Pablo Torre

It's finally time to dive into the unsolved mystery at the root of a major American city, which also meant that we needed to make a lot of calls about the influence of the mob, specifically.

I've talked to all of the Tarkanian family and they all have different stories, but we talked to George Tarkanian.

Who kind of shed light on his own experience.

And Anthony Spolatro, to be very clear, for those not familiar with Anthony Spolatro, is who?

I mean, he's probably, you know, the most infamous, I guess you could call him crime boss, you know, in Las Vegas in the 70s and 80s.

He was known as the enforcer, probably the most violent crimes of any mob figure at the time.

He was depicted in Casino, the Joe Pesci character.

Wait, wait.

So Anthony Spolatro, to be very clear, is the real life Joe Pesci in Casino?

Yes.

But for George, Tark's son, was it immediately obvious what this was like?

No, I think like most people, you know, it was a small community.

They, you know, knew some of these people that see him at the supermarket.

There weren't that many places to go.

So everyone was kind of familiar with each other.

So he didn't realize a lot of this too much later.

And this is where, by the way, the blending of fiction and nonfiction is a bit of a through line in the story.

The cinematic adaptation of real life events that are also f***ing insane.

How central, how close is Vic Weiss to the life of Jerry Tarkanian when it came to negotiations with the NBA, but also in general?

Yeah, it depends on who you ask about that.