Jerry Tarkanian is 82. His health, which began deteriorating about four years ago when he fell while walking in San Diego, has declined to the point that basic movements are difficult. When someone comes by for an introduction during the meal at Landry’s, Tarkanian shakes hands with his left hand because his right is anchored to the table, as if to keep him from slumping over. His eyes, which drooped like week-old balloons when he was 40, now seem to hang to his neck. After eating, as Tarkanian makes his way to the parking lot, he hesitates as he steps down from the curb, putting his hand on the shoulder of a visitor and grunting hard as he guides his walker a few inches in front of him.

His Division I coaching career, which covered 31 seasons, 3 colleges and countless hearings, depositions and court dates as he fought the governing body of the sport he loves, feels far away. In the car on the way back to the family home, a two-story Spanish-style house that Tarkanian and his wife, Lois, bought in 1973, he is asked about his years of plenty. He nods twice when the championship team of 1990 is mentioned. He shakes his head when asked to remember coaching against John Wooden. “Played him three times,” he says slowly. “Lost all three.” He looks out the window. “Should have won one of them.”

As the car pulls into the driveway, past the mailbox with the basketball on it and around the corner from the small backyard court where friends and relatives and college students and celebrities have played casual games, Tarkanian is asked if he still watches basketball. For the first time all day, his face brightens. He smiles. “It’s on all the time,” he says. “We didn’t have so much TV when I was coaching.”

And what does he think when he watches these days? Tarkanian turns in his seat and hacks through a laugh. It is almost as if he is trying to chuckle.

“I think,” he says as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, “that it looks familiar.”

Ahead of His Time

Tarkanian’s impression is not unreasonable. During his time at U.N.L.V., he was considered by many to be an outsider. He was not Wooden, certainly, and his approach to operating his program — from recruiting to his playing style to how he handled the N.C.A.A. — was markedly different from those of contemporaries like Knight and North Carolina’s Dean Smith. Compared with those icons, Tarkanian was a renegade.