Boston’s 1-2 Punch: Ford and Sutter Fired

It was a bad day in Boston for coaches.

The Celtics’ Chris Ford and the Bruins’ Brian Sutter were fired Wednesday within two hours of one another, a rare if not unprecedented ouster of two big league coaches from the same city on the same day.

No successors were named.

Bruin General Manager Harry Sinden, who made his announcement second, said the timing was coincidental.

The Celtics and Bruins are coming off first-round playoff ousters.

Ford, 46, was 222-188 in his five seasons with the Celtics, but only 35-47 this season before losing to Orlando in the playoffs. He struggled to rebuild the team amid the retirement of Larry Bird and the death of Reggie Lewis. Ford has one year left on his contract.

“There comes a time in a coach’s career where there is a point of diminishing returns,” said M.L. Carr, the Celtics’ director of basketball operations and a former teammate of Ford’s. “You get to a point where you feel it’s in the best interest of both the coach and the team to move on, and I think this was the case here.”

Sutter, 38, was fired after three seasons and was apparently the victim of two first-round playoff defeats, including this year when Sinden said “people just packed it in.”

Sutter was 120-73-23 in 216 regular-season games but only 7-15 in the playoffs.

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The Winnipeg, Manitoba City Council voted to invest $37 million and back a local bid to keep the Winnipeg Jets from leaving for Minneapolis. Federal lawmakers have yet to act, but a noon deadline is set for today on retaining the team.

Toe Blake, the dour-faced disciplinarian whose eight Stanley Cup championships in 13 seasons as coach of the Montreal Canadiens are an NHL record, died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 82.

Tennis

Thomas Muster, the hottest clay-court player in the world, extended his winning streak to 24 on the slow surface at the Italian Open in Rome with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over Jan Siemerink to reach the quarterfinals.

Muster is chasing Mats Wilander’s record of 31 consecutive victories on clay, set in 1982-83.

Also advancing were Goran Ivanisevic, Wayne Ferreira, Sergi Bruguera, Stefan Edberg and Andrei Medvedev. A day after top-seeded Pete Sampras was beaten, the only big name to lose was No. 10 Todd Martin, defeated, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, by Bohdan Ulihrach, a qualifier from the Czech Republic.

Andre Agassi was fined $2,500 by the ATP for his “Are you going to get a knife and chase me now?” comments to a courtside spectator at last week’s German Open at Hamburg. Agassi was referring to the April 1993 stabbing of Monica Seles on the same court.

Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, saying she has never lost with them both there, flew in her mother, Marisa, and her dog from Barcelona and routed France’s Nathalie Tauziat, 6-2, 6-3, in the second round of the German Open in Berlin. Gabriela Sabatini beat Mexico’s Angelica Galvadon, 6-4, 6-0, and Mary Joe Fernandez defeated Germany’s Barbara Rittner, 6-2, 6-2.

Jurisprudence

Former Oklahoma State basketball star Randy Rutherford, irate because his electricity was turned off, threatened to blow up a city block on May 11, according to a misdemeanor charge filed in Stillwater, Okla. Rutherford is charged with threatening to harm public employees and destroy public property and, if convicted, faces up to 30 days in jail or a $100 fine, or both. . . . Four former and current Washington football players have asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a judge’s decision to dismiss their suit against the Pacific 10 Conference. The players sued the Pac-10 after the Huskies were put on probation in 1993 for a number of rules violations.

Former world champion sprinter Katrin Krabbe won a court reversal of her two-year doping ban in Munich, Germany, with the Regional Court ordering the International Amateur Athletic Federation to pay damages for the income loss she has suffered, reportedly as much as $2.7 million. The IAAF vowed to take the case to a higher court as it did in getting a similar case overturned by American 400-meter world-record holder Butch Reynolds. Krabbe, 25, is expecting a baby and has said she is retiring.