At 6-14, Timberwolves Fire Blair as Coach

The Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday fired Coach Bill Blair and named General Manager Flip Saunders interim coach.

The Timberwolves were 6-14 under Blair, after going 21-61 last season, setting a record with their fourth consecutive season with at least 60 losses.

Saunders, a Continental Basketball Assn. coach for seven years, becomes the fifth coach of a team that has been in the league only since 1989. He was named the Timberwolves’ general manager last May when Kevin McHale, his former teammate at the University of Minnesota, became the Timberwolves’ vice president of basketball operations.

“That’s not what you want,” McHale acknowledged when questioned about the many coaching changes. “That is an embarrassing track record that this organization has. That’s not the way successful organizations are run.”

McHale said Saunders would be coach for the rest of the year while maintaining his general manager’s duties.

Jurisprudence

A man accused of killing Michael Jordan’s father and dumping his body in a South Carolina swamp says he was wrongly accused because he’s black and predicts that he will be vindicated at trial.

Daniel Andre Green said a boyhood friend who plans to testify against him after pleading guilty to the slaying will perjure himself on the witness stand.

“I know I’m going home,” Green told the Chicago Sun-Times from his jail cell in North Carolina.

Green, 21, admits having stolen James Jordan’s car and jewelry but denies having killed him. He said Jordan’s body was gone before he and Larry Martin Demery found the car.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Green, who was charged along with Demery with the July 1993 killing of Jordan as he slept in his car along a road near Lumberton, N.C.

Demery pleaded guilty to murder in May and is scheduled to testify against Green next month.

Hockey

The Philadelphia Flyers have bought an American Hockey League expansion team, which will begin play next season at the 17,380-seat Spectrum. No name has been chosen for the franchise, an AHL spokesman said.

The Flyers will play at the new CoreStates Centre arena next season.

The Kings assigned right wing Dan Bylsma to their minor league team in Phoenix. Bylsma had no points in two games.

The Czech Republic got goals from five players and routed Sweden, 5-1, in the Izvestia Cup, moving into third place in the round-robin competition at Moscow. Russia and Canada, with three points after two games, are the only unbeaten teams among six at the midway point of the six-day tournament.

Names in the News

A magistrate court denied a request to release Steffi Graf’s father, Peter Graf, from a Mannheim, Germany, prison where he is in custody on suspicion of tax evasion.

Graf, who was arrested in August, is to remain jailed because there is a danger he might try to flee the country or conceal evidence in the case if he were set free, the court decided.

The 54-year-old Graf, who managed his daughter’s finances, is suspected of failing to pay taxes on up to $71 million she reportedly earned since the mid-1980s.

Alberto Tomba is being investigated for allegedly striking a photographer with a trophy cup Sunday in Madonna Di Campiglio, Italy. Police are looking into the alleged incident between Tomba and free-lance photographer, Aldo Martinuzzi, who has been on the outs with Tomba since he circulated nude photos of the World Cup champion last summer.

Unbeaten Antonio Barrera has signed to defend his World Boxing Organization junior featherweight title for the fifth time, against Kennedy McKinney, the once-beaten former International Boxing Federation champion.

The 12-round bout will be one of two title fights at the Forum on Feb. 3. WBO super flyweight champion Johnny Tapia, also undefeated and also making his fifth title defense, will fight Giovanni Andrade.

USC junior golfer Brian Hull shot a two-under-par 69 at Yorba Linda Country Club and won the amateur qualifying event that will enable him to compete in the 1996 Nissan (Los Angeles) Open Feb. 18-25 at Riviera Country Club.