SH Blog: Varejao to miss the rest of season, Pau Gasol to come off bench for good

• Vince Carter hopes to receive Hall of Fame consideration, from Chris Tomasson of Fox Sports Florida: “Of course, that’s a goal,’’ Carter, a Daytona Beach native who returns to his home state Sunday to face the Orlando Magic, one of his former teams. “You hope [Carter’s career is] good enough. It would be a definite honor to go down into history with the greatest. I would love to be considered for the Hall of Fame … but I’m still trying to finish my career.’’… “I just go year-to-year, contract-to-contract,’’ said Carter, who is averaging 12.3 points to drop his career average to 21.1. “My ultimate goal coming into the NBA was to play 15 years, so here I am, Now, we’ll see what happens.’’

• Rashard Lewis and Chris Bosh questioned whether Carter can win over voters, from Tomasson: “I think it would be a little tough because he hasn’t won a championship and he hasn’t been to the Finals,’’ said Miami Heat forward Rashard Lewis, “I think they’ll (voters) look at that and use that against him that he didn’t really compete for a championship.’’… “It will probably be tough for him to get in on the first ballot because you just got to be head and shoulders above (other candidates),’’ said Heat forward Chris Bosh. “It could go (by the voters), ‘Yeah, you’re an individual player’ … but he put the Toronto Raptors on the map. If he hadn’t been there, people wouldn’t know who the Toronto Raptors were.’’

• Jeff Van Gundy ripped Suns decision to fire Alvin Gentry, from Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic: “Alvin Gentry is an outstanding coach. A year and a half ago (actually 2010), they were in the Western Conference Finals. So now he’s not a good coach? I don’t understand. You know, there’s going to be a some owner soon that show the foresight to remain patient with a really good coach even if he has a bad team. “Listen, Marcin Gortat is the best player on the Suns. And no disrespect to him, because he’s a good center, but if he’s your best player, you will have the worst record in your conference most likely. “My point is why fire Alvin Gentry? I don’t understand that. He’s obviously done a good job. I’m trying to understand what he did wrong.”

• Ty Lawson called Russell Westbrook a villain after what he did on Sunday night, from Tomasson: “Denver’s Ty Lawson said Russell Westbrook now Pepsi Center “villain” for knocking down 2 mascot Rocky halfcourt shots. “I’ve never seen anybody do that before,’’ Lawson said of a player impeding the attempts by Rocky, which earn fans free queso from a local restaurant if one goes in. “It was kind of funny. We got a villain now. Every come he comes here, we’re going to definitely try to boo him… The fans now have a villain when Russell comes to the Pepsi Center.’’

• Check out what Westbrook did, exactly, to be hated by Nuggets fans:

• After beating the New York Knicks, Kris Humphries had this to say:

• J.R. Smith reacted to the tweet from Humphries:

• Smith also expressed his displeasure of how the Knicks continue to start out games poorly, from Jared Zwerling and Ian Begley of ESPN New York: “J.R. Smith called the Knicks out for putting on another poor first-quarter performance in front of the Garden crowd. Make that four in a row. While the Knicks shot 36.4 percent from the field, the Nets finished at 52.9 percent and led 26-24 after one. “We have a great crowd, great fans,” he said. “For us to come out there and not play the way we’re capable of to start the game off, and try to always have to fight back into it in the second half, it’s unacceptable. It’s disrespectful to them more than anything, and for us we, should be embarrassed about it.”

• Suns coach Lindsey Hunter is ready to put his mark on the team, from Coro of Arizona Republic: “Hunter said he will be more concerned about players improving than wins and losses for the Western Conference’s last-place team after its worst first half in a quarter-century. “I’m a defensive guy,” said Hunter, who was helped Sunday by assistant Igor Kokoskov, another interim candidate. “So that’s the identity that we’re going to try to create, being a tough, nasty, defensive-minded team. We’ll go from there. I’m not going to try to build Rome in day. We’re going to take it one step at a time and solidify our defense and make sure everybody understands exactly what’s going on and hold everybody accountable.”

• ABC showed Bill Russell during the Presidential Inauguration. Apparently, they thought they were showing Morgan Freeman:

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