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      Praying the Lakers Regain a Starring Role in the N.B.A. Playoffs

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      This postseason, the only reminders of the Los Angeles Lakers’ luster appear on a fictionalized cable series and streaming documentaries.Dear God of Sports,This prayer comes in the name of N.B.A. healing and restoration.The playoffs are happening now, blessed with tension and talent. What a spectacle. Thank you for the young among us, beginning with Ja Morant and Jordan Poole. Make safe the health of the great, grizzled Noah known as Chris Paul.The vigor you have again bestowed upon the Boston Celtics is beauty to behold.But something is missing: the Los Angeles Lakers. Any postseason without the Lakers feels like a breach of a cosmic bond.For all to be right in the Kingdom of Hoops, the Lakers must be a fixture in the playoff firmament; same as they were in all but five seasons from their birth in the late 1940s until 2014, when Kobe Bryant (may he and his beloved rest easy) began edging toward retirement.The Lakers are cherished and hated like no other team. They bestow extra attention, vibe and legitimacy upon the postseason. Nothing is the same without them in the mix.Great Spirit of Sports, the Lakers now wander in the desert. With this season’s epic collapse, they have failed to reach the postseason in seven of the last nine years. Yes, they reached the highest of heights in 2020. But that season’s N.B.A. championship finished inside a pandemic bubble. Two years ago now seems like 20. Today, the journey to that title is a parable few remember. Was it just a dream?Basketball fans have been forsaken. A generation walks in the wilderness, having never seen a powerful Lakers team challenge Steph Curry and Golden State with everything on the line.But you never let us down, God of Sports. Amid the playoffs, you have sprinkled reminders of Lakers luster for all to see — at least those of us who subscribe to HBO Max and Apple TV+.Two years removed from winning an N.B.A. championship, the Lakers missed the playoffs this season.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLast week came the unveiling on Apple TV+ of the documentary “They Call Me Magic.”Please allow for good reviews.Heal the hearts of the Lakers family, who now live in distress over another recent depiction, the HBO series “Winning Time.” It is classic Hollywood: a glitzy blend of fact, fiction and glammed-up dramatic license that focuses on the team’s 1980s Showtime era. All that off-court excess, all that soap opera intrigue, along with those five league titles.That series has caused hurt feelings and bruised pride to consume Lakersland.Jerry West demanded a retraction and an apology from HBO over the overheated, fictive way he is depicted.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar called the series a deliberately dishonest rendering, “with characters who are stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Han Solo resembles Harrison Ford.”Magic Johnson, the show’s centerpiece, the Showtime era’s North Star, said he had not seen the series and that it did not tell the truth. Confusing, I know.Lord of Hoops, Great Giver of the Three-Point Shot, far be it from me to tell these basketball legends that their anger is misplaced. But ease their troubles. Remind them that few will watch a series like “Winning Time” in these discordant days without being in on the joke.Help them see the irony: The Lakers’ iconic modern image was built in part on Hollywood smoke and mirrors. On the cloaking and twisting of reality. Indeed, on magic.The Lakers of the 1980s were more than just a team that won five championships in a decade. Their uniqueness came not just from those titles but from the power of make-believe — the Forum Club, the Lakers Girls, the age-defying movie stars in every other seat.Remind aggrieved Lakers of their team’s twists of narrative. Their storied rise in the 1980s was cast as villains to the Boston Celtics and drawn in simple strokes: the cool, Black team standing in the path of the stodgy, white one.Yes, Boston had Larry Bird and other white stars, but it also had Black Celtics like Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish and Cedric Maxwell — legends in their own right.And which team had a Black head coach? The Celtics, led by K.C. Jones for two of their three N.B.A. crowns that decade.In the longtime telling of this duel, the city of Boston has often been projected as mired in racism. But simple stories, as you well know, sometimes mask the complicated truth. Los Angeles has always had plenty of its own problems with race.Injustice exists everywhere. Greatness is a rarer thing. The greatness of 17 N.B.A. championships ground the Lakers, even though mythology has always been a part of their story.Oh mighty one, in the name of St. Elgin, lessen the burden of former Lakers who feel wronged.Then turn back to the hardwood.Restore LeBron James, his creaky knees and 37-year-old back.Remind him that all good things come in due time — so long as due time starts next season. The entertainment empire he is building in Los Angeles is something to behold. But being a movie mogul and community force flows first from the river of N.B.A. championships.Consider purgatory for the front office executives who signed Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and the other elder-Lakers before this season.When you finish replenishing Hollywood’s team, would you mind granting an even bigger miracle to another basketball calamity?God of Sports, remember the Knicks? More

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      ‘Winning Time’: When the NBA Went Pop

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      A new HBO drama chronicles the 1980s Lakers, whose fluid style and Hollywood flair changed the game and the culture. An N.B.A. writer takes account.When asked to describe the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, the actor DeVaughn Nixon, 38, paused for a moment. “Stylized,” he said. Then he rattled off more words: “Fast. Cool. Fun. Sexy.”That’s not how most sports franchises are typically described. But the Lakers of that era were built differently.The Showtime Lakers, as the team was known, set a new template for how professional basketball came to be viewed on and off the floor. The team crossed over into pop culture consciousness in a way no N.B.A. franchise had. It spurred discussions about the place of money, race, celebrity and sex in the game. With their brash new-money owner, Jerry Buss, the Lakers challenged what was then the status quo — which included poor attendance and ratings. They helped save the league.They also made for great TV, both in their time and as the basis for an equally flashy new HBO docudrama, “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” in which Nixon plays his own father, the point guard Norm Nixon. Episode 1 of the 10-part first season debuts Sunday.Created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, the series is based on the book “Showtime” by the journalist Jeff Pearlman. But the chatty, fast-paced, fourth-wall-breaking style of “Winning Time” is signature Adam McKay (“The Big Short,” “Don’t Look Up”), who executive produced and directed the pilot.“It was a story that I thought I knew the basics of,” McKay, a lifelong basketball fan who hosted a podcast last year about the N.B.A., said in an email. “I thought it was mostly about Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dr. Buss.”“I had no idea until I read that book what a complicated, layered story it was,” he added. “It was like ‘Brothers Karamazov,’ only about basketball.”DeVaughn Nixon, left, plays his father, Norm Nixon, in the series. He said he hadn’t truly understood the impact of the Showtime Lakers until he got a bit older.Warrick Page/HBO“Winning Time” isn’t the first chronicle of the 1980s N.B.A., a seminal period for the sport and the subject of numerous books and documentaries. Based on the eight episodes provided to journalists in advance, “Winning Time” tells the story in a tone befitting those Lakers teams. Cuts are frenetic, needles drop hard, and characters frequently deliver commentary and exposition straight to the camera. Grainy film and glitchy video mix with real and faux archival footage, adding to the vintage vibes.Much like the Johnson-era Lakers, it’s an unconventional show that doesn’t pretend to be subtle.The legendThe accomplishments of the Showtime Lakers have become the stuff of lore. The Lakers won five championships from 1980 to 1988, one of the most successful runs of any franchise in N.B.A. history. Their main rivals, the Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird, won three in that same period. (This N.B.A. writer grew up a Celtics fan and was exposed to the rivalry out of the womb.) Together, those teams produced some of the greatest basketball players the world had ever seen.DeVaughn said he hadn’t understood the importance of the Showtime Lakers until he was older and on a trip to Positano, Italy, well after his father had retired.“I come back from the bathroom and Michael Jordan’s sitting down next to us, and he’s just chopping it up with my dad,” Nixon said. Jordan, he recalled, called his father a “bad boy on the court.”Solomon Hughes, right, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics was in many ways a rivalry between opposing views on what basketball should be. Warrick Page/HBO“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, all right, cool.’” Nixon added. “He was a part of something.”Jordan wasn’t alone in his admiration. Eighties basketball, particularly the Lakers, had a cultural and political poignancy that has influenced the game and the world at large ever since. One could draw a straight line, for example, from the political activism of Abdul-Jabbar, who played for the Lakers from 1975 to 1989, to that of LeBron James. (Something that hasn’t survived: Abdul-Jabbar’s deadly skyhook, which has rarely been seen in this century.)And today’s fashion parades, sexy dancers and boisterous lineup introductions — with their pyrotechnics, laser light shows and T-shirt guns — owe a lot to Buss (played in the series by John C. Reilly), the transformational owner who purchased the Lakers in 1979.Buss helped usher in an era that put celebrities courtside and expanded the fan experience. Celebrities had long been connected to Los Angeles sports teams — Doris Day and Jack Nicholson were already frequent sightings at Laker games — but Buss ratcheted up celebrity attendance, a dynamic that still exists.Solomon Hughes, who plays Abdul-Jabbar, said that “the uniqueness of that professional sports team in the backdrop of Hollywood really just changed how we how we look at sports.”The Lakers were nicknamed “Showtime” was because of a nightclub called the Horn, which Buss frequented. There, a singer would start a show by saying, “It’s showtime,” and Buss adopted the phrase to describe his approach to the Lakers. A frequent guest of the Playboy Mansion who held a Ph.D in chemistry and sported disco lapels and an impressive comb-over, he was intent on marrying Hollywood glamour with high-quality basketball — a significant break from the standard mold of how N.B.A. teams operated.The rivalryThat standard was strongly influenced by the Celtics, who dominated the N.B.A. in the two decades before Buss bought the Lakers. Red Auerbach, the former coach and general manager of the Celtics (played by Michael Chiklis), detested, for example, the idea of cheerleaders at games; Boston didn’t have them until 2006. Buss was an interloper, wreaking havoc on the sanctity of basketball.But Buss wanted more than just a glitzy experience surrounding the game. He wanted the basketball itself to be flashy. That made Johnson’s availability in the 1979 N.B.A. draft all the more serendipitous. Johnson played the game with an eye for fast-paced showmanship, frequently whipping behind-the-back, no-look bullets to teammates as if he had a third eye.“He wanted to put on a show,” Quincy Isaiah, the 26-year-old who portrays Johnson, said. “But he definitely wanted to make everybody in that arena feel good while watching, including his teammates.”Not everyone felt good, especially outside Los Angeles. Chiklis, a native of Lowell, Mass., grew up a fan of the Celtics, a franchise with a diametrically opposed view on how basketball was supposed to be.“I had just about as much hate and ire for them as I did for the Yankees,” Chiklis said, adding, “You couldn’t be in Boston at that time and not get sucked into the vortex of that rivalry.”The rivalry had a racial component, too. Bird was a transcendent player like Johnson, but some wondered whether he would have received the same attention had he been Black. Dennis Rodman, one of the game’s greatest rebounders, said in 1987 that Bird won three straight Most Valuable Player awards “because he was white,” adding, “Nobody gives Magic Johnson credit.” Isiah Thomas, Rodman’s teammate on the Detroit Pistons, agreed, adding that if Bird “was Black, he’d be just another guy,” setting off a furor.As the Lakers and Celtics rivalry evolved, interest in the league grew and more games were shown live on TV. (The rise of ESPN, which debuted in 1979, also helped.) Johnson became a household name, especially as the Lakers kept winning.John C. Reilly, left, (with Isaiah, center, and Jason Clarke, as Jerry West) plays Jerry Buss, the flashy, new-money owner who helped usher the N.B.A. into a new era. Warrick Page/HBOThe celebrityBefore the 1980s, the N.B.A. was a struggling league with low ratings, and the networks wouldn’t give it prime slots. One Finals game in 1977 tipped off at noon Pacific. Many games were aired on tape delay.The Lakers helped turn the N.B.A. from a fringe sports league into a titan, which set the stage for Jordan and, later, Kobe Bryant to help make the game a global phenomenon. As McKay put it, the Lakers “changed fashion, music, the way people behaved, the way they spoke.”“It’s an explosion that just rarely happens in any form of culture,” he continued, “let alone sports.”Along with Bird, Johnson became a star unlike any basketball player before. He and Bird appeared in TV commercials together and clocked huge endorsement deals. When Johnson — a heterosexual athlete who was averaging 12.5 assists and 19.4 points a game — announced in 1991 that he had H.I.V. and was retiring, it sent shock waves around the world. Pau Gasol, a native of Spain, said he had been so inspired by Johnson’s news conference that he vowed as a boy to find a cure for H.I.V. Instead, he became an N.B.A. All-Star, who helped lead the Lakers to multiple championships.Some of the key figures in the story have said publicly that they aren’t happy with the show, including Johnson. (Neither the central figures portrayed nor the Lakers organization were involved in the production.) In an email, a spokeswoman for Abdul-Jabbar described the series as “based on a fictional account taken from a book” written by “an outsider,” adding that Abdul-Jabbar had not seen the show and that “the story is best told by those who lived it.”Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner of the Lakers and the daughter of Jerry Buss, who died in 2013, is executive producing a documentary series about the franchise for Hulu, set to debut this year. Johnson is developing one about his own life for Apple. (Spokespeople for Johnson and the Lakers declined to comment.)“If I was Kareem to Magic or any of those guys, and I looked at it personally, like they’re telling my story, it would probably feel weird to me, too,” Rodney Barnes, an executive producer and writer of the show, said. But the creative team wanted to tell a story about everything that period encompassed, he added — about not only the Lakers but also “America as a whole.”And their story would hardly be the last take on the Showtime Lakers, Barnes acknowledged.“There’s still a lot of meat on that bone,” he said. More

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      Kevin Garnett Talks Missed Opportunities, On and Off the Court

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      Garnett, the 15-time N.B.A. All-Star, discusses the new owners of the Timberwolves, whether he’s ready to forgive Ray Allen and his thoughts on player activism.At one point in a new Showtime documentary, Kevin Garnett unexpectedly jumps out of his seat during an interview to curse into a boom microphone.Sitting down has never been one of his strengths, whether on the basketball court or in typically sleepy affairs, like talking about yourself on camera.The film, titled “Kevin Garnett: Anything Is Possible,” premieres on Nov. 12. It traces Garnett’s life story, from his upbringing in South Carolina through his ascent to being one of the most celebrated prep-to-pros players in basketball history by winning an N.B.A. championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008.This documentary is the latest in a trend of athletes trying to shape the narratives about themselves through their own productions. Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Russell Westbrook have been involved in similar projects.In Garnett’s documentary, for which he is an executive producer, one scene stands out. Garnett and the rapper Snoop Dogg are in a recording studio discussing athlete activism, and Garnett criticizes the N.B.A. players who resumed the playoffs after walking out to protest social injustice in the summer of 2020.“I actually thought for a second that the players had momentum to where, if they could’ve took a stance, all of them together, and said, ‘No, we’re not playing,’ that they could’ve actually went on Capitol Hill and started a conversation, a real one, and started talking about police reform,” Garnett tells Snoop Dogg.Garnett added, “Just falling in line actually didn’t really help anything.”In a recent interview, Garnett discussed those comments on player activism, his acting ambitions and his relationship with his former Celtics teammate Ray Allen.You do a very impressive impersonation of Doc Rivers, the former Celtics coach, in the documentary. We’ve seen your acting skills in “Uncut Gems.” What is your interest in continuing your acting career?I feel like obviously the character that I played in the “Uncut Gems” was myself, and I didn’t think that I can mess that up, and I felt confident in that. I’m getting some opportunities, just nothing that speaks to me. Some of the things that have come across my desk are just things that I can’t relate to and I don’t feel like fit me. But I have very high interest. I would love to do more movies if possible.There’s an interesting scene with Snoop Dogg where you’re talking about the N.B.A. players and the post-George Floyd protests. You essentially suggested that the players fell in line when it came to protesting police shootings, and that they should have stopped playing until there was real reform. Is that an accurate framing of how you feel?Well, if I’m being frank, yeah. I think what I tried to insinuate, if not say, was that I just think that if players really, really felt passionate about the George Floyd situation, and they wanted to do more, I think the way that — or at least the way I thought that — you should actually effect change is changing. If that meant you all not playing, then you shouldn’t. I thought that should’ve been an option.I thought the league actually took advantage of the players and knowing that the majority of the players needed to play and needed the opportunity to play, and that wasn’t going to be an option.It seems like during the pandemic, the world linked on sports for entertainment, or to keep things at a calm. With that type of leverage, you got to know how to actually use that leverage. I don’t think the players really had a firm leadership in being able to devise a plan and put it together.Were you particularly political in your playing career? For example, would you have been willing to stop playing until there was legislation addressing a reform that you were passionate about?I would have taken the opportunity to go on Capitol Hill and use my platform to be loud and to say whatever it was I felt. You’ve got to remember, this is your livelihood. And as 400-plus players, you’re not just speaking for yourself. You’re trying to speak for a body of players that think differently, on all accounts. This is how you eat. This is how you feed yourself, and everybody is in different categories as far as economics, when it comes to the league.I probably would have been in a position to take a stance and actually want to initiate a conversation. But, again, I felt like it would have been important to have proper people, proper politicians and proper partnerships to be able to go to the table with proper vision to talk about reform. That’s all.[Later, Garnett added a clarification.]I want to make clear that I actually love the way the players stayed together, and whatever decision they came up with, they were in unison with it. I don’t want to come off like I’m going at the future players or the players that are current and they should have did this.I actually support the players, LeBron, Chris Paul and all they do for the union and for the players.Garnett and some of his Celtics teammates were upset that Ray Allen, left, would join the Miami Heat right after Miami defeated Boston in the 2012 playoffs.Mike Blake/ReutersPaul Pierce is featured heavily in the documentary, as are several other Celtics teammates from 2008. One who is barely mentioned is Ray Allen. Have you softened your stance toward Ray at all? [Some of Allen’s teammates were angry after Allen, who was with the Celtics from 2007 to 2012, left for Miami in free agency after the Heat defeated the Celtics in the playoffs.]I wish Ray all the best, and I wish him and his family all the best, and whatever he’s doing, I’ll always be supportive of it. And that’s all I got to say.Your teammates from that team have said, “It’s K.G. who has to be the one who wants to talk to Ray.” Are you open to any sort of reconciliation with him?It’s not that big of a deal to me. I think Ray’s living his life. I’m living mine. That’s where I stand on it. I think if people wanted to do something, we would have done it by now. So it’s pretty obvious where we’re at, but I wish all the best to all my teammates and people that I played with. Not just Ray, everybody.Paul Pierce mentioned recently that you and he were in the process of maybe starting a podcast. Who would you have as your first guest?Probably [former President Barack] Obama or Jamie Dimon [the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase]. Yeah. You caught me off guard.Well, you can call Paul after and talk about it.I was just about to say, right? “So Paul, since you put it out, who would be the first guest, right?” Paul would be like, some “Girls Gone Wild”-type stuff.Garnett was the fifth overall pick in 1995 when the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted him out of high school.Ann Heisenfelt/Associated PressCan you tell me a bit about your relationship with Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, the new ownership group of the Minnesota Timberwolves?I haven’t had any conversations with them. I haven’t spoken to A-Rod personally.Do you have any interest in being part of the new ownership group, whether in basketball operations or as a minority owner or in some way being part of the franchise?I think that opportunity has passed. I actually think I’ve been hearing whispers that A-Rod is actually going to take the Timberwolves to Seattle. So we’ll see. I don’t know.Would you be upset if that happened? [The Timberwolves didn’t respond to a request for comment.]No one wants to see the Wolves leave Minneapolis, but you know, it’s business. I would never want the Timberwolves to leave Minneapolis and Minnesota. I think that team means a lot to that state. More

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      An N.B.A. Female ‘First’ Hopes It’s Not Such a Big Deal Soon

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      Lisa Byington, the league’s first full-time female play-by-play broadcaster, with the Milwaukee Bucks, said she’s proud but hopes the novelty has a short shelf life.MILWAUKEE — It had the feel of the first day of school for Lisa Byington, who was learning her way around Fiserv Forum, where the Bucks play their home games. A couple of television production trucks were stationed in a corridor not far from the court, but Byington faced a dilemma: Which belonged to Bally Sports Wisconsin, the team’s broadcast partner?She took her chances and poked her head inside one of them and was excited to see some familiar people, including John Walsh, the director of the Bucks’ broadcasts. Walsh welcomed her by pointing to a box of cookies. “We still have some left!” he said. Byington had arrived early on Sunday for her first home game as the team’s new play-by-play voice.“Everyone’s made me feel like family,” Byington said later. “It’s been a super easy situation to walk into for a situation that shouldn’t be easy.”For 35 years, Jim Paschke provided the soundtrack for the Bucks as their play-by-play voice, as well-worn and beloved as a La-Z-Boy recliner. When he retired last season in the wake of the team’s first championship since 1971, he was replaced by Byington, 45, who made history as the first female full-time play-by-play broadcaster for a major men’s professional sports team. About a week later, Kate Scott was hired to do play-by-play for the Philadelphia 76ers.The hiring of both women this season is a sign of incremental progress in a predominantly male industry, though Byington is well aware that not everyone will be accustomed to hearing a woman relay the theatrics of Giannis Antetokounmpo soaring for a dunk.Byington, left, has a meeting with, from left, Brent Rieland, a producer; Zora Stephenson, the Bucks’ sideline reporter; and John Walsh, a director, before their show for a preseason game.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesByington takes a selfie video at Fiserv Forum before a game.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“You learn how to work with it, and you learn how to laugh about it,” she said. “And if there are fans who have concerns and don’t quite get it, I can listen. But ultimately, I don’t think of myself as a female broadcaster. I think of myself as a broadcaster, and the goal is to do the job well enough that people start thinking that way as well.”Growing up outside of Kalamazoo, Mich., Byington learned from her parents, Linda and Bob, both educators, that she could dream big, that she could be ambitious in school and excel at sports and that her gender would not hold her back. “They made me feel like I could do anything in the world,” she said.At Portage Northern High School, she helped lead the girls’ basketball team on a run to the state semifinals. Her father was the coach, and as she came off the court following the team’s season-ending loss, they shared a tearful embrace. The moment was filmed for a story on their father-daughter connection by WWMT, the CBS affiliate in Kalamazoo.“It was amazing to see, and that was the first time I realized the impact of broadcasting,” Byington said. “I always go back to that, because that’s really the first moment I started thinking, ‘Oh, that impacted me, and maybe someday I can impact others in the same way.’”At Northwestern, she played varsity basketball and soccer while majoring in journalism. (“I’m always better when I’m busy,” she said.) Armed with a master’s degree in broadcast journalism, she broke into the business as a sports anchor and reporter for modest-size television stations in Michigan.She was working her second job in local TV when she overheard a conversation on sports talk radio about how Pam Ward was set to become the first woman to be the play-by-play voice for a college football game on ESPN. Byington was on her way to cover a high school football game at the time.Byington stopped in at the media truck to check in with her director and producer.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesByington (left) talked with sideline reporter Zora Stephenson before a game.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“I remember it being such a big deal,” she said of Ward’s trailblazing assignment.A few years later, Byington was moonlighting as a sideline reporter for the Big Ten Network when one of her bosses there called with an unusual request. The network needed someone to do play-by-play for a women’s basketball game. It was unusual because Byington had never done play-by-play. She was unfazed: How much different could it be than anchoring a sportscast? Turns out, a lot.“It was horrible, but I must not have screwed up enough because they kept asking me to do a bunch of different sports,” she said.Byington went on to do play-by-play for softball and field hockey and football. She did men’s and women’s soccer. And gymnastics. And volleyball. Earlier this year, she was the first woman to do play-by-play of the men’s college basketball tournament for CBS and Turner Sports, and her call of Oral Roberts’ second-round upset over Florida drew media praise.And as the Bucks began evaluating candidates to replace Paschke in the weeks after the Bucks won last season’s championship, Peter Feigin, the team president, found that he was particularly impressed by about three consecutive hours of coverage that Byington supplied of the Big3 League playoffs. Byington was new to the Big3, but there she was, live from the Bahamas, working an hourlong pregame show followed by both semifinals.“If you can do that, you can do anything,” Feigin said.Byington was broadcasting a college football game on Sept. 4 when her agent, Gideon Cohen, tried to call her, which struck her as odd: He knew she was on the air. When Byington opted not to pick up, Cohen resorted to sending a text message that featured a GIF of Antetokounmpo. She had landed the Bucks job.Byington (right) calling a preseason game between the Bucks and the Oklahoma City Thunder.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesAfter a long day Byington leaves Fiserv Forum.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“Everything was kind of fuzzy after that,” she said.Women have been broadcasting men’s sports for years now, Byington said, but not every game for one team and for one fan base.“That’s the big difference, and that will be the big shift,” she said. “Because fans can handle a voice coming in and out for a national network. But now you’re based in the community, you’re going to events, you’re interacting with them, and it’s your voice on highlights and on social media — all of that.”And while Byington is not naïve to the significance of her gender, she does hope the story line has a short shelf life.“It’s a part of the process,” she said. “But if you’re asking me the same questions 10 years from now — or even next month — then there’s a problem.”On Sunday, the Bucks were in Milwaukee for their first preseason game at home, and as Byington walked toward the court about an hour before the tip, she took out her phone to capture the moment. The stands were still empty, and a couple of ushers did double-takes: Was she the new announcer?Byington chatted with Zora Stephenson, the Bucks’ sideline reporter, then made her way across the court to greet Beth Mowins, who was preparing for her play-by-play duties with ESPN, which was also broadcasting the game. The moment was not lost on either of them: two women calling the same game for different networks.“Probably a bigger deal than people realize,” Byington said.Before long, Byington was seated with Marques Johnson, her broadcast partner, near the scorer’s table as their show went live.“So happy you could join us,” she said. More

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      The Mannings Give TV Sports Yet Another Alternate Viewing Option

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      ESPN has the quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning. CBS has the slime and SpongeBob allure of Nickelodeon. A boxing upstart even got Trump. For viewers, it’s ever more options beyond just watching the game.Midway through the telecast of this N.F.L. season’s first Monday night game, Eli Manning asked his brother Peyton what he would do when a coach called a play he did not like.“I’m going to call my own play,” Peyton Manning said while mimicking a quarterback looking over to the sideline as if his helmet radio wasn’t working. “I’m going to call my own play. ‘I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.’ That’s what you do.”He added that he would have to give the assistant equipment manager, who was sure to be yelled at by the coach for the malfunctioning headset, a nice holiday present.It was a prime example of an N.F.L. moment suited to the brothers who are former star quarterbacks: a funny, well-told, behind-the-scenes anecdote that revealed how football actually works. The generally well-received telecast was full of such nuggets, prompting optimism about ESPN’s evolving experiment.The Mannings were not on ESPN’s main presentation of “Monday Night Football.” Their showcase was the debut of an alternate telecast option that will run nine more times this season on ESPN2 or ESPN+, the streaming service. The Mannings will work two more telecasts in September, including the game Monday night between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, with the rest of the schedule to be determined.ESPN and other networks spent years trying to hire Peyton Manning as a color commentator, and he finally agreed to work in a system that demands a lot less work and travel than the main broadcast. He appears live from a friend’s warehouse in Denver, while Eli appears from his home in New Jersey.Alternate telecasts are not new for ESPN, but the network has been increasing them recently. “We have done them across more sports and leagues than we have done them in the past, and we have done them with different approaches,” said Freddy Rolón, an ESPN vice president.And it is not just ESPN presenting sports in multiple ways. This month, Triller provided an alternate commentary stream featuring Donald J. Trump for a pay-per-view boxing card. CBS and Nickelodeon announced they would once again produce a slime-filled, kid-friendly telecast of an N.F.L. playoff game. NBC, Fox, Amazon and others have their own versions of alternate telecasts.Such telecasts go back to at least 2004, when ESPN showed a behind-the-scenes feed of a college football game, or perhaps to 1980, when NBC tried an announcerless broadcast with just the natural sights and sounds of the game. But the modern alternate broadcast dates to 2014, when ESPN first tried out its “megacast” presentation of the college football national championship game, with feeds featuring play breakdowns, celebrity guests, home team radio audio and other commentators.It is no coincidence that ESPN has been the biggest proponent of alternate feeds. Unlike many of its competitors, it controls numerous sports channels on which alternate feeds can be run. But with the rise of powerful internet and streaming services, alternate feeds do not need to be placed on television channels.“There isn’t a finite number of streams,” said Sam Flood, the head of sports production at NBC.Peyton and Eli Manning will be on ESPN2 for alternate telecasts of 10 Monday night N.F.L. games this season.Davide BarcoUntil recently, alternate feeds were mostly targeted at hard-core fans. Alternate telecasts with coaches breaking down plays or using advanced statistics are less likely to attract a casual fan. Instead, they draw established fans who want to learn more or stay engaged in a game that is boring or a blowout.The Nickelodeon game, however, attempts to get children and families who otherwise would not watch football to do so, and Triller’s stream with Trump was not for the boxing fan, but for perhaps the boxing-curious fan who would be drawn in, for one reason or another, by the former president.“We are aiming at people who never really watch boxing, some who don’t know what Triller is,” said Thorsten Meier, the chief operating officer of Triller Fight Club.The dirty little secret of alternate feeds, however, is that nobody watches them. Not nobody, exactly, but nobody in television terms.About 14.5 million people watched the standard telecast of the Baltimore Ravens and Las Vegas Raiders game in Week 1 of the N.F.L. season, while just 800,000 people watched the presentation by the Manning brothers. Just 5 percent of the audience chose the alternate telecast. In some ways, though, that is a great success — whatever is on ESPN2 during “Monday Night Football” usually draws only hundreds of thousands of viewers, anyway.But no matter how loudly fans might complain about announcers or wish telecasts did more of this or less of that, the fact remains that when presented with alternatives, viewers usually stick with what they know. Meier of Triller did not have final numbers, but he said the Trump alternate commentary was the least popular one of the night, behind the traditional English-language and Spanish-language commentaries.Networks also have to be careful about cannibalization. Most media companies that own sports rights these days belong to huge conglomerates with numerous concerns — ESPN is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC and cable channels like FX. The company could show versions of football across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, or show a sitcom on ABC, football on ESPN and a different sport on ESPN2. Homing in on fans of a specific sport or trying to attract casual fans can come at the cost of other corporate priorities.Where alternate telecasts really shine, then, is as a laboratory. They are often where new things in televised sports are tested before they are ready for prime time, such as which advanced statistics to show fans, and how to do so. When sports television is inevitably saturated by odds and betting data in the coming years, you can be sure it got its start on betting- and fantasy-focused alternate streams.For the last few years, NBC Sports has shown the final championship NASCAR race on NBC, as well as a feed focused just on the four drivers in championship contention on its cable channel, NBC Sports Network. That experience has led the network to incorporate an occasional focus on just one driver for a few laps during its regular showings of the NASCAR Cup Series.“We really lean into a specific driver for a little bit longer, and it creates a stronger bond between the driver and audience,” Flood said.If the future of sports watching is fans choosing exactly the kind of announcer or experience they want, why not take the idea further? Amazon, which shows N.F.L. games on Thursdays and owns the rights for a number of different sports in Europe, already provides several different commentary streams for those games.But Amazon also owns Twitch, the streaming platform most heavily associated with video games — where at any given moment you can find thousands of people, some of them professionals with a huge audience and some of them amateurs with no audience, commenting while playing video games or doing other things. Amazon has shown some games on Twitch with handpicked and hired hosts, but it is not a free-for-all open to thousands of different commentators.For one, there is a rights issue. The N.F.L. sells Amazon the right to do very specific things, which does not include allowing anybody who wants to comment on games on Twitch, and therefore allow anybody to watch on Twitch and bypass traditional ways of viewing.But even if they could do so, Marie Donoghue, the head of global sports at Amazon, is not sure they would want to. “We don’t know if infinite choice is what fans want,” she said. “We do think fans want great optionality, but we have to learn, because if you give fans infinite choice it may become overwhelming, and they get lost in the experience.”Infinite may not be on the horizon then, but more certainly is.Next year, when Amazon actually produces the N.F.L. games they show, there will almost certainly be more options. Meier said Triller was getting ready to “rock the world with a completely new concept” in boxing, while Rolón said ESPN would expand its alternate telecasts as technology allowed it to do so. More

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      The N.F.L.’s New Play: Embrace Betting Ads, Watch the Money Pour In

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      The placement of gambling ads during football game broadcasts shows how much the N.F.L. has changed in its approach toward gambling.Betting has long been a part of the National Football League’s DNA. Two of its founding fathers, Art Rooney and Tim Mara, were gamblers.Rooney bankrolled the early years of the Pittsburgh Steelers with a small fortune he won at Saratoga Race Course. Mara, his close friend, was a bookmaker who bought the New York Giants for $500.For decades, however, N.F.L. officials went to great lengths to distance the league from the tens of billions of dollars wagered on its games — legally in Las Vegas but also with offshore sports betting shops, in office and bar pools and among illegal bookies. The N.F.L. backed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act of 2006 and fought New Jersey’s efforts to allow its casinos and horse tracks to take bets on football games.“We’re trying to do whatever we can to make sure our games are not betting vehicles,” Joe Browne, an N.F.L. spokesman, told The New York Times in 2008.“We have been accused of allowing gambling because it is good for the popularity of the game,” he added. “If that’s true, then we have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing gambling on our games.”What the N.F.L. once sold as a principled stand, however, has more recently given way to a far more pragmatic one. As betting on football ballooned into a multibillion-dollar industry, and as state after state acted to legalize it, the N.F.L. was left with a stark choice: to continue to fight gambling on its games, or to embrace it in exchange for a significant cut of casino marketing dollars.The proliferation of legalized gambling, like that at a FanDuel sports book in Phoenix, has led the N.F.L. to loosen its restrictions.Matt York/Associated PressAnd that money the league once spent on lobbying against gambling? This season, the N.F.L. is getting it all back. And then some.On its opening weekend, celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx headlined commercials that aired during N.F.L. game broadcasts, pitching betting as just a click away with a WynnBET, DraftKings, FanDuel or BetMGM account. The NFL Network included betting lines on its ticker for the first time.Belated or not, the N.F.L.’s embrace of gambling is, well, lucrative. League and industry experts expect the revenue from gambling companies for the N.F.L. and its teams to be several hundred million dollars this season.“Over the next 10 years, this is going to be a more than $1 billion opportunity for the league and our clubs,” said Christopher Halpin, chief strategy and growth officer for the N.F.L.Little more than three years after the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling in most states, sports betting companies are meeting an eager audience. GeoComply Solutions, a company that uses geolocation to help confirm that bettors gambling online are doing so from places where betting is legal, said it processed 58.2 million transactions in the United States during the N.F.L.’s opening weekend, more than double what it handled during the same weekend last season.“We expected high volumes, but what we have seen has surprised us nonetheless,” said Lindsay Slader, a managing director with GeoComply, which is based in Canada. “The level of demand across new markets, such as Arizona, indicates that consumers have long waited for the option to legally place a sports bet.”The company said the bets came from 18 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Soon, more states are likely to join.New York has approved online betting and is in the process of determining which operators will be allowed to take wagers. And sports betting measures are under consideration in heavily populated states such as California, Texas and Florida, where sports book operators are spending heavily to get a foothold.“You have to look at the size of the prize,” said Craig Billings, chief executive of Wynn Interactive. “I think this is going to be the same size of market as the commercial casino industry in the U.S., $40 billion annually or more.”That is why he hired Affleck to direct and star, alongside Shaquille O’Neal, in a commercial, and his company has plans to spend more than $100 million on advertising throughout the N.F.L. season.“Being part of the in-game broadcast is important — it’s our most popular sport with a core audience of early adopters that have been betting offshore,” Billings said. “It’s a rifle shot you have to take.”WynnBET is hardly alone.Through Sept. 9 this year, DraftKings’ spending on national television advertising is up 98 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, while FanDuel’s spending has more than doubled, according to estimates from the research firm iSpot.TV.Overall, gambling companies spent $7.4 million on advertisements during the first week of prime time games, 9 percent more than they did during last year’s opening games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, according to estimates from EDO, a TV ad measurement platform.“The dollars are starting to add up,” said John Bogusz, the executive vice president of sports sales and marketing for CBS Sports.The network saw a surge in advertising interest for N.F.L. broadcasts this year. Bogusz attributed “a good portion” of the growth to sports betting ads.“Overall, the volume is up among all advertisers, but that added to it as well,” he said. “I think it will continue to grow.”Dan Lovinger, the executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, said on a conference call that the surge from sports betting operators was “reminiscent to when the fantasy category opened up.”In 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings spent millions blitzing the airwaves with commercials to gain a larger audience for daily fantasy games, where fans pay an entry fee to assemble rosters of real football players to play against the rosters of other fantasy players.The blitz worked. Sort of.The campaigns attracted customers but also the attention of regulators and prompted complaints from viewers who grew weary of the repetitive advertisements. Both companies spent fortunes on lawyers and lobbyists and endured intact to pivot to sports betting.The average amount of actual game action over the course of a three-hour broadcast of an N.F.L. game is about 11 minutes. Halpin said the league’s internal research showed that among its fans age 21 and older, roughly 20 percent were frequent sports bettors who were mostly young and male, and that another 20 percent — mostly women over 55 — were “active rejecters.”To navigate this stark divide, as well as persuade those in the middle, the N.F.L. decided to limit sports betting ads to one per quarter along with a pregame and halftime spot — six in all per broadcast.It also largely eschewed talk of odds and spreads directly during the biggest N.F.L. game broadcasts.“We have to avoid oversaturation of the game with sports betting talk or risk alienating fans,” Halpin said. “My mother loves her N.F.L., but she doesn’t want gambling talk.” More

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      ESPN Cancels Nichols's Show After Maria Taylor Comments

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      Rachel Nichols said in a recorded conversation that Maria Taylor, who is Black, was tabbed to host 2020 N.B.A. finals coverage because the network “felt pressure” on diversity.ESPN has taken Rachel Nichols off its N.B.A. programming and canceled “The Jump,” the daily basketball show she has hosted for five years, the network confirmed Wednesday.The show’s cancellation comes one month after The New York Times reported on disparaging comments made by Nichols about Maria Taylor, one of her colleagues at ESPN at the time. In a conversation with an adviser to the Lakers star LeBron James, Nichols, who is white, said that Taylor, who is Black, had been chosen to host 2020 N.B.A. finals coverage instead of her because ESPN executives were “feeling pressure” on diversity.Nichols, who was in her hotel room at the N.B.A.’s Walt Disney World bubble in 2020, was unaware her video camera was on and the conversation was being recorded to an ESPN server. Taylor has since left ESPN and joined NBC.“We mutually agreed that this approach regarding our N.B.A. coverage was best for all concerned,” said Dave Roberts, the executive who oversees ESPN’s N.B.A. studio shows.The moves were first reported by Sports Business Journal.It is unclear whether Nichols will be on ESPN’s airwaves again. She signed a contract extension last year, but ESPN declined to say whether she will appear on other shows. A representative for Nichols did not respond to a request for comment.In a post on Twitter, Nichols thanked the show’s crew and wrote that “The Jump was never built to last forever but it sure was fun.”In the wake of the Times report, ESPN removed Nichols from her role as a sideline reporter for the N.B.A. finals and canceled one episode of “The Jump.” But she continued hosting the show through the finals until Aug. 16, when she went on vacation. Malika Andrews hosted for the rest of the week in her absence.Outside of games themselves, “The Jump” was ESPN’s most prominent N.B.A. programming. Nichols frequently interviewed stars and newsmakers like Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., on the show. “The Jump” was nominated for one sports Emmy, as was Nichols for her hosting role, but it never found huge viewership.Roberts is the ESPN executive who decided to end “The Jump” and pull Nichols from N.B.A. studio programming. Two weeks ago, he received a promotion and took over some of the duties previously held by Stephanie Druley, the executive who previously oversaw N.B.A. studio programming and the person who had to deal with Nichols’s comments on the recorded call.The cancellation of “The Jump” is just one part of a broader reshuffling of ESPN’s daytime lineup.On Tuesday, ESPN announced that Max Kellerman was leaving “First Take” — where he had sparred with Stephen A. Smith — to host a new show that is being developed. That show will likely be in the afternoon, as will be a new daily N.B.A. show that will supplant “The Jump.”Besides creating the new basketball show, before the N.B.A. season begins in eight weeks, ESPN will also have to find a replacement for Taylor as host of “N.B.A. Countdown,” ESPN’s pregame and halftime show. More

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      Maria Taylor Leaves ESPN After NBA Finals

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      The popular studio host and reporter was widely expected to depart after disparaging remarks made by a colleague were made public. Her next stop could be NBC.On Tuesday, she hosted the N.B.A. finals for ESPN. The next day she was gone.ESPN announced on Wednesday that Maria Taylor, one of the network’s high-profile talents, had left the company. More