Pacers lose Danny Granger for up to three months

The Indiana Pacers need to find a long-term replacement for Danny Granger.

Team officials announced Wednesday that the one-time All-Star forward is expected to miss up to three months after receiving an injection in his left knee to treat patellar tendinosis.

Losing Granger for an extended period is a big blow for a team that entered this season hoping to contend for an Eastern Conference title. He was the Pacers’ top scorer last season (18.7 points) and is typically their first option in late-game situations too.

Granger originally hurt the knee during May’s playoff run. Coach Frank Vogel said the soreness dissipated for a while, then returned while Granger was working out during the off-season.

ETC.

Rockies hire Weiss as manager

Walt Weiss was hired to replace Jim Tracy as manager of the Colorado Rockies, the team announced at baseball’s general managers’ meetings in Indian Wells. Weiss, 48, the 1988 American League rookie of the year, spent parts of 14 seasons in the major leagues. He will make the rare jump from a high school dugout to the big leagues.

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A judge sentenced former New York Yankees pitching prospect Brien Taylor to 38 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to distributing crack cocaine. Taylor, 40, told U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing in New Bern, N.C., that he was sorry for causing so much pain to his family and his five daughters. Taylor, the No. 1 overall selection in the 1991 draft, could have received between five and 40 years in prison.

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Former Detroit Tigers slugger Delmon Young pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment for shouting an anti-Semitic slur and tackling a man to the ground outside a New York City hotel last spring. The 27-year-old outfielder, who became a free agent after the World Series, was ordered to complete 10 days of community service and enroll in a program at the Museum of Tolerance New York.

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San Diego Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal has been suspended 50 games because of a positive test for testosterone. Grandal made his big league debut this year. He hit .297 with eight home runs and 36 RBIs in 60 games.

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Novak Djokovic held off Andy Murray in the ATP finals at London. The top-ranked Serb beat Murray, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, at the O2 Arena. Djokovic still hasn’t advanced to the semifinals at the season-ending tournament for the top eight players in the world. Tomas Berdych beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 7-5, 3-6, 6-1, in the late Group B match. On Friday, Djokovic will face Berdych, and Murray will take on Tsonga.

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The U.S. will open the fourth and final round of World Cup qualifying Feb. 6 in Honduras, and Mexico will begin its quest by playing host to Jamaica. Pairings and dates for the six-nation, 10-match regional qualifier were determined Wednesday in Miami Beach, where CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, staged its tournament draw. The draw laid out a difficult qualifying path for the U.S., which will play its first and last games on the road.

The top three finishers in the tournament are assured berths in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, and the fourth-place finisher will meet the winner of the Oceania region in a home-and-away playoff for another World Cup spot.

—Kevin Baxter

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Carmen Basilio, a genial onion farmer’s son who wrested the world middleweight boxing crown from Sugar Ray Robinson in 1957 and lost an equally epic, razor-edge rematch six months later, died Wednesday at age 85 in Rochester, N.Y.

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Edward Brophy, executive director of the Boxing Hall of Fame in upstate New York, said Basilio died at a hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia.