■ BASKETBALL
D’Antoni to miss Worlds
Mike D’Antoni will not serve as an assistant coach for the US team at the World Basketball Championships because of back problems. USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo announced on Tuesday that NBA Toronto Raptors coach Jay Triano will replace D’Antoni on the staff of US coach Mike Krzyzewski for the global showdown between Aug. 28 and Sept. 12 in Turkey. “My back has been something I have been periodically dealing with and after the July Las Vegas training camp, I realized I need to get it better so I can be ready for the approaching NBA season,” said D’Antoni, coach of the New York Knicks. “I regret not being able to be with the team through the World Championship, I wish them the best of luck.” D’Antoni will work with the US squad during their seven-day training camp that starts on Tuesday in New York. Triano will join the team in New York and take D’Antoni’s spot for exhibitions in Spain, Greece and Turkey.
■ BASEBALL
Joint bid for Texas planned
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Houston businessman Jim Crane plan to join together to bid for control of the Texas Rangers baseball team in an auction for the team in a US bankruptcy Court, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. No other details about the bid by Cuban and Crane were immediately known. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Fox Sports Networks, a division of News Corp, said that Fox would not be submitting a bid. “There will be no additional comment at this time,” the spokesperson said. The Rangers, currently fighting for a playoff spot, filed for bankruptcy protection in May in what was considered a procedural move to close a US$570 million sale backed by the league to a group led by former All-Star pitcher and current team president Nolan Ryan and Pittsburgh attorney Chuck Greenberg. The Rangers’ problems began long before that, however, when creditors declared owner Hicks Sports Group in default on US$525 million in loans in April last year. Those creditors, led by distressed debt investor Monarch Alternative Capital LP, have said the Ryan-Greenberg offer was not the highest and the deal did not give them enough money.
■ BASEBALL
Youkilis injures his thumb
The Boston Red Sox’s injury woes deepened after first baseman Kevin Youkilis was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a torn muscle in his right thumb, the team reported on its Web site on Tuesday. Youkilis suffered the injury during an at-bat on Monday and a scan revealed the extent of the damage. His progress over the next few days will determine whether he will require surgery that could end his season. The team’s most consistent player, Youkilis is hitting .307 this season. Youkilis’ problem is the latest in a rash of injuries that have hit the Red Sox.
■BASEBALL
Guillen explains comments
Ozzie Guillen says his comments about Latino baseball players have been taken out of context. The outspoken manager of the White Sox said over the weekend that Asian players are given privileges in the US that Latinos are not afforded. He said he’s the “only one” in baseball teaching young players from Latin America to stay away from performance-enhancing drugs and that Major League Baseball doesn’t care about that. The White Sox said Guillen was wrong and in Detroit on Tuesday, Guillen said he didn’t mean to criticize Major League Baseball or his team. He said he was trying to explain how hard it is for Latino players to play in the US.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier