• Billy Hunter was voted out as executive director of the NBA Players Association on Saturday. Yahoo Sports reported it was a unanimous 24-0 vote, with six player reps absent from the meeting. Hunter was previously placed on leave by the executive committee for misuse of funds and failing to get proper union approval for his five-year, $15 million contract extension in 2010. Hunter is still owed about $10 million on that deal, and the case is likely headed to court.
• Kevin Garnett said Saturday the Boston Celtics have not approached him about a trade despite a report they are shopping him in advance of Thursday’s trade deadline. It might not matter. Garnett has a full no-trade clause, meaning he’d have to agree to any trade. When asked Saturday if there was a deal or a city he would approve, Garnett said, “No.”
• Yahoo Sports reported Friday the Celtics have spoken with the Los Angeles Clippers about a deal involving Garnett for Eric Bledsoe and DeAndre Jordan. “If it’s up to me,” Garnett said, “I will live and die green.” Technically, it is up to Garnett since he can veto any deal. “OK then, so what are we talking about?” Garnett said.
• In what is probably just a coincidental twist, Garnett was seated next to the Clippers’ Chris Paul and Blake Griffin during Saturday’s media event. “I think people are just talking,” Paul said. “At the end of the day, who wouldn’t want to have Kevin Garnett on their team? I talk about that guy all day, every day, his intensity to the game and how he plays the game. He’s a special player. That’s a guy right there that I looked up to for a long time.”
• CBS Sports reported the Celtics have discussed trading injured point guard Rajon Rondo to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Dwight Howard. A Rondo/Howard trade would signal the Lakers giving up on this season, which would be bad news for the Cavaliers. They need the Lakers to make the playoffs in order to get their draft position.
• Meanwhile, Howard said this weekend he has received assurances from Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak that he isn’t going anywhere. “They told me they weren’t going to trade me,” Howard said. “That’s what Mitch said.”
• As the world continues to celebrate Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday, Deadspin.com wrote a fascinating piece this week with Craig Ehlo, who felt Jordan’s wrath on a few occasions. The most memorable, of course, was “The Shot” that Jordan made over Ehlo in the 1989 playoffs. Ehlo was an assistant coach at Gonzaga when former Cav Jeremy Pargo was there. Ehlo said in the article Pargo (a Chicago native) would grab a white player at practice — he’d often try to find one of the worst players on the team — and re-enact “The Shot.” “He was so happy that he could do it and re-enact it and still my reaction was never, ‘Stop that crap.’ He knew that I could take it,” Ehlo said.
• Ehlo added that the night Jordan scored 69 against the Cavs in 1990, he told Ehlo what he was going to do and Ehlo still couldn’t stop him. “Things were going so well for him that I guess he just went for it,” Ehlo said. “We were running up the court side-by-side and he told me: ‘Listen, man, I’m hitting everything, so I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do this time and see if you can stop it. … I’m going to catch it on the left elbow, and then I’m going to drive to the left to the baseline, and then I’m going to pull up and shoot my fadeaway.’ And sure enough ...” Ehlo couldn’t stop it.
• Those hideous, fluorescent-green shoes the youngsters wore during Friday’s Rising Stars Challenge were compliments of Adidas. All of the Adidas guys wore them, including the Cavs’ Tyler Zeller.
• NBA Commissioner David Stern confirmed during his press conference Saturday the league has received an attractive proposal to move the Sacramento Kings to Seattle and the league is waiting on a proposal Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has promised he will deliver by March 1 that includes a new arena deal to keep the team. From there, the owners will decide which city wins. Stern said he doesn’t see a scenario in which both cities are happy and inferred expansion is not a present option.
• Deputy commissioner Adam Silver said the league has received proposals from both the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets to host the All-Star game after Madison Square Garden was recently refurbished for the Knicks and the sparkling new Barclays Center was built for the Nets. Silver said it’s likely one of the two cities will host the game in 2015, but no announcement is scheduled. New Orleans is the host city next year.
