New Jersey Nets star Derrick Coleman pleaded...

New Jersey Nets star Derrick Coleman pleaded innocent to charges that he assaulted three teen-agers outside a Manhattan nightspot. Coleman was charged a week ago after an April 30 street brawl outside Rebar, a Chelsea club. His lawyer said Coleman was not in the fight.

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John Bach, an assistant coach who helped make the Chicago Bulls one of the NBA’s top defensive teams, has been released. Bach, 68, has been the team’s defensive coach for eight years, during which the Bulls won three consecutive titles. The Bulls chose to not pick up the option year on his contract.

Soccer

After months of controversy, Russian Coach Pavel Sadyrin left four star players off what he said is his team’s final World Cup roster.

The players dropped are among Russia’s best--wing Andrei Kanchelskis, and forwards Sergei Kiryakov, Igor Kolyvanov and Igor Shalimov.

They “don’t exist as far as I’m concerned,” Sadyrin said.

The four are the final holdouts from a mutiny launched by many of the team’s veteran players in December. They demanded that Sadyrin be fired for incompetence.

Although a predicted boon to the San Francisco Bay area economy, World Cup soccer might cost Stanford as much as $1 million, school officials said.

The school’s athletic department expects to spend roughly $2.2 million to replace wooden benches, add media seats and build an extra fence, among other stadium improvements, said Valerie Veronin, who helped negotiate the World Cup contract.

Those costs and others likely will exceed revenues from parking, concessions and a $500,000 contribution by the World Cup Host Committee.

Eight other World Cup sites, run by local governments or quasi-governmental sports bodies, expect to profit from the games.