Ackerman to Head New Women’s NBA

The league structure is evolving and the players are calling, and on Wednesday the Women’s National Basketball Assn. got someone to lead that structure and someone for the players to call.

Val Ackerman, vice president of the NBA’s business affairs and a former player at Virginia and professionally in France, was named by NBA Commissioner David Stern to shepherd the league, which begins play in June 1997 with eight teams in NBA cities to be named.

“Our response from the women’s basketball world has been outstanding,” Ackerman said. “We’ve heard from agents on behalf of players, coaches on behalf of players and players on behalf of themselves.”

The season will last 10 weeks in the summer, with each team playing 28 games, followed by a four-team playoff and league championship, and Ackerman is trying to reach agreement with the rival American Basketball League, which begins play in mid-October of this year and has signed all of the U.S. Olympians, to allow players to compete in both leagues.

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After voiding Juwan Howard’s contract with Miami, the NBA is looking into the contracts of three other Heat players: Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway and P.J. Brown. The league contends the Heat and Mourning agreed to his seven-year, $112-million contract long before it was announced and that it put the team’s salary level too high for Miami to sign Howard and stay under the salary cap.

Also, the NBA said incentive bonuses for Hardaway and Brown were so easily attainable that they should count under the cap.

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Two years’ probation and a 25% pay cut--$22,000 a year--have been ordered for Weber State basketball Coach Ron Abegglen under self-imposed sanctions proposed by the school for NCAA rules violations.

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Otis Thorpe and the Detroit Pistons have agreed to a three-year contract believed worth between $15 million and $20 million. . . . The New Jersey Nets have signed free-agent David Benoit to a one-year contract reportedly worth $500,000. . . . Marquis Burns will enroll at UC Riverside this fall for his final season of college eligibility after two seasons at UCLA and one at New Mexico State.

Tennis

Todd Martin, seeded 12th in the tournament and the 15th-ranked player in the world, was toppled by Germany’s unseeded Bernd Karbacher, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, in the second round of the ATP Championship in Cincinnati.

Two-time Olympic doubles champion Mary Joe Fernandez got back to her regular job in Montreal, defeating an overmatched Sung-Hee Park of South Korea, 6-1, 6-1, at the du Maurier Open in Montreal.

Frenchman Fabrice Santoro upset seventh-seeded Karim Alami of Morocco, 6-3, 7-6 (7-3), in the first round of the San Marino tournament in Italy. . . . Defending champion Judith Wiesner was a first-round upset victim in the Styrian Open, beaten, 4-6, 6-7, by unseeded Czech Lenka Cenkova in Maria Lankowitz, Austria.

Jurisprudence

Rolland Atkins, a 55-year-old Aurora, Colo., man who was arrested July 19 after police caught him sitting in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Stadium with a loaded pistol 1 1/2 hours before the opening ceremonies, waived a preliminary hearing in Atlanta.

Federal authorities agreed to drop charges against Ugandan boxer Bakule Charles Kizza, 22, who was arrested July 17 after buying $500 worth of women’s lingerie with counterfeit bills at a Wal-Mart in Gainesville, Ga., about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.

An arrest warrant was issued for former NFL lineman Carlton Haselrig, 30, who apparently walked away from an alcohol rehabilitation center in Ebensburg, Pa.

Hockey

Veteran winger Russ Courtnall, Markus Naslund, Mike Sillinger and Jassen Cullimore are staying with the Vancouver Canucks after testing the free-agent waters.

The International Hockey League has moved its Peoria, Ill., franchise to San Antonio and announced that Jeff Brubaker, who coached the Jacksonville Lizard Kings of the East Coast Hockey League last season, will be the coach and general manager.

Miscellany

Catcher Yalian Serrano Castro, a 15-year-old Cuban baseball player, has defected to the United States, reaching Miami after slipping out of his hotel room at the Junior Pan American Baseball Championships outside St. Louis.

For the first time in three years, a $150,000 sports car, offered for a world record at a track and field meet in Sestriere, Italy, went unclaimed.

In a repeat of the Olympic final, gold medalist Randy Barnes beat fellow American and silver medalist John Godina in the shotput, with a toss of 71 feet 1/2 inch.

Name in the News

Robert R. Reinhard, 76, a two-way tackle with the Los Angeles Rams in 1950 and a two-time All-America lineman at California, died in Salem, Ore., on Friday of Alzheimer’s disease. The Glendale native also played four seasons with the Los Angeles Dons.