Mark Davis, basketball legends headline this year's Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame class

HENDERSON, Nev. — If you like basketball, especially Las Vegas basketball, tonight’s your night.

The Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame holds its annual induction ceremony and dinner at Lee’s Family Forum and if you’ve been around these parts for any length of time, you’ll be familiar with this year’s class.

Mark Davis, Tim Grgurich, Mark Warkentien, Cliff Findlay and Ryan Moore make up the SNSHOF’s Class of 2026 and frankly, it’s one of the best that has been presented since the Hall began with David Humm in 1997.

It’s the biggest night of the year on the local sports calendar as excellence is acknowledged and thousands of dollars are raised for youth sports initiatives and scholarships for local athletes. It’s the one time where the entire local sports community gets to gather and celebrate. The event is sold out and with so much of this year’s class connected to hoops, perhaps everyone attending should wear a pair of Air Jordans. Or your favorite basketball footwear.

“Grg” and “Stein” were part of Jerry Tarkanian’s staff during UNLV basketball’s best days in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Findlay, who owns a multitude of car dealerships throughout Nevada and the West, played basketball for the Rebels back in the late 1960s. He also funded the Findlay Prep basketball program that played out of Henderson and would send a number of its alums to Division I college programs and the NBA during its run from 2006-2019. A 2001 SNSHOF inductee, he will be honored with the organization’s inaugural Legacy Award.

And while we all know that Davis owns the Las Vegas Raiders, it sometimes gets overlooked that he also owns the Las Vegas Aces. You know, the three-time WNBA champion Aces and current reigning champs.

Moore? I’m not sure he could go to his left. But I’ll bet Grgurich could turn him into a decent enough basketball player. Instead, Moore’s prowess on the golf course — he was an NCAA champion while playing for coach Dwaine Knight, a SNSHOF member himself and has won five times on the PGA Tour, earned him his spot in this year’s class.

I was thinking about the golf stars already in the Hall and between Chris Riley, Jim Colbert, Robert Gamez, Stephanie Lowden, Brady Exber and now Ryan Moore with Coach Knight and Butch Harmon captaining that group, I’d wager they would take a lot of people’s money on the golf course.

If you’ve followed UNLV basketball, I don’t need to remind you the importance of Grgurich and Warkentien. They were true hoopaholics, dedicated to the game and the athletes who played it. Over the years, Tarkanian told me on more than one occasion how vital both Grgurich and Warkentien were to the program’s success. It’s great to see both are being recognized for their years of service.

The duo were also impactful in the NBA. Grgurich helped the Dallas Mavericks win a championship while Warkentien would go from scout to NBA Executive of the Year with the Denver Nuggets and worked for several franchises.

My regret is we won’t hear from Warkentien, a great speaker and storyteller. We lost him in 2022. And my other regret is Dr. Brad Rothermel won’t be there to see them get inducted. We lost Brad, who was UNLV’s athletic director while Grgurich and Warkentien were there, and a fellow SNSHOF inductee of the Class of 2001, a few weeks ago. He would have been so proud to see Grgurich and Warkentien join him in the Hall.

And when the NCAA brings its Men’s Final Four to town in 2028, which to me remains the craziest juxtaposition in college sports history given the NCAA’s prior relationship with UNLV and Tarkanian, we’ll have Mark Davis to thank for it.

If Davis doesn’t move the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas, Allegiant Stadium doesn’t get built. And that means no Final Four. No Super Bowls (yes, that’s plural), no College Football Playoff championship, no WrestleMania and no Taylor Swift and dozens of other concerts that have performed at the Raiders’ home that have attracted millions of visitors to Las Vegas.

Perhaps the Aces would’ve won if the MGM still owned them. But I doubt it. Davis went all in from the moment he obtained the franchise for around $2 million in 2021. Three W titles in four years. The league’s first exclusive team practice facility. Giving coach Becky Hammon a million-dollar deal and then making sure franchise star A’ja Wilson stayed in Las Vegas with a recent $3 million contract extension is Davis’ commitment to women’s basketball.

As for the Raiders, well, it has been a lot of heartbreak for Davis since he came here from Oakland in 2020. But perhaps the combination of GM John Spytek, head coach Klint Kubiak and rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza will lead the Silver and Black out of the darkness. Maybe they’ll finally get it right.

One thing I know. The Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame got it right with this class.

Editor’s note: Steve Carp has been covering sports in Las Vegas since 1988 and is a 2019 inductee of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame.