ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060062
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
RICHIE ADAMS HAD THE TALENT, but he squandered it and now he faces a murder charge in New York.
Richie Adams' sneakers once carried him toward a pro basketball career. Now, authorities say, a bloody size-13 1/2 basketball shoe implicates him in the brutal killing of a 14-year-old girl.
Adams, who played at Nevada-Las Vegas from 1981-85, was due in court Friday for stalking and slaying a neighbor, authorities said - the final step in his slide from prospect to suspect.
At 6-foot-9, Adams was a defensive standout nicknamed ``The Animal'' for his intensity. He twice was named the Pacific Coast Athletic Association's player of the year.
``If he hadn't become his own undoing, this is a guy who could have played in the NBA, had a good career,'' said Tom Konchalski, a New York high school basketball scout.
Drafted in the fourth round by the Washington Bullets in 1985, Adams was arrested a day later for stealing a car off the Bronx streets he never could escape. The Bullets never invited him to training camp, and the rest of the NBA ignored him.
Adams then joined a long line of New York City playground stars - like Earl ``The Goat'' Manigault, who got hooked on heroin, and Karlton Hines, who was shot to death in a drug dispute - in learning it takes more than a good game to make it.
He played professional basketball in South America, but was inexorably drawn back to the Bronx. There, years after the NBA gave up on him, Richie Adams still had celebrity status on the local courts - and a taste for cocaine.
Supporting his habit with a series of thefts, Adams was arrested twice in 1988, for robbing a woman at an automated teller machine and purse-snatching. A 1989 conviction for larceny and armed robbery led to a five-year prison sentence.
``I was a hoodlum,'' Adams said during a 1991 jailhouse interview. He was paroled in 1994 and returned once again to the Bronx.
Friends say there never was any sign Adams was capable of murder. Authorities disagree.
The victim, Norma Rodriguez, was savagely beaten; her chest was caved in and she suffered neck and head injuries. Her battered body was discovered Oct.15 in a housing project hallway one floor below where Adams, 33, was living with his mother.
The family of the slain high school freshman says Adams stalked her and was infuriated when she rejected his advances. Adams was arrested eight days after the killing, pleaded not guilty to murder and is being held without bail.
It was a sneaker that led police to Adams - a bloody size-13 1/2 adidas shoe found near the crime scene, authorities said.
Friends describe Adams as exuberant off the court, intensely determined on it. But they have trouble equating the teen-ager of the late '70s with a killer in the '90s.
``It doesn't sound like Richie at all,'' said Sidney Green, a former UNLV teammate and now the head coach at Southampton College. ``I hope they find the right person. But Richie Adams? No way.''
Adams' arrest came despite the best efforts of many to save him. In 1988, Jerry Tarkanian sent his recently arrested ex-player plane tickets to Las Vegas. The UNLV coach hoped to land him a job and get Adams out of the Bronx.
Adams sold the tickets.
``I love Richie,'' Tarkanian said after the arrest, providing an epitaph for Adams' career. ``But he just never made a right decision.''
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Richie Adams was Pacific Coast Athletic Associationby CNBplayer of the year twice at Nevada-Las Vegas.