Paper Says Wilkens Schedules Talk With Thompson

Lenny Wilkens, general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics, has flown to Washington, D.C., to talk to Georgetown basketball Coach John Thompson about the NBA club’s vacant coaching job, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Wilkens, who was removed as coach April 24 after a 31-51 season, also will talk to Bernie Bickerstaff, an assistant coach with the Washington Bullets, while he is in Washington, D.C., the newspaper said.

Wilkens was in New York Sunday for the NBA draft lottery. Before the lottery, there was speculation that Thompson might go to Seattle in a package deal if Seattle won the lottery and the right to draft Georgetown’s 7-foot center, Patrick Ewing. The New York Knicks won the lottery, however, and the SuperSonics got the No. 4 draft pick.

Asked Sunday by the Washington Post if Ewing’s New York destination meant that Thompson would not consider Seattle, Thompson said: “I can still go.”

Don Fehr, acting executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn., said that he would ask the 26 player representatives to consider asking for strike authorization when they meet in Chicago May 23.

Fehr was reacting to management’s suggestion in a negotiation meeting Monday that it would ask for a freeze in pension and salary compensation at 1985 levels in the current collective bargaining talks.

New York Yankee infielders Dale Berra and Don Mattingly were fined $1,000 each by the club because of their actions on the team’s recent trip.

Berra, 28, was charged in Kansas City last Saturday night with indecent conduct and assault for trying to strike a security officer after the officer had seen him urinating in a public place.

Kansas City police said that Mattingly, 24, received a municipal summons for indecent conduct on Thursday, also for urinating in a public place. The Yankees were in town for a three-game weekend series with the Royals.

Bill Schroeder, director emeritus of the First Interstate Bank Athletic Foundation, was honored for his 49 years of service with the Foundation, formerly the Helms Foundation. Schroeder, 80, founded the collection of athletic memorabilia with Bill Helms in 1936 and served as its managing director until six months ago.

Bettors in Britain who forecast a scoreless tie in the English League game between Bradford and Lincoln City, won because of the Bradford soccer stadium fire that claimed 52 lives Saturday. The game had to be called, which counts in the weekly soccer lotteries as a scoreless tie, always the most difficult to forecast. Vernon’s Pools said that its first prize was shared by 16 entries, among them a 22-member syndicate in Blackpool that collected 28,467 pounds ($34,160).

Tennessee State University has been placed on probation for one year for violating eligibility rules, primarily involving its football program, the NCAA announced.

The school will remain eligible for postseason competition but will be required to return to the NCAA $80,052.80 from earnings for participating in the 1981 and 1982 Division I-AA football championships, its record of participation in those events will be deleted and its place in the final standings vacated, and any team awards must be returned.

Former U.S. Olympic swimming coach Sherm Chavoor filed a $1-million slander and invasion of privacy lawsuit against a Filipino-American who has taken the coach to court on discrimination charges.

Dexter Del Mar alleged in a $10,000 civil complaint that Chavoor called him a “yellow Jap” and threw him out of the 400-member Arden Hills Swimming and Tennis Club in September, 1983.

Chavoor, who coached Mark Spitz to seven Olympic gold metals in 1972, said he has worked with minorities for more than 40 years, and the charges made by Del Mar outside the courtroom taints his reputation.

Names in the News

Fred Nordgren, Tampa Bay Bandit nose tackle, is out for the season with a broken left leg.

Quarterback Brian Sipe has regained his starting job with the Jacksonville Bulls of the United States Football League, 11 games after a surgical team repaired his separated shoulder.

Eric Turner signed a two-year contract with the Houston Rockets. Turner, a 6-3 point guard from the University of Michigan, was the Detroit Pistons’ second-round pick in last year’s draft but failed to make the team.