Rodman’s Special Kind of Contract Isn’t Fine With NBA

Dennis Rodman made the Chicago Bulls an offer that sounded too good to be true: They could pay him nothing for any games he might miss for kicking a cameraman, head-butting a referee or any other inappropriate antics. However, Rodman’s agent said the NBA won’t allow the deal.

Rodman was suspended for 14 games last season for kicking a courtside cameraman, using an expletive in a live postgame television interview and striking Milwaukee’s Joe Wolf in the groin.

The previous season, he was suspended for six games for head-butting a referee.

While the Bulls were in Salt Lake City for the NBA finals in June, Rodman made derogatory comments about Mormons. That drew a $50,000 fine, the largest in NBA history.

Rodman suggested that the team pay him nothing up front, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. Instead, he said, the Bulls should set up a sort of debit-card system with $10 million in an escrow account. When it came time to pay him at the end of the season, the team could deduct a pro-rated amount for each game he was suspended.

“But I am told the league won’t allow that kind of arrangement,” his agent, Dwight Manley, told the Sun-Times. “They see it as a violation of the salary cap or something.”

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The Lakers signed rookie free agent guard Shea Seals, who was not selected in the NBA draft. Terms were not disclosed. In four years at Tulsa, Seals, 22, averaged 18.5 points and 6.3 rebounds. He is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 2,288 points.

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Former Boston Celtic swingman Todd Day signed with the Miami Heat for the NBA veterans’ minimum of $272,500. Day made $2.9 million last season in Boston. . . . Rick Mahorn, who turns 39 Sunday, agreed to return to the Detroit Pistons under a one-year deal. Terms were not disclosed.

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A prosecutor in York, S.C., said he might not decide until next month whether to charge Charlotte Hornet owner George Shinn, who is accused by a woman of kidnapping and sexually assaulting her in his home.

Track and Field

Despite being cleared by USA Track and Field after allegedly testing positive for testosterone at the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials, Mary Slaney remains ineligible to compete pending a decision by the sport’s international governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation.

Slaney hasn’t commented on the ruling, but her lawyer, Jim Coleman, said he expects the IAAF to go along with the U.S. ruling.

The IAAF suspended Slaney in May, complaining U.S. officials had dawdled in taking action. The U.S. federation followed suit and suspended Slaney in June, before the U.S. championships. The IAAF isn’t expected to rule until late November.

Nike, which sponsors both Slaney and USA Track and Field, put its resources behind Slaney in her fight to clear her name. Nike would not say exactly what that support entailed.

Tennis

Former star Bjorn Borg avoided personal bankruptcy after one of his former companies agreed to pay part of his debt to 11 Swedish creditors.

Borg owed them more than $1 million, but the creditors will accept less than half of that, the Swedish newspaper Expressen said.

Earlier this year, Swedish tax authorities threatened Borg with personal bankruptcy if he didn’t pay $40,000 in back taxes from 1991, and he paid. His business empire collapsed in 1989.

With the wind buffeting shots and her game in disarray, Chanda Rubin lost to qualifier Shinobu Asagoe, 6-4, 6-3, at the Toyota Princess Cup in Tokyo. Asagoe is ranked 259th in the world. Rubin is ranked 30th.

Top-seeded Monica Seles, who had a first-round bye, advanced to the quarterfinals by defeating Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasugarn, 6-1, 6-4.

Golf

The tournament committee of the PGA European Tour said it did not agree with the decision to remove Miguel Angel Martin from the Ryder Cup team, but the move probably will have no impact on next week’s competition.

Colin Montgomerie, the top money winner the last four years in Europe, said he might be playing mostly in the United States next year.

Auto Racing

Dexter Canipe, who won 17 of 21 races this season at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina, won NASCAR’s national championship of short-track racing.

Canipe, 37, of Claremont, N.C., collected a $132,500 bonus.

Miscellaneous

The system that helped turn East Germany into a sports power still is producing drug cheats, a German researcher said. Werner Franke, a molecular biologist who has studied the state-sponsored use of drugs in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s, said many of the people and methods involved were still active today. He said files show that most of East Germany’s Olympic medal winners in strength and speed events had taken drugs.

The United States beat the Dominican Republic and Cuba beat Canada to advance to the women’s final in the North and Central American and Caribbean Volleyball Championships at Caguas, Puerto Rico.

A bullet train that will run between Tokyo and Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, was unveiled and will cut the three-hour trip in half.