Lakers guard Steve Blake suffers puncture wound on left foot

Training camp is still a week away, but the Lakers are already dealing with an unusual injury.

Backup point guard Steve Blake stepped on a spike strip over the weekend at a beach parking lot and sustained a puncture wound in his left foot. He can’t take part in any impact exercises for about three weeks, the Lakers said Monday.

The Lakers begin exhibition play Oct. 7 against Golden State. The regular season begins Oct. 30 against Dallas.

Blake lives in Manhattan Beach and was walking barefoot when he was injured.

He averaged 5.2 points in 53 games with the Lakers last season and could face competition for minutes from reserve guard Chris Duhon, who was acquired in the Dwight Howard trade.

Blake, 32, has two more years and $8 million remaining on his contract.

— Mike Bresnahan

::The Clippers made it official Monday, announcing the hiring of Gerald Madkins as the team’s director of basketball operations.

The Clippers also announced three other front-office personnel moves. Eric Miller was selected the director of basketball administration, Fabrizio Besnati will return for his eighth season as the director of international scouting and Jason Piombetti was promoted to the position of director of scouting.

Madkins, a former UCLA player and assistant coach, spent the last two seasons as the vice president of player personnel for the New Orleans Hornets.

He will report directly to Gary Sacks, the Clippers’ newly appointed vice president of basketball operations. “He’s an expert talent evaluator,” Sachs said. “He’s great for us.”

Madkins joins the Clippers with a wealth of NBA experience, having also worked as the director of scouting for the Houston Rockets from 2008-10, as the West Coast scouting director for the Seattle SuperSonics for one year and as a scout for the New York Knicks from 2003-07.

— Broderick Turner

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The Seattle City Council approved a deal to build a new arena designed to lure the NBA back to town.

Council members voted 6-2 to approve investor Chris Hansen’s plan for a $490-million arena near the Seahawks’ and Mariners’ stadiums south of downtown. The plan calls for $200 million in public investment, and Hansen has personally guaranteed to cover the city’s debt if the arena’s finances don’t work out.

The arena could also house an NHL team.

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Etc.

Kurt Busch was signed by Furniture Row Racing to drive its No. 78 Chevrolet in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series next year, replacing Regan Smith.

Busch, the 2004 Cup champion, this year is driving for another small team, Phoenix Racing, after a series of public outbursts by Busch led to his release from Penske Racing at the end of last season.

Busch, 34, has 24 Cup wins in his career but he’s winless this year and is 25th in the Cup standings. Smith scored the only Cup win for himself and Furniture Row last year at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

— Jim Peltz

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Point guard Reggie Moore has been dismissed from the Washington State University basketball team. Coach Ken Bone said that the senior has been dismissed for violation of team rules. Details were not provided.

Bone says Moore has been an important part of the basketball program for the last three years. Two years ago, Moore served a one-game suspension for marijuana possession.

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A former McPherson College football player is facing charges in connection to the beating death of a football player at nearby Tabor College in Kansas.

McPherson County Attorney David Page said that 19-year-old Alton Franklin of Dallas is charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. The charges were filed following the death Saturday of 26-year-old Brandon Brown of Sacramento.

Police have said Brown was found lying unconscious in McPherson, about 25 miles from the Tabor campus in Hillsboro, early Sept. 16. He never regained consciousness.

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Kerri Walsh Jennings said she was pregnant when she won her third beach volleyball gold medal.

Walsh Jennings said on NBC’s “Today” show she is 11 weeks pregnant. That means she was already expecting her third child when she and Misty May-Treanor won the Olympic gold medal in London on Aug. 8.

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Less than a day after quitting international soccer, John Terry attended a racism hearing at the Football Association in Wembley, with the former England captain facing an eight-match ban from playing for Chelsea.

The defender is fighting a misconduct charge that was brought despite being cleared in court of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand during a Premier League match last October.

The 31-year-old Terry decided Sunday night that his position with England had been made “untenable” by the FA’s decision to pursue a case, although he had been allowed to keep playing despite being stripped of the captaincy before the trial.

“I don’t see how we’ve made [his position] untenable; they’re two very separate processes,” FA General Secretary Alex Horne said at Wembley Stadium, where an independent four-man FA panel is hearing the case.