Sports briefs 4/22/05

Basketball

* Jim Paxson was fired Thursday as general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose stunning second-half collapse this season cost them their first trip to the NBA playoffs in seven years. Paxson's dismissal has been expected for weeks and came exactly one month after Paul Silas was fired as coach by owner Dan Gilbert, who has had a tumultuous first 50 days running the franchise.

The Cavaliers were 31-21 on Feb. 25, and 34-30 when Silas was fired. But the team fell apart down the stretch despite the play of LeBron James and finished 42-40, losing a tiebreaker with New Jersey for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

* A prominent Chinese academic says it is inappropriate for Yao Ming to be nominated for the "model worker" award.

The ruling party nominated the Houston Rockets center last month for the honor, which for decades has turned miners, teachers or factory workers into celebrities in the state media. Winners are to be announced April 30.

"Sports stars ... are not the perfect models for the public," Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Beijing's Renmin University, told the official Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday. "According to the past criteria, the title of 'model worker' should only be given to ordinary laborers."

Other academics quoted by Xinhua defended the nomination.

"Yao's work in the NBA has benefited not only himself, but also his country," sociology professor Yu Hai of Shanghai's Fudan University said.

College

* Fred Peete, a sophomore guard who averaged 13 points a game for Kansas State last season, is leaving the team, coach Jim Wooldridge said Thursday.

Peete, a Memphis native who graduated from high school in Pullman, Wash., transferred to Kansas State after a year at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. He started all 29 games for the Wildcats and averaged five rebounds, 3.8 assists and 2.1 assists. He hit 44 of 126 (34.9 percent) of his 3-point shots.

Tennis

Third-seeded Carlos Moya of Spain and fourth-seeded Guillermo Coria of Argentina lost Thursday in the third round of the Open Seat Godo.

Max Mirnyi of Belarus defeated Moya 6-4, 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals of this clay-court tournament leading to next month's French Open.

Agustin Calleri upset Coria 6-4, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (2) in an all-Argentine match and will next face Monte Carlo Masters champion Rafael Nadal. The eighth-seeded Spaniard beat 10th-seeded Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia 6-1, 6-2.