Thanks, Clippers, but He Thinks Celtics Are Fine

Ed Pinckney, rumored to be coming to the Clippers in a trade that would have sent Benoit Benjamin to Sacramento, instead ended up with the Boston Celtics in the deal that shipped Danny Ainge to the Kings.

What was Pinckney’s reaction?

“I’m glad I’m not going to the Clippers,” he said. “I’ve never had a chance to play for a winning team. So, yes, I’m excited about this. (The Celtics are) not going to ask much of me, but I’ll give them everything I’ve got.”

Add Pinckney Trade: Not everyone was pleased by it, namely the Kings’ Harold Pressley, a college teammate of Pinckney’s at Villanova, who this week has seen Sacramento trade away centers LaSalle Thompson and Joe Kleine in separate deals and get Brad Lohaus to play the position.

“It’s a bad deal,” Pressley said. “If (the Kings) would have waited, they could have done it with me and Joe. But Red (Auerbach) knew they’d panic, and they did. Now what kind of team do we have? (The Kings) had made a couple of deals which made sense. I guess they were due for one that made no sense.”

From Phil Jackman of the Baltimore Evening Sun: “Imagine late-night talk-show host Pat Sajak’s chagrin when CBS put up a hefty hunk of dough to fly Sugar Ray Leonard and entourage west for an appearance on the show, and, arriving a day early, Leonard shows up the night before on the Arsenio Hall show. A real sweetheart, that Sugar.”

Urged by his new New York Islanders teammates to describe a party at the Playboy mansion, former King Wayne McBean, acquired in the deal that sent goalie Kelly Hrudey to Los Angeles, complied with a vivid tale of the beautiful and the wealthy at play.

“Oh, yeah?” Mick Vukota said, according to Newsday. “Well, just wait until we take you out. I know a place with 25-cent beers!”

Quotebook

Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Universe: “Many times at the beach a good-looking lady will say to me, ‘I want to touch you.’ I always smile and say, ‘I don’t blame you.’ ”