Ignominious Is Key Word in Kimble Trade

Bo Kimble, former Loyola Marymount star and first-round draft pick of the Clippers in 1990, has fallen on hard times. Last week, the 6-foot-4 guard was traded from the Rapid City Thrillers to the Hartford Hellcats of the Continental Basketball Assn. The cost to the Thrillers? A fifth- and a sixth-round CBA draft pick.

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Trivia time: Where did Phoenix Sun Coach Paul Westphal attend high school and what state record did he set while playing basketball there?

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Team loser: Who is the biggest sports stiff of 1994? Bruce McNall, Donald T. Sterling, Tonya Harding? Good guesses, but they did not come close in a listener survey on radio station XTRA last week.

The station took more than 100 calls in half an hour Thursday morning, and when the votes were tabulated, Raider fans easily won the stiff-of-the-year award with 32 votes. Charger fans were second with eight.

Art Shell received four votes and Al Davis two.

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Get a real coach: Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post on the Philadelphia Eagles’ search for a new coach: “Why doesn’t Young Turk Lurie just hire Chuck Knox after he gets fired? Or maybe Don Zimmer? How about Gene Shue? But Dick Vermeil? The word burnout didn’t even find its way into the English language until Vermeil invented it.”

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Ho-hum: Nebraska football Coach Tom Osborne knows he will never be compared to such quotable coaches as Buddy Ryan or Lou Holtz: “I’ve been accused of being repetitious, of speaking in a monotone, of being boring and not giving you any good stuff. So be prepared. This isn’t going to change.”

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Preferential treatment: Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner coming to grips with upcoming events: “Or (what about Daryl) Strawberry, who as the biggest name in Autograph-Gate is trying to fight against the overwhelming power of Internal Revenue. His only shot to avoid jug time, it seems, is to get a change of venue to San Mateo County, where, we have heard, an autograph to the right judge goes a lot farther than most other places.”

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Poor baby: Nancy Kerrigan continues to whine about all of the expectations placed on her. “People expect me to be perfect all of the time. I’m not. They call us ice princesses. Far from it.”

Add Kerrigan: “They (media) just built me up to something that nobody can live up to. So now they’re tearing me down for it. It’s not completely fair.”

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Bright side: Lawyer Jeff Moorad, chosen No. 99 on the Sporting News’ annual list of the 100 most powerful people in sports, kept a sense of humor about the selection: “It’s lower than my handicap; I spent $1.58 billion less than Rubert Murdoch to make the list, and good closers are in big demand.”

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Trivia answer: Westphal attended now-closed Aviation High in Redondo Beach and in 1968 was the state’s first player to score more than 1,000 points in a season.

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Quotebook: New England Patriot Coach Bill Parcells after his team defeated the Buffalo Bills, denying them a fifth consecutive trip to the Super Bowl: “This is like Dracula. You’ve got to put a stake in their heart, and then you still wonder if it’s in there.”