playoffs in Israel, I couldn't have gotten back for spring training. But the Cardinals weren't too bothered by it," Kruger said. "They didn't call, so that ended that."

Brown became an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons after Tel Aviv and invited Kruger to camp in the fall of '75, but the Pistons had five other guards under guaranteed contracts.

"Really, Lon was arguably as good as they were," Brown said. "He could have made the team. The way things worked out, it was probably a blessing in disguise for him. He went and coached, and he's a great coach."

The Rebel

Brown sees, and hears, a lot of the late Hartman in Kruger.

"I watched Hartman's practices, and whenever he talked it was in a low voice," Brown said. "He commanded everyone's attention. He never spoke loud. When he did, he'd raise his voice a little bit ... players know the difference.

"Lonnie's the same way."

Last December, Kruger, as a New York Knicks assistant coach, barked back at Minnesota guard Latrell Sprewell as the ex-Knick directed a string of obscenities at James Dolan, the chairman of the Knicks' corporate owner who was sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden.

"He was one guy who stood up to Sprewell," Brown said. "He's his own man, don't worry about that. You've got a good one."

UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick first went to Rothermel, the Rebels' athletic director from 1981-90, to ask him whom he would hire if Rothermel were seeking the program's next coach in the wake of Charlie Spoonhour's departure.

Hamrick received a quick history lesson about Rothermel's relationship with Kruger.

Rothermel first met Kruger in 1966, when Lon and Mike Kruger attended a Show-Me baseball camp that Rothermel helped run in Branson, Mo., and Rothermel later tried muscling everyone out of the post in offseason pick-up games during Kruger's collegiate playing days.

Lon and Barbara baby-sat Brad and Suzanne Rothermel's daughters in Manhattan.

Kruger consulted with Rothermel before taking coaching jobs at Texas-Pan American, Kansas State, Florida and Illinois. The only time Kruger didn't ring Rothermel was before he accepted a five-year, $10 million deal to coach Atlanta in 2000.

"And I probably would have advised him to take that, too," Rothermel said, "because of the financial arrangement."

Hamrick asked Rothermel to contact Kruger in March and gauge his interest in UNLV.

"He had just gotten back from Utah," Rothermel said of Kruger. "He was interested in that position and wanted to take it, and he asked me if that was a better position than UNLV. I said it wasn't even close."

Rothermel told Kruger that it would be difficult replacing Rick Majerus, given the success Majerus had in Salt Lake City.

"But I also said that this is a better environment to recruit to and a better situation to win it all," Rothermel said. "He hasn't done it yet, but he's been real close. We'll get real close again, hopefully."

Hamrick sought additional input from Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery, and various conference commissioners and athletic directors.

"They all said the same thing, that he's a class guy who can really coach and recruit," Hamrick said. "I knew what I was getting. Since he's been here, it's been everything as advertised. He's thrown himself into everything, and that's what we needed."

Kruger took Florida from a shambles of a program to the Final Four, in 1994, in four seasons. In 1988, with Mitch Richmond, Kansas State got to within a victory of going to the Final Four under Kruger.

"This town wants it so badly," Rothermel said. "When we won the national championship (in 1990), it had such a tremendous influence in bringing the community together. I'm confident we can recapture that."

With a head coach who, according to his son, had lost something the past couple of seasons.

The Hawks, 69-122 under Kruger, fired him halfway through his contract. He started last season as an assistant to Knicks coach Don Chaney before Isiah Thomas arrived and fired everyone but the Garden janitors.

Lon and Barbara Kruger moved to the Phoenix area, to watch Kevin play his freshman season at Arizona State. The Sun Devils, who play Texas-El Paso at Valley High on Friday in the Las Vegas Invitational, will feast Thursday on a Thanksgiving meal in the Kruger home in Anthem.

"I was happy to see him happy," Kevin Kruger said of his father's taking the UNLV job. "He really wasn't happy that last couple of years. You could tell."

Lon Kruger caught flights to Arizona to watch both of Arizona State's exhibition games the past two weeks, and Sunday he was in Tempe to see Kevin hit a 3-pointer in the season-opening 79-48 victory against Jackson State.

Lon said Kevin is better than he was as a college sophomore.

"He can do a lot more things," Lon said. "He's a better athlete, and he's bigger than I was. I was real fortunate to be on good teams, and that brought more attention to what we were doing.

"Kevin's on a club that's rebuilding. If the team gets going, then I think he'll get better results than I did."

Kruger has been trying to recapture attention for UNLV basketball over the past eight months, and hotel and casino mogul Steve Wynn's front-row appearances at both of the Rebels' exhibition games weren't by accident.

Kruger said he and Barbara have met with Wynn's wife Elaine a few times.

"They've been great," Kruger said. "There's a long list of names ... I hate to do that because I'd leave someone out. The people who are showing support mean so much. They want to get this thing going.

"Filling up the Mack, that's the barometer of whether or not we have this thing going. If that's happening, then people are having a good time, enjoying it and making it a thing to do."

Rothermel said attorney Chuck Thompson, beverage company owner Abe Gialketsis, and former Klondike Hotel owners John and Mike Woodrum are a few of roughly 125 former major boosters who have returned to the program's fan base.

Former coaches Jerry Tarkanian and Spoonhour also have open invitations to practices and games.

If the Rebels capitalize on that momentum by winning, regular crowds of more than 15,000 might return to the Mack. According to Hamrick, season ticket sales have boosted from about 6,000 to more than 7,000 since Kruger's hiring.

The entire lower bowl of the arena is sold out, Hamrick said, which has earned the program approximately $650,000 in additional donation revenue.

"It escalates on a daily basis," Hamrick said. "It's been a great period of time since he's been here."

Kruger accentuated his Las Vegas honeymoon with an initial recruiting class, highlighted by Lynwood, Calif., forward Devon Jefferson, that was ranked 14th in the nation by Hoop Scoop recruiting magazine after the early-signing period.

"By my way of thinking, everyone has a piece of this," Kruger said. "It's a shared ownership; the players, the coaches, the fans, the community and the university. Everyone should feel vested in this.

"We'll get this thing going again."