Former Rebel Armon Gilliam dies at 47

Mark Warkentien was in bed at his Tucson, Ariz., hotel when his cellphone rang at 6:30 Wednesday morning. As he scrambled to take the call, he said to himself, "This can't be good."

It wasn't.

At the other end was Tim Grgurich, who was calling to let his close friend and longtime basketball colleague know that UNLV legend Armon Gilliam had died at age 47 from what appeared to be a heart attack while playing in a pickup basketball game Tuesday night in Bridgeville, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh.

"By 6:35, you had two old guys crying, then laughing, then crying again," said Warkentien, the former UNLV assistant coach who was credited with discovering the 6-foot-8-inch, 230-pound Gilliam, who played for the Rebels from 1984 to 1987.

The news of Gilliam's death shocked everyone connected with the program.

"I'm just sick about it," former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian said. "He was a great individual. He came to work every day. He was about getting better every day.

"He had a big impact on our program. He was a great player, and he was a great person. Everyone loved Armon. It has been tearing me up ever since I heard about what happened to him."

GILLIAM-LED REBELS REACHED FINAL FOUR

Warkentien and Grgurich coached Gilliam, a power forward nicknamed "The Hammer" because of his physical play around the basket. He was a second-team All-American as a senior and was the No. 2 overall pick in the 1987 NBA Draft after leading the Rebels to the Final Four that spring.

"Here's how good Armon was," said Warkentien, currently the New York Knicks' director of pro scouting. "He took us from being a good regional program to becoming a national power. He took us to the next level."

Gilliam's former teammates struggled to come to grips with the news.

"It was like, 'What?' " Freddie Banks said. "I was stunned. All I could do was shake my head and say, 'My guy is gone.'

"Armon was a great teammate. He was such an unselfish player. He was a quiet dude. But when it came time to play, he was there. I can't tell you how many times he set a screen for me to get me open to knock down a jump shot. He got as much satisfaction doing that as scoring himself."

Leon Symanski, who was Gilliam's teammate for three years and was his roommate on the road during their senior season in 1987, said: "I'm still in shock. I'm only a couple months older than Armon, and when you get news like this, it makes you think about things in your own life."

Symanski backed up Gilliam during their UNLV careers, and he remembers Gilliam's performance against Navy and David Robinson on Dec. 29, 1986, at the Thomas & Mack Center.

"I would always be yelling at Armon to dominate because, if he played well and we got a big lead, I'd get a chance to play," Symanski said. "So we're playing Navy, and I know for Coach Tark to put me in we'd have to be up by a lot because it was a really important game.

"I'm yelling at Armon, and I don't know if he hears me or not, but he just dominated David Robinson. We go up big, and I got to play eight or nine minutes. It meant so much for me to get a chance to play in a game like that, and without Armon, it doesn't happen."

Symanski never expected to room with Gilliam, but it was one of the best memories he has of his basketball career.

"Tark called me into his office, and he said Armon wants to be my roommate when we go on the road," Symanski said. "I said, 'Why me?' and Tark said, 'He respects how hard you work, and you're the only guy who takes his textbooks on the road with him.'

"That was probably the highest compliment (Gilliam) could have paid me. So we became roommates and close friends."

UNLV RETIRED GILLIAM'S NUMBER IN '07

Gilliam, who late in his NBA career changed the spelling of his first name to Armen so it would be easier for people to properly pronounce, had his No. 35 retired by UNLV on Nov. 6, 2007. He was inducted into the UNLV Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998.

Warkentien initially discovered Gilliam while at a junior college game to watch another player: Frank "Spoon" James. Warkentien went to West Virginia where Gilliam was working as a counselor at a summer basketball camp. After another look, Warkentien saw a player vastly improved over than the one he watched that spring at Independence (Kan.) Junior College.

"I called Tark and said, 'We gotta sign this kid now,' " Warkentien said. "Nobody was on Armon at that point. But I knew word was going to get out, and we'd probably lose out on him.

"It took some convincing, but Tark said go ahead, and of all the players we signed, Armon might have been the best signee of them all, given where he started and what he turned out to be."

Long before he helped lead UNLV to the 1987 Final Four and then play in the NBA, Gilliam was making his mark in Las Vegas. He was redshirting in 1983-84 when he was invited to play on Paul-Son Dice, a men's AAU team that competed in tournaments across the country.

"We had been together for several years, and we were winning," said Larry Keever, the team's coach. "We didn't have a lot of room for new players, and he was our youngest player, but Armon fit in with us. He was such a hard worker. He had no ego. He just loved to play."

Paul-Son Dice won the national AAU title that year, and it helped make Gilliam's transition to college basketball much easier.

"He was a wrestler in high school, so he had great feet," Keever said. "He also had played football, and he had great hands, too. I knew he would be a great college player."

In Gilliam's three years with UNLV, he averaged 17.3 points and 8.3 rebounds. He was the 1987 Big West Conference Player of the Year and ranks seventh on the school's career scoring list with 1,855 points and sixth on the career rebounding list with 890.

Much of Gilliam's success at UNLV can be credited to the work Grgurich, Cleveland Edwards, Keith Starr and Mel Bennett -- all Pittsburgh natives -- put in with him. Gilliam was loyal to his western Pennsylvania roots and trusted his coaches to make him better.

"He was at our Legends game before the start of last season, and he looked up to the rafters and saw his number and he said to me, 'I really love seeing my jersey up there,' " said UNLV deputy athletic director Jerry Koloskie, the team's trainer when Gilliam played for the Rebels. "He really loved the program, and he loved representing UNLV. He was a class act."

Banks remembers the night UNLV retired Gilliam's jersey.

"When they retired his jersey, he said, 'Why are you retiring my jersey before you retire Freddie Banks' jersey?' " Banks said. "He always had my back, and for him to do that the night he was being honored will always mean a lot to me on a personal level."

GILLIAM PLAYED 13 SEASONS IN NBA

In June 1987, Gilliam became the highest-drafted UNLV basketball player at the time when the Phoenix Suns selected him with the No. 2 overall pick behind Robinson. A first-team All-NBA rookie selection, Gilliam had a 13-year pro career with six teams, averaging 13.7 points and 6.9 rebounds. He retired after the 1999-2000 season at age 35.

"When we drafted him, we thought he had the size and the bulk to play inside," said Jerry Colangelo, the chairman of the Suns when Gilliam was drafted. "He also had a nice soft touch.

"He gave you everything he had, and he was a good person."

Gilliam, however, struggled to be an effective player in coach Cotton Fitzsimmons' up-tempo offense and wound up coming off the bench. He was traded to the Charlotte Hornets 25 games into the 1989-90 season.

"Some would say he never realized his potential," Colangelo said. "But who's to say? He was a good guy with a big heart who had a good (NBA) career."

Gilliam never forgot his UNLV roots, even toward the end of Tarkanian's tenure, when the program was in turmoil.

"I was really fortunate to get to know him," former Rebel and current UNLV coach Dave Rice said. "He came back often, and he would share his love of the Runnin' Rebels with all of us. He was very loyal to Coach Tarkanian and the program, and, as a player, you couldn't help but notice that."

Brad Rothermel, the athletic director during Gilliam's time at UNLV, remembered how Gilliam was an exemplary representative of the university.

"He was one of those student-athletes who never caused a problem," said Rothermel, who serves as a special adviser to athletic director Jim Livengood. "He was an excellent player for us, and in recent years, he was always a regular that would come back for the Legends games at the beginning of each season.

"Not only would he play, but he would dominate those games."

After retiring from the NBA, Gilliam returned to his native Pennsylvania and got into coaching.

He spent 2001-02 as head coach at Penn State-McKeesport before going to Penn State-Altoona, where he coached the Lions from 2002 to 2005. Later in 2005, he was a player-coach for the Pittsburgh Xplosion in the reincarnated American Basketball Association, lasting one season before retiring for good.

At the time of his death, Gilliam was involved in real estate and various business ventures in the Pittsburgh area.

Born May 28, 1964, in Bethel Park, Pa., Armon Louis Gilliam is survived by his parents, James and Alma Gilliam; a son, Jeremiah; and three brothers, Jvan, Graylin and Jerrell.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@review journal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.