Bo Kimble

Former Loyola Marymount star Bo Kimble, a disappointment with the Clippers and New York Knicks, has signed with Lyon of the French League. Kimble was recently waived by New York after playing in a team-low nine games last season. Lyon reportedly will pay his $300,000 salary directly to the Knicks, suggesting the transaction was actually a buyout. Kimble has three more years left on his NBA contract, starting at $1.13 million for 1993-94.

Twenty years later, grown men still grab Bo Kimble's hand and cry. "They won't let go," he says. Twenty years later, Paul Westhead plays the videotape for his Oregon women's basketball team and they howl. "They can't believe what they are seeing," he says. "Sometimes I can't either." Twenty years later, the mother of the late Hank Gathers can finally smile. "My son's memory has become such a strength to so many people," Lucille Gathers Cheeseboro says.

The commercials are right: Bo knows basketball. Bo Kimble scored 57 points Thursday night to lead his Gray team to a 150-141 victory in Loyola Marymount's annual Crimson-Gray intrasquad game. Kimble and redshirt transfer Brian McCloskey keyed a second-half rally that carried the White team despite 52 points by Hank Gathers, who led the Crimson. McCloskey finished with 30, most of them as the Whites pulled away in the second half. He hit 4 of 5 three-pointers.

All Max Good ever promised his players was a pair of sneakers and a hard time. He has roused his teams before 5 a.m. for practice and challenged young men one-third his age to fight. The only thing he runs harder than his players is his mouth, which tends to spew words that would have made George Carlin uncomfortable. When the late Sister Peg Dolan, one of the matriarchs of Loyola Marymount, met the Lions basketball coach, she told him her seat was behind the team bench. Good suggested she move elsewhere because of his colorful language.

Damon and Pythias were characters of Greek legend whose friendship was so inspirational that, when Pythias was sentenced to death, Damon pledged his life as collateral, giving Pythias time to arrange his affairs. Such friendships are not rare in the checkered history of man. Today, in the new psychobabble, they call it male bonding but it used to be called, simply, love for one another.

Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers, USC freshmen whose basketball scholarships will not be renewed for the 1986-87 academic year, received releases to transfer Thursday from Athletic Director Mike McGee. McGee said he granted the releases after receiving requests to transfer to unspecified schools in a note Thursday morning from the players.

Ah, it's a sunny Sunday afternoon, the sky is smoggy blue, the sofa is soft, the tube is tuned, the NBA All-Stars are all-starring their way from one side of the screen to the other, and visions of being inside the television instead of outside, being right there alongside all these slammers and jammers, can't help but dance in the average college basketball player's fantasy. Only, Bo Kimble is not your average college basketball player. He happens to be the leading scorer in America.

Former Clipper guard Bo Kimble was waived by the New York Knicks Thursday. Kimble, the nation's college scoring leader only three years ago, averaged only 3.7 points in nine games last season. "It was in the best interest of Bo and the Knicks to allow him to seek other opportunities to play at this time," Knick General Manager Ernie Grunfeld said. Kimble came to the Knicks last year after averaging 5.6 points in 96 games during two seasons with the Clippers.

Loyola Marymount's victory over UC Santa Barbara over the weekend was probably the Lions' most impressive in two seasons and served as a coming out for Bo Kimble. The high-scoring senior made his point--51 of them--that he is sound physically and served notice that other highly regarded foes can expect similar treatment.

Bo Kimble wasn't quite sure what his role was on the USC basketball team. So he approached Coach Stan Morrison after USC lost to Oregon State Dec. 22 and asked him how he could contribute more. "He said that he wanted me to penetrate more on offense and that would open up things for me and the team," Kimble said. Kimble, a 6-4 freshman guard, heeded Morrison's advice Sunday afternoon at the Forum.

As a precocious young adult, Bo Kimble bore the determined face of the Loyola Marymount basketball team in its most triumphant hour. In middle age, he wonders why he couldn't do it again. "I'm so upset about this that I can't even begin to tell you," the former Lions scoring machine said from his home outside Philadelphia, nominating himself to be the school's next coach. "At least twice I've mentioned to the powers that be that I would love the opportunity to get our program back on track.

Will Kimble leaned forward, touching his chest just below his left shoulder. "If you want to feel it, you can," he said. There, implanted beneath his skin but easily felt through his shirt, is a defibrillator, designed to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm if it detects an irregular heartbeat.

Ten years later, it was different at Gersten Pavilion. This time, Hank Gathers' No. 44 jersey moved. It elevated from the ground and kept rising, off the court to the rafters, hoisted to a permanent perch almost directly above the spot he collapsed on March 4, 1990. In an emotional tribute during halftime of Saturday night's game against Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount retired the uniform numbers of Gathers and sidekick Bo Kimble, No. 30, heroes of another generation in Lions' lore.

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

Bo Kimble still believes. The feeling he has now is not so very different from the adrenaline-primed determination that carried him and his Loyola Marymount teammates on that spine-tingling NCAA tournament run after Hank Gathers had collapsed on the court and died in 1990. His belief is dogged and passionate--and probably a little irrational. Kimble still believes he can play in the NBA.

Former Loyola Marymount star Bo Kimble, a disappointment with the Clippers and New York Knicks, has signed with Lyon of the French League. Kimble was recently waived by New York after playing in a team-low nine games last season. Lyon reportedly will pay his $300,000 salary directly to the Knicks, suggesting the transaction was actually a buyout. Kimble has three more years left on his NBA contract, starting at $1.13 million for 1993-94.

What letdown? Anyone who thought Loyola Marymount might be down after losing at Louisiana State on Saturday, flying home late Saturday night and playing the University of San Francisco on Sunday, think again. The responded with another record-breaking performance while thrashing the Dons, 157-115. The Lions' second conference record in four nights--breaking their still-warm mark of 150 scored Thursday against St. Mary's--raised them to 17-4 for the season and 8-0 in the West Coast Conference.

On the surface, Bo Kimble's one-day holdout ended in expected fashion Saturday when Clipper uniform No. 30 was displayed. Coach Mike Schuler talked of how his newest player will contribute, and Kimble laughed and smiled for all to see. "The negotiations are past, and what is important now is that Bo is a member of the Clipper family, and we're all going to be going out this season watching him shoot the lights out," team attorney Bob Steele said. "That's what this is about.

Before I start feeling too sorry for Bo Kimble, someone tell me how much money he has made sitting on the bench the last three years. I want to compare it to my lifetime earnings. ANDY BYRNE Alhambra

Former Clipper guard Bo Kimble was waived by the New York Knicks Thursday. Kimble, the nation's college scoring leader only three years ago, averaged only 3.7 points in nine games last season. "It was in the best interest of Bo and the Knicks to allow him to seek other opportunities to play at this time," Knick General Manager Ernie Grunfeld said. Kimble came to the Knicks last year after averaging 5.6 points in 96 games during two seasons with the Clippers.