UCLA hero Ed O'Bannon is right at home in Las Vegas (cont.)

With his rebuilt left knee O'Bannon was too lean to bang down low as a forward, but not quick enough to guard the perimeter. Plus he did not get along with Nets coach Butch Beard, who sometimes had O'Bannon running the point in practice.

"When I needed to play well, I didn't," O'Bannon says. "For me to lose sleep over what some people might say, or be upset, I'm letting them win. All the guys I played with, they know that I'm a good player and know I should be in the league right now."

Orlando released O'Bannon prior to the 1997-98 season and with his three-year, $3.9 million contract expired, O'Bannon went overseas and played seven years in Italy, Spain, Greece, Poland and Argentina. In 2004 O'Bannon was in Oregon at a tryout for a Chinese pro team when his fire went out.

"He called and said, 'I think I'm done,'" his wife, Rosa, says. "It was good that he made that decision on his own. It keeps him at peace and it's empowering."

O'Bannon zipped up his gym bag, left his sneakers at the hotel and flew home to L.A. While he and Rosa were comfortable in familiar surroundings, Las Vegas beckoned, with its cheaper cost of living and the opportunity for a fresh start. They moved there four years ago and while Rosa hit the ground running, earning her Masters degree, Ed semi-sulked.

"I wanted to sit at home," he says. "I had been working my ass off my whole life."

He was on the couch, flipping through the channels on TV like Al Bundy reveling in some decade-old athletic grandeur, when Rosa challenged him to get a job, or at least get out of the house. "I'm working on my transition -- what are you doing?" she told him.

He had thought about selling insurance and he had a standing offer from a friend to sell cars, at which he initially scoffed. But one call led to another, and by the end of the week he was on the lot. He has been promoted four times in four years and he is now Findlay Toyota's assistant marketing director/sales consultant and works six days a week.

At home, where their children, Aaron, 14, Jazmin, 12 -- who made her middle school's basketball team and has rekindled her father's love for the game --- and Edward III, 10, have a sense of their dad's BMOC status of the '90s, he has an ESPY Award atop the TV. The Wooden Award is also on display. Everything else is packed up in the garage of their two-story, stucco home with a pool.

O'Bannon is two semesters shy of his college degree but has promised Rosa, a high school counselor, to get it in the next year, possibly from UNLV. The ironies never cease. "It's the circle of life," Rosa says. "I guess his destiny was to be here."

*****

It is UNLV's home finale and O'Bannon is so late that he misses his pregame and halftime Toyota booth duties. "That's what you call a marathon sale," he says after handing over the keys to a 2008 4-runner at the lot in Findlay. "I don't see myself as a car salesman. I'm just a guy who happens to sell cars and helps people make decisions. If they buy, cool. If not, cool. I'm not one to pressure you into buying a car."

When the game is over, after O'Bannon cheers for the Rebels in their victory over Air Force and applauds Anthony, in the house calling the game for television with his retired No. 50 hanging overhead, Easy Ed the car salesman goes to work.

"I know you," says an older lady adorned in scarlet and gray, her traveling party wearing UNLV gear that dates to Tarkanian's heyday. "I almost bought a car from you yesterday."

O'Bannon goes into salesman mode, sidles up next to her, invites her back to the massive 12.5-acre lot with a 145,000-square foot showroom and hands her his card.

"Don't take his card," says her wise-cracking friend. "He played at San Diego State, or something like that."

O'Bannon laughs. "There are no regrets," he says later, but still wonders what would have happened had he stuck with UNLV. "There are definitely some what-ifs."

Paul Gutierrez is a senior staff writer at The Sacramento Bee.