With rumors flying regarding increased power for Lenny Wilkens and a possible overture towards Rick Adelman, ESPN reported this evening the Seattle Sonics have parted ways with head coach Bob Hill.

The Boston Globe’s Greg Lee claims the Celtics have cut ties with troubled guard Sebastain Telfair following the Coney Island product’s most recent brush with the law.  Asked on “PTI” today if the Celtics’ action was justified, Tony Kornheiser insisted that Telfair “keeps getting caught with guns.”

Actually, during his brief tenure with the Celtics, this was the first time Telfair was formally charged with illegal handgun possession.

Mrs. AK-47 (above, right) has an interesting take on her husband’s poor rapport with Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, writes the Desert Morning News’ Brad Rock.

Masha Kirilenko said Monday night that she believes some of the problems could be related to her husband’s imperfect command of English.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “His English is not so good.Sometimes he can’t explain himself. Maybe he needs an interpreter.”

She claimed Houston’s Yao Ming, from China, “has an interpreter all the time” and added “maybe we’ll hire one.”

Masha went on to say that, “with the coach and Andrei that’s certainly a language barrier and it looks like there could be a misunderstanding with both guys.”

Asked if she thinks Sloan and his player can work out their differences regarding playing style and time, she said, “Two smart people like that can work it out.”

She was motivated to speak on the subject when she saw her husband’s red-eyed picture in the newspapers on Monday. “I said, ‘This is not happening,'” she said. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

On the brink of Nets/Raptors Game 2, much of Dave D’Allesandro’s latest mailbag in the Star Ledger consists of angry missives from former Vince Carter fans.

Dave: Love to know what you’re basing the notion that it “wasn’t that clear basketball would catch on in Canada” before Vince came here — and please don’t cite Vancouver, since that’s 3,000 kilometres from Toronto. You’re confusing trend-obsessed members of the short attention span crowd with real basketball fans, who admittedly are not as plentiful in Canada as in the U.S. but do exist in large numbers here. If anything, Vin Weasel set the Raptors back. A lot casual sports fans in Canada still have trouble taking the NBA seriously since the face of our team was a guy who let his ego hold his game hostage. – Neate Sager

Short memory you got, Neate. Ask Glen Grunwald about the crushing debt load he was under in ’97, or a few years before Vince showed up: The Canadian dollar was tanking (it was worth something like 65 cents), which suppressed the Raptors’ ability to generate revenue. They were losing millions every month, as they had broken ground on the new arena and it was turning into a white elephant. Attendance was falling every year at the Skydome. There were reports that it took them four games to generate the sort of revenues that Madison Square Garden would get in one night. And there was a widespread perception that Revenue Canada (that’s their IRS, for you Yanks who don’t know) was going after athletes, hitting the non-resident NBA players with a higher tax for every day they spent in Canada – which everyone knew would be an issue when it came to pursuing free agents. Anyway, Carter arrived, he became the most popular athlete in the country after Gretzky, and the rest is history – in your case, the revisionist kind.