Lithuanian basketball dries up

Sports fans in Lithuania are calling for protests at the parliament building after television stations canceled live broadcasts of Euroleague basketball games because of a new law banning advertising alcohol.

The law took effect Tuesday and bans all alcohol-related ads on TV from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. It was put in place partly because Lithuania has a high rate of alcohol-related problems.

The law will have a dramatic effect on basketball -- the country’s most popular sport -- because breweries sponsor many of the country’s teams.

“This is outrageous,” said Jonas Junevicius, a 31-year-old banker in Vilnius. “Now they are taking basketball from us, and we will probably not be able to watch the Beijing Olympics because Budweiser is among the sponsors there.”

Some 50,000 people have signed a petition to be handed to the parliament chairman this week.

Trivia time

When Lithuania regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, former NBA star Sarunas Marciulionis helped to resurrect the national basketball team and secured several sponsorships for financial support. What famous rock music band was one of the team’s sponsors?

Cashed out

Ivan Cash, a 22-year-old college student, designed and printed anti-Isiah Thomas T-shirts and was arrested for selling them outside Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, the New York Daily News reported.

Cash, a graphic design major, drew up a shirt picturing the New York Knicks coach encircled with the words “Don’t hate the player or the game. Hate the coach.”

Cash told the paper that more than 100 frustrated Knicks fans had bought his shirts at the last three home games and that police “came up to me at every game before and asked me what I was doing. I told them. They shrugged, and that was that.”

But this time, the cops handcuffed him, charged him with intent to sell and he spent three hours in a cell before he was released.

Cash says he thinks the arrest was meant “to put a lid on all the demands by fans for a new coach.”

Just like Nassau Coliseum

The NHL’s Winter Classic was such a success that league officials and players are already talking about the next outdoor hockey game.

One rumor has pegged Yankee Stadium as the venue for a game featuring either the New York Islanders or Rangers.

Count Islanders center Mike Sillinger among those who would be in favor. Sillinger recalled playing in an outdoor game in Europe during the 1994 NHL lockout and said the atmosphere was second to none.

“The fans were crazy,” he said. “They were drinking something they called ‘pooch,’ which was hot wine. And they were drinking beers and smoking. After every game, your jersey smelled like cigars.”

He won’t stick it to Clemens

Dodgers manager Joe Torre was Roger Clemens’ manager for six seasons with the New York Yankees, so he might have some inside knowledge of the Clemens steroid accusations.

The accuser, Brian McNamee, was the strength coach for the Yankees.

Still, Torre prefers to stay away from that fight.

“You’re not going to get me in that jackpot,” he said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “I’d rather just stay away from making any in-depth comment about the whole steroid-HGH thing.”

Trivia answer

The Grateful Dead. The team wore tie-dyed warm up uniforms designed by the band in exchange for financial support. Lithuania won the bronze medal.

And finally

Golfer Mark Calcavecchia has won 13 PGA Tour events. But he has also been runner-up 26 times, which leaves him with a bit of a feeling that his career could have been better.

So what happened in some of those 26?

“I choked. Pressure. Trying too hard. Mental problems. Demons. Yips,” he said. “It’s a tough game.”

peter.yoon@latimes.com