After Big Trade, Sacramento Pulled the Plug on McCurdy

Before he was released as a result of the Sacramento Kings’ trade for Mitch Richmond, rookie Paris McCurdy showed he was already a veteran in at least one aspect of the game--how to make enemies and negatively influence people.

McCurdy had shouting matches with Karl Malone and Eddie Johnson and brief shoving incidents with Richmond and former teammate Ralph Sampson.

The run-in with the Seattle SuperSonics’ Johnson in last week’s exhibition game at Spokane, Wash., was a true Parisian experience. Johnson got so upset at McCurdy that he swatted at a plastic rosin bottle on the scorer’s table, missed, caught his hand on some wires and unplugged the Kings’ radio broadcast.

Add Paris: King radio announcer Gary Gerould lost communication with his studio back in Sacramento and thought he was off the air. King Coach Dick Motta, seeing Gerould’s panic, came to his aid and called a timeout.

Last add Paris: No one is saying McCurdy isn’t sturdy--he’s a 6-foot-7, 220-pounder who was in 1991 training camp with the Denver Broncos as a defensive lineman before being cut. Maybe he can try the World Wresting Federation next.

Trivia question: Who have been the New York Yankees’ managers, in order, since 1987?

Household name: Michael Jordan can run and jump and dunk and nearly fly, but what are his other characteristics?

“He’s affectionate, romantic,” Jordan’s wife, Juanita, told Ebony magazine. “He likes champagne and he sends me flowers all the time.”

Head case: Philadelphia Eagle quarterback Jeff Kemp says the concussion he suffered in last Sunday’s loss to the San Francisco 49ers is not the first head injury to occur in his family in a pro football game. Kemp said his father, Jack Kemp, former quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, once took a similar blow to the head.

Said Jeff: “The newspapers in Buffalo read, ‘X-rays of Kemp’s head reveal nothing.’ ”

Wilber the Grouch: The Washington Redskins’ Wilber Marshall, who has five interceptions this year, doesn’t want to talk about whether he is playing better at 29 because he is down to 230 pounds.

“That’s a bad question,” Marshall said.

Why?

“Because I said so,” he said.

Sounds reasonable.

Hardball: Owner Ted Turner of the Atlanta Braves, who delivered the keynote address at the Olympic Congress of USA last week in Colorado Springs, said Soviet sports officials have told him they expect to be competitive in baseball.

“But I told them that baseball is a very hard game,” he said. “It took me 16 years to get to the World Series, and we got there only when I got out of the involvement with the team. That’s how hard it is. I couldn’t do it.”

Trivia answer: Lou Piniella, Billy Martin, Piniella, Dallas Green, Bucky Dent, Stump Merrill and now Buck Showalter.

Nightmare on Broad Street: This is what Gary R. Blockus of the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call had to say about goalie Ron Hextall of the Philadelphia Flyers when he played his first game after a six-game suspension for slashing Jim Cummins of the Detroit Red Wings--in an exhibition, no less:

“(Hextall) showed no Freddy Krueger tendencies.”

Quotebook: Florence Griffith Joyner, making a comeback in running as a road racer: “I’ve gone from the glamour of the track to the dirt of the streets.”