Coach Has Somebody to Shoot

After watching the Milwaukee Bucks take the Soviet national team apart, Utah Jazz Coach Frank Layden got an idea.

He told Peter May of the Harford Courant: “We should let the Russians in the league. They’d help the Clippers. And they’d do it for nothing. Just for the per diem.

“They really were awful. And you tell me we (the NBA) actually draft those SOBs? We’ve got to find these scouts, get the CIA and shoot them.”

There was no joy in Indiana when the Pacers drafted Reggie Miller and passed up Steve Alford.

Said Boston Celtics President Red Auerbach: “Reggie Miller is going to have to be a super-duper great player, because every time he misses a shot, the fans will get on the club’s case--’Why didn’t you take Steve Alford?’ ”

So far, Miller hasn’t missed many. In two games, the 6-7 guard from UCLA has scored 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Alford, with Dallas, has scored 8 points, hitting only 3 of 12 shots. He was 0 for 6 Saturday night.

Says Indiana personnel director George Irvine of Miller: “He’s got great height for his position, he’s a good athlete and he’s proven to us he not only can shoot, but he can make the plays. And he defends better than we thought he would. The pro game is better suited to his game.”

Add Pacers: Last year, they outraged the natives when they drafted Auburn’s Chuck Person and passed up Scott Skiles, one-time Indiana high school star.

Skiles went to Milwaukee where he sat out most of the year with an injury. Person was the NBA rookie of the year.

Trivia Time: Name the only pitcher to win World Series games in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. (Answer below.)

Kansas City quarterback Frank Seurer, former Edison High School and University of Kansas star, has recovered from a preseason automobile accident and is hoping the Chiefs give him a shot this year.

John Hadl, who coached Seurer with the L.A. Express, thinks he can make it. He said the only reason he replaced Seurer with Steve Young was because of Young’s big contract.

“Steve’s a good athlete, too,” Hadl said, “but he doesn’t have Frank’s arm. The players out there really liked Frank. His leadership qualities flowed naturally.”

St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog said he had all of the team’s postseason games on videotape.

“I won’t watch them until I get old,” he said. “I just want to have them on my shelf.

“My kids taped them and they do a hell of a job. They take out all the commercials and streamline them. They even take out the Budweiser commercials.”

Tommy Kane, leading receiver for unbeaten Syracuse, is a native of Montreal who wanted to play baseball and basketball when he came to the United States.

He was coveted by Syracuse basketball Coach Jim Boeheim, but the Orangemen already had signed Pearl Washington, so Boeheim recommended him to football Coach Dick MacPherson.

Originally, Kane’s best sport was hockey. As a teen-ager, he played on a team with Mario Lemieux, now a star with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I was the only black in the league,” he said. “Finally, the verbal abuse was too much, and I quit.”

Trivia Answer: Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles.

Quotebook

Randall (Tex) Cobb, actor and boxer, asked if success will change him: “I sure hope so.”