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      A Storm at ESPN Over Rachel Nichols Comments on Maria Taylor

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      In comments still rippling through the network, the reporter Rachel Nichols, who is white, said Maria Taylor, who is Black, earned the job to host 2020 N.B.A. finals coverage because ESPN was “feeling pressure” on diversity.As the N.B.A. playoffs started in May, the stars of ESPN’s marquee basketball show, “NBA Countdown,” discussed whether they would refuse to appear on it.They were objecting to a production edict from executives that they believed was issued to benefit a sideline reporter and fellow star, Rachel Nichols, despite comments she had made suggesting that the host of “NBA Countdown,” Maria Taylor, had gotten that job because she is Black. Nichols is white.A preshow call with Taylor and the other commentators — Jalen Rose, Adrian Wojnarowski and Jay Williams — as well as “NBA Countdown” staff members had turned acrimonious, and Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN’s president, had several phone conversations while at a family event to try to help smooth things over.Some of those involved saw the initial maneuvering as a sign of the network favoring Nichols despite a backdrop of criticism from employees who complained that the sports network has long mishandled problems with racism. It had declined to discipline Nichols despite fury throughout the company over her remark, which she made during a phone conversation nearly a year ago after learning that she would not host coverage during the 2020 N.B.A. finals, as she had been expecting.“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said in July 2020. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”ESPN has been trying, and often failing, to deal with the scandal for months. But a fast-approaching deadline is forcing the network to show at least some of its cards. Taylor’s contract expires during the N.B.A. finals, which start on Tuesday between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks, yet few substantive steps have been taken toward a new deal even though Pitaro has identified Taylor as one of ESPN’s rising stars.Whether or not ESPN and Taylor agree on a contract, the internal damage from the past year has been substantial.This article is based upon interviews with more than a dozen current and former ESPN employees, as well as others with knowledge of the company’s inner workings. Most of them spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by ESPN to speak to the news media or because of paperwork they had signed upon leaving the company.The VideoIn mid-July last year, Nichols was staying at the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., confined to her room for seven days because of the N.B.A.’s coronavirus protocols before the season resumed. She had with her a video camera so that she could continue appearing on ESPN shows, primarily “The Jump,” a daily N.B.A. show she has hosted since 2016.But she was eyeing hosting duties for ESPN’s pregame and postgame shows during the playoffs and finals, the network’s most important studio basketball programming. That host is the face of ESPN’s N.B.A. coverage, and before the pandemic, both she and Taylor hosted different versions of the show.About the time Nichols arrived in Florida, she was told by executives that Taylor would host coverage during the N.B.A. finals.Nichols discussed her career on a phone call on July 13, 2020, with Adam Mendelsohn, the longtime adviser of the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and James’s agent, Rich Paul. Nichols was speaking with Mendelsohn to request an interview with James and his Lakers teammate Anthony Davis, whom Paul also represents. During the conversation, she also sought advice from Mendelsohn because she believed her bosses were advancing Taylor at her expense.“I just want them to go somewhere else — it’s in my contract, by the way; this job is in my contract in writing,” Nichols told Mendelsohn, referring to hosting coverage during the N.B.A. finals a few minutes after saying ESPN was “feeling pressure” about racial diversity.Nichols, an ESPN reporter, and Mendelsohn, a spokesman for LeBron James, had a phone conversation that was recorded on video from ESPN’s server. This is an excerpt from a recording of more than 20 minutes that was obtained by The New York Times.“We, of course, are not going to comment on the specifics of any commentator contract,” said Josh Krulewitz, an ESPN spokesman. Krulewitz declined to make Pitaro available for an interview.Unbeknown to Nichols, her video camera was on, and the call was being recorded to a server at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn.It is not clear why her camera was on, but most people at ESPN believe that Nichols, using new technology during a pandemic, did not turn it off properly. It was effectively the remote pandemic version of a hot mic incident.Dozens of ESPN employees have access to the company’s video servers as part of their normal work flow.At least one of these people watched the video on the server, recorded it on a cellphone and shared it with others. Soon, more copies of the conversation were spreading around ESPN, and within hours it reached ESPN executives, in part because of some of the comments from Mendelsohn. He is a prominent political and communications strategist who has worked for the giant private equity firm TPG; was a communications director and deputy chief of staff for Arnold Schwarzenegger, then the governor of California; and is a co-founder of James’s voting rights group, More Than a Vote, which focused on encouraging access for Black voters during the 2020 election.In a recording of the video obtained by The New York Times, Nichols and Mendelsohn paused for a moment during the conversation after Nichols said she planned to wait for ESPN’s next move. Mendelsohn, who is white, then said: “I don’t know. I’m exhausted. Between Me Too and Black Lives Matter, I got nothing left.” Nichols then laughed.Nichols and Mendelsohn discussed her career and wider issues of diversity at ESPN and in corporate America. This is an excerpt from a longer video obtained by The New York Times.Mendelsohn, throughout the conversation, strategized with Nichols about how she should respond to ESPN. “Be careful because that place is a snake pit,” he said. They considered a move that Mendelsohn described as “baller” but “hard to pull off”: telling Pitaro and others that having two women competing over the same job was a sign of ESPN’s wider shortcomings with female employees.“Those same people — who are, like, generally white conservative male Trump voters — is part of the reason I’ve had a hard time at ESPN,” Nichols said during the conversation. “I basically finally just outworked everyone for so long that they had to recognize it. I don’t want to then be a victim of them trying to play catch-up for the same damage that affected me in the first place, you know what I mean. So I’m trying to just be nice.”Multiple Black ESPN employees said they told one another after hearing the conversation that it confirmed their suspicions that outwardly supportive white people talk differently behind closed doors.In a statement, Mendelsohn said: “I will share what I believed then and still believe to be true. Maria deserved and earned the position, and Rachel must respect it. Maria deserved it because of her work, and ESPN recognized that like many people and companies in America, they must intentionally change. Just because Maria got the job does not mean Rachel shouldn’t get paid what she deserves. Rachel and Maria should not be forced into a zero-sum game by ESPN, and Rachel needed to call them out.”He declined to answer follow-up questions about their conversation.In response to questions from The Times, Nichols said she was frustrated and was “unloading to a friend about ESPN’s process, not about Maria.” But she added: “My own intentions in that conversation, and the opinion of those in charge at ESPN, are not the sum of what matters here — if Maria felt the conversation was upsetting, then it was, and I was the cause of that for her.”Nichols said she reached out to Taylor to apologize through texts and phone calls. “Maria has chosen not to respond to these offers, which is completely fair and a decision I respect,” Nichols said.Taylor declined to comment.Nichols said the recording of the video by an ESPN colleague was hurtful. “I was shaken that a fellow employee would do this, and that other employees, including some of those within the N.B.A. project, had no remorse about passing around a spy video of a female co-worker alone in her hotel room,” she said, adding, “I would in no way suggest that the way the comments came to light should grant a free pass on them being hurtful to other people.”Krulewitz, the spokesman, said: “A diverse group of executives thoroughly and fairly considered all the facts related to the incident and then addressed the situation appropriately. We’re proud of the coverage we continue to produce, and our focus will remain on Maria, Rachel and the rest of the talented team collectively serving N.B.A. fans.”Maria Taylor’s contract with ESPN expires this month.Eleanor ShakespeareThe ResponseWithin ESPN, particularly among the N.B.A. group that works with both Taylor and Nichols, many employees were outraged upon watching the video. They were especially upset by what they perceived as Nichols’s expression of a common criticism used by white workers in many workplaces to disparage nonwhite colleagues — that Taylor was offered the hosting job only because of her race, not because she was the best person for the job.The employees also said that Nichols made Taylor’s job more difficult because Taylor also needs to go to Mendelsohn to secure interviews with basketball newsmakers.As ESPN executives were deciding what to do about the video, a four-minute cut of the conversation was leaked to Deadspin. (The video obtained by The Times is more than 20 minutes of continuous conversation.)The leak had a major effect on how ESPN responded. Multiple former ESPN employees, including a former executive, said that company executives expressed fears of a lawsuit from Nichols and that Disney, ESPN’s parent company, became heavily involved.Krulewitz said the leak did not change how the company reacted. Nichols said she spoke with a lawyer to better understand how an ESPN investigation would work, but she did not threaten to sue.ESPN declined to say whether any employees were disciplined, and Nichols said that she was told that the “content of the conversation did not warrant any discipline.” The only person known to be punished was Kayla Johnson, a digital video producer who told ESPN human resources that she had sent the video to Taylor. Johnson, who is Black, was suspended for two weeks without pay, and later was given less desirable tasks at work.Johnson did not respond to requests for comment and recently left ESPN.Taylor, who had recently gained widespread acclaim for her on-air comments about the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, was fed up because she had also been disparaged recently by at least one other ESPN colleague for speaking about Floyd. She told executives, including Pitaro, the company’s president, that she would not finish covering the season.“I will not call myself a victim, but I certainly have felt victimized and I do not feel as though my complaints have been taken seriously,” she wrote in an email to ESPN executives, including Pitaro, two weeks after the incident, which was obtained by The Times. “In fact, the first time I have heard from HR after 2 incidents of racial insensitivity was to ask if I leaked Rachel’s tape to the media. I would never do that.”She added: “Simply being a front facing black woman at this company has taken its toll physically and mentally.”A few days later, Taylor reconsidered and told the company she would host “NBA Countdown” during the playoffs on one condition: She did not want Nichols to appear on the show.In Taylor’s view, according to six people who have spoken to her, ESPN executives agreed to the stipulation but violated it almost immediately by allowing Nichols to make short appearances without interacting with Taylor. ESPN declined to comment about the arrangement.All of Rachel Nichols’s appearances on “NBA Countdown” this season have been prerecorded.Eleanor ShakespeareRenewed ConfrontationOne employee involved in N.B.A. coverage said that ESPN’s decision not to punish Nichols was still an “active source of pain” and discussion among co-workers.It also has potentially affected coverage and assignments. For the 2020-21 N.B.A. season, in addition to her role hosting “The Jump,” Nichols was made the sideline reporter for ESPN’s most important N.B.A. games.Taylor, meanwhile, has become increasingly comfortable with expressing her views within the company. In the spring, she admonished executives for appointing a game coverage team for the N.C.A.A. women’s Final Four that did not include any Black women and pressured the company to add LaChina Robinson as an analyst, which they did.Taylor also has given Malika Andrews, who is Black, a bigger role on “NBA Countdown,” which directly led to the latest internal tug of war.To avoid having Taylor and Nichols interact, all of Nichols’s appearances on “NBA Countdown” this season were prerecorded, but often in a way to make segments appear as if they aired live. Appearances by other sideline reporters were a mixture of live and prerecorded.Shortly before the playoffs, however, ESPN executives said that if Taylor continued to refuse to interact with Nichols on air, no reporters would be allowed on the show live. “NBA Countdown” pushed back to no avail.“The idea behind this was to treat every reporter equally and inclusively by providing a similar forum and platform,” Krulewitz said. Nichols said she preferred “consistency in the way the show used the reporters,” and added that she told ESPN decision makers that she did not want to take opportunities away from others.But on May 22, the first day of the N.B.A. playoffs, the tensions exploded between those who worked on the show and ESPN executives in charge of basketball.On the preshow call involving the stars of the show and production staff in both Los Angeles and New York, Taylor insisted to an executive that she be able to conduct live interviews with sideline reporters. She also brought up the recorded phone conversation. Wojnarowski jumped in and called Nichols a bad teammate. Rose said that ESPN had asked a lot from Black employees over the past year, but that he and other Black employees would extend their credibility to the company no longer.Taylor, whom executives had asked numerous times to change her interactions with Nichols, said that the only people punished by ESPN’s actions were women of color: Johnson, herself and the three sideline reporters — Lisa Salters, Cassidy Hubbarth and Andrews — who received lesser assignments so that Nichols could have the lead sideline reporter role and now were not being allowed to appear on the show live.Pitaro spoke with Taylor and Wojnarowski, and Wojnarowski alone, when Pitaro asked Wojnarowski whether going back to the status quo and allowing sideline reporters to appear on the show live would solve the problem, according to three people familiar with the conversation.By the end of the day, the restrictions were rescinded.Krulewitz declined to comment on the argument, besides saying that “the decision regarding reporters on these shows was made solely by N.B.A. production management,” and not Pitaro.The spread of the recording throughout ESPN happened less than a week after Pitaro had pledged “accountability” and improvements throughout ESPN’s workplace culture.“We are going to speak through our actions here, and we are going to improve,” Pitaro said in an interview then. “If we don’t, it is on me, I failed, because it does all start with me.”Still, nobody was outwardly punished besides Johnson, the producer who recently departed ESPN. She left with a handful of Black employees who had pressed Pitaro for changes.Taylor’s contract with ESPN expires in less than three weeks, and it looks increasingly likely that those could be her last weeks at the network. More

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      He Created the Sports Theme Song You Didn’t Know You Knew

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      It’s a little bit “aggressive” and a little bit “light.” The theme song for TNT’s “Inside the N.B.A.” is as much a character as the show’s popular hosts.Even the most casual N.B.A. fans probably remember the classic theme song for games played on NBC during the golden era of 1990s basketball. They’ll almost assuredly recall that it was written by John Tesh, the former television host and composer. Some might even know that it’s called “Roundball Rock.” It has been memorialized in pop culture on “Saturday Night Live” and further enshrined with a video of Tesh explaining where the song came from: a voice mail message he left for himself.In the 21st century, another theme song has become familiar to N.B.A. fans, although most likely not as much as Tesh’s. It is the one that signals the start of one of the most influential studio shows in sports, “Inside the N.B.A.” on TNT. Here, the composer of the theme song is virtually unknown to the show’s viewers and even to its hosts. But he is a household name in some corners of music fandom and one of the industry’s most prolific composers.The composer is Trevor Rabin, the former guitarist of the progressive rock band Yes. The South African-born musician was the driving force behind the album “90125,” a comeback record for the band, and the song “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” the band’s only No. 1 hit. Rabin was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 with the band.“I wasn’t really even aware of that, to tell you the truth,” Ernie Johnson, one of the hosts of “Inside the N.B.A.” and a Yes fan, said in a phone call after finding out that Rabin was the composer. “But that’s very cool.”Rabin, who lives in Los Angeles, described himself as a rabid basketball fan, particularly of the Lakers. He said that he “religiously” watches games and uses that time to practice the guitar. But when it comes to this theme song, he has gone mostly unnoticed.“I remember Shaq saying once he liked the theme just in passing, but no one’s ever acknowledged me. Charles Barkley needs to acknowledge it and give a shout out. Otherwise I’m never going to support him again,” Rabin joked during a recent interview, referring to Shaquille O’Neal and Barkley, who host “Inside the N.B.A.” with Johnson and Kenny Smith.Rabin, 67, turned to film scoring in the 1990s. He had shown an interest in orchestration dating to his childhood in South Africa, growing up as the son of a classical pianist mother and a violin-playing father. As a member of Yes, Rabin said that he would often try to introduce orchestral components to the music.Rabin is perhaps best known for composing the theme song for the movie “Remember the Titans.”Mike Coppola/Getty Images“A lot of it has become kind of electronic and computerized, but writing for orchestra was always a love of mine,” Rabin said, referring to on-screen scores. “So I just decided I’m going to get into film, and I remember my manager saying: ‘Oh, it’s a big brick wall there. Just because you’ve had a notoriety with other areas, film’s going to be very difficult.’ But I decided, ‘No, I really want to do this.’”He quickly became a sought after composer in Hollywood. In 1998 alone, the films “Armageddon,” “Jack Frost” and “Enemy of the State” were released with Rabin’s scores. His most famous work is most likely the theme song for 2000’s “Remember the Titans.” That composition was played in November 2008 after Barack Obama delivered the acceptance speech for winning the presidency.It was the “Titans” theme that put Rabin on the radar of Craig Barry, now the Turner Sports executive who oversees the “Inside the N.B.A.” studio production. Barry, also a serious Yes fan, was doing some production work for NBC during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City — and used the theme from the “Titans” soundtrack to close out the final broadcast. Barry then recruited Rabin to rework the TNT studio show’s theme song.“I went armed with literally a handful of his work,” Barry said, and added, “I was essentially telling him I want all of this together.”Part of what makes a theme song effective, Barry said, is that “you never get sick of hearing it.”Clearly, TNT has not. Usually, according to Rabin, the network will update graphics and other parts of the broadcast — except the hosts, of course — every three years or so. But the theme song has stayed the same for almost two decades. It has become a character of the show, much in the same way as Johnson, O’Neal, Barkley and Smith. (Like Tesh’s, this theme has appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” but as part of a larger sendup of “Inside the N.B.A.”)“To me, it’s kind of a signature,” Johnson said. “If somebody has their back turned, and they’re in the house doing something and have the television on for background noise and they’re waiting for something, when they hear that song, they go, ‘OK, the ‘N.B.A. on TNT’ is on. It’s like the stamp that says the N.B.A. is coming on.”The listener can hear certain mainstays of what made Yes successful, particularly the soaring lead guitar riffs and the heavy use of a synthesizer. But there is more that may not immediately meet the ear. The song is in the time signature 7/8, whereas most songs written for any medium in the last two centuries are more traditionally 4/4. (A time signature is generally a measure of a song’s rhythm.)The genesis of the theme song was an act of aggression. Rabin said that he was watching the 1984 N.B.A. finals between the rival Boston Celtics and his Lakers, when during Game 4, Kevin McHale, the Celtics power forward, clotheslined the Lakers’ Kurt Rambis. Rabin was scoring while watching the game and the clothesline inspired him to come up with the 7/8 meter, which he would then use for TNT.“I feel like anything I do, when I listened back to it, I always think: ‘Oh, God, why didn’t I do this? I should have done that,’” Rabin said.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesAnother aspect distinguishing this song is its versatility, whether under highlights or as a main theme.“What’s unique about the ‘N.B.A. on TNT’ theme is that it can be used in various situations, and it can be really appropriate,” Barry said. “It has this primary theme and then it has this very aggressive rush section and then it has a light fanfare piece of it. It’s all kind of seamlessly melded together.”Rabin said the only N.B.A. figure he has discussed the theme with is Gary Payton, the Hall of Fame point guard who spent much of his career with the Seattle SuperSonics. Right after the theme made its debut, Payton visited the set of “Bad Boys II,” a film Rabin had scored. Rabin was chatting with the film’s lead, Will Smith, when Payton approached.“I said: ‘Oh, my goodness, you’re the Glove. How you doing? And can I shake the glove?’” Rabin said.He informed Payton that he had composed the “Inside the N.B.A.” theme song.“And then he was like, ‘Man, that’s cool.’ And I guess that’s the story,” Rabin said.Even though TNT has not made a move for a new theme song, the current one does have one prominent critic: Rabin.“It’s kind of a terrible affliction I have,” he said, adding that he’s also uncomfortable watching movies he has scored. “I feel like anything I do, when I listened back to it, I always think: ‘Oh, God, why didn’t I do this? I should have done that.’”But every time the song is played on the broadcast, Rabin collects a check, no matter how much he cringes at hearing it played.“I wish it was $15,000 at a time, but unfortunately I think it’s more like 15 cents,” Rabin said. More

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      2021 French Open: What to Watch on Monday

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      Serena Williams and Roger Federer feature on Court Philipe-Chatrier on the second day of first-round matches.How to watch: 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time on the Tennis Channel and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on NBC; streaming on the Tennis Channel+ and NBC apps.In Serena Williams’s illustrious career, there have been many firsts. On Monday, win or lose, she will add another as the first person, alongside her opponent, Irina-Camelia Begu, to play a night session match at the French Open. But before then, there are plenty of entertaining contests to watch on Memorial Day.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Iga Swiatek of Poland celebrates winning her first career Grand Slam singles title at the 2020 French Open.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressCourt PHILIPPE-CHATRIER | 6 a.m. MondayIga Swiatek vs. Kaja JuvanIga Swiatek, ranked No. 9 in the world, won the French Open last year without dropping a set, but hasn’t rested on her laurels since. In the Italian Open final this month, Swiatek defeated Karolina Pliskova, a former world No. 1, without dropping a game, and secured a No. 9 world ranking, a career high. Swiatek, who turns 20 on Monday, modeled her game after Rafael Nadal’s, evinced in her aggressive style of play and topspin-heavy shots. It’s well suited for the crushed red brick of Paris.Kaja Juvan, a 20-year-old ranked 101st, reached the third round of the Australian Open in February, her best major tournament finish. This is daunting opposition, and while Juvan’s deft touch serves her well on clay, her drop shot will be hard to execute against Swiatek, whose excellent movement was a factor in her march to the title last year. There is little doubt that Swiatek will be able to secure a win.Court PHILIPPE-CHATRIER | 8 a.m. MondayDaniil Medvedev vs. Alexander BublikWith Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal both in the other half of the draw, Daniil Medvedev, the two-time Grand Slam finalist, hopes to make a deep run on his worst surface. Medvedev, a 25-year-old lanky baseliner ranked No. 2, has struggled with clay, proclaiming during his first match at the 2021 Madrid Open that “I don’t want to play here on this surface.” Although he was able to win in three sets, he’s never done so at Roland Garros, losing in the first round every time.On the other side of the net, Alexander Bublik is equally unsuited to clay. Although Bublik, 23, reached a world ranking of No. 37 after a run to the quarterfinals at the Madrid Open in early May, his style is similar to that of Medvedev, preferring hard and grass courts. Bublik, a Russian-born player who now represents Kazakhstan, has had slightly more success at the French Open, reaching the second round in the past two years.Because of their poor performances on clay and similar styles, it’s hard to tell which player is favored. Bublik’s recent success might give him the confidence to beat the best all-around player in this half.Sofia Kenin competing at the Stuttgart Open in Germany in April.Pool photo by Philipp Guelland/EPA, via ShutterstockCOURT SUZANNE-LENGLEN | 10 a.m. MondaySofia Kenin vs. Jelena OstapenkoSofia Kenin, the fourth seed, had a breakout season in 2020. Kenin won the Australian Open at the beginning of the year and reached the French Open final. However, this season has not gone well; Kenin, 22, has lost her last four matches and announced in early May that she would no longer be coached by her father. While her style of play is well suited to clay, she may struggle, especially against better opponents.Jelena Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion, will be pushing for an upset. Now ranked No. 44, Ostapenko hasn’t made it past the third round of a major since Wimbledon in 2018 and has lost in the first round on four occasions since. Having reached the quarterfinals at the Italian Open, Ostapenko, 23, will be confident, and a deep run is not out of the question if she can muscle past Kenin.Roger Federer practicing ahead of his first match on Monday at Roland Garros.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesCourt PHILIPPE-CHATRIER | 10 a.m. MondayRoger Federer vs. Denis IstominRoger Federer, a 20-time major champion, last played a Grand Slam event at the 2020 Australian Open. Now, having recovered from two surgeries on his right knee, he has returned with a more grounded sense of what he can accomplish. Federer, 39, has spoken about the reality that even on his best days he was rarely a top contender for titles at Roland Garros, and that his focus is mostly on the grass courts at Wimbledon, which begins in three weeks.Denis Istomin, a 34-year-old qualifier, is in a similar position. Istomin, a Russian-born player who represents Uzbekistan, has never made it past the second round of the French Open. His style of play is better suited for grass and hardcourt tournaments. Although Istomin is ranked No. 204, he will be a tough challenge for Federer, if only because of his match fitness.Court PHILIPPE-CHATRIER | 3 p.m. MondaySerena Williams vs. Irina-Camelia BeguSerena Williams, the seventh seed, recently played her 1,000th match on the WTA tour, a testament to both her longevity and her success at the highest levels of tennis. However, she has recently struggled on clay. After reaching the semifinals at the Australian Open in February, Williams, 39, took a break, returning in May for the Italian Open. Now, having lost two of her three matches in preparation for Roland Garros, it’s unclear whether she has prepared herself properly for a deep run at the tournament.Irina-Camelia Begu, ranked No. 74, may see this as an opportunity for her first top 10 victory since 2018. Although Begu, 30, hasn’t won a main draw match since the Phillips Island Trophy in February, Begu’s grinding style of play works well on clay, and her plan will be to move Williams around the court and disrupt her powerful baseline play. More

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      Marv Albert, Hall of Fame N.B.A. Sportscaster, Is Retiring

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      Albert, who turns 80 in June, will call his last game in the Eastern Conference finals.Marv Albert, whose rapid-fire coverage became an N.B.A. soundtrack for almost 60 years, will retire from sportscasting after the 2021 postseason, his employer, Turner Sports, announced on Monday.Albert, who will turn 80 in June, called 25 N.B.A. All-Star Games, 13 N.B.A. finals, the 1992 gold medal men’s basketball victory for the United States and dozens of other major sporting events for several networks in a long career that earned him recognition in several halls of fame.Though Albert called games in a variety of sports, including professional football, hockey and baseball, he is most recognized for his work in basketball. He was the Knicks’ lead play-by-play voice for much of four decades starting in 1967, and became the primary N.B.A. voice for NBC Sports in 1990, where he worked from 1977 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2002. He has worked for Turner Sports for 22 years, 19 of them as an N.B.A. play-by-play announcer.“There is no voice more closely associated with N.B.A. basketball than Marv Albert’s,” Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said in the announcement. “Marv has been the soundtrack for basketball fans for nearly 60 years,” he added.Albert registered his first signature “Yes!” call in 1968, when Knicks guard Dick Barnett hit a jump shot during the playoffs.On-air, he was “as warm as they come,” David Halberstam, a former play-by-play announcer for the Miami Heat who publishes the Sports Broadcast Journal, said in a phone interview. But off-air, Albert was on the quiet side. Born and raised in Brooklyn, his obsession with basketball started early. He worked as a ball boy for the Knicks as a teenager and then returned as a college senior and developed a close relationship with Marty Glickman, the famed broadcaster who called the team’s games for WCBS radio at the time. Sometimes, Glickman would hand Albert the microphone to announce statistics.Albert called his first game on Jan. 27, 1963, filling in for Glickman as the Boston Celtics beat the Knicks. He was 21.“He called the game with such a great flair and such great descriptiveness that he had learned from Glickman, and it was riveting and gripping,” Halberstam said of Albert’s early years. “You’d never want to turn that radio off.”Albert’s coverage of the first five of Michael Jordan’s six N.B.A. championship titles solidified his household name. But his career was interrupted by a highly publicized trial in 1997 that exposed a series of lurid sexual encounters. Two women testified that Albert had attacked them, and Albert pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor account of assault and battery.After pleading guilty, he resigned from the MSG Network, which broadcast the Knicks and the Rangers of the N.H.L., and was fired by NBC. He did not serve jail time but attended court-mandated therapy.Less than a year later, though, he returned to broadcasting by covering Knicks games on the radio and as host of the nightly “MSG Sportsdesk.” In 1999, he rejoined NBC. Albert left NBC in 2002, after the network lost its N.B.A. coverage, and he was let go as the voice of the Knicks in 2004 after criticizing the team’s play on air.“He made you love basketball more because of his style and because of his voice, his tone and his rhythm and his pace,” Mike Breen, who took over doing television play-by-play for the Knicks from Albert, said in a phone interview. “It was perfection.”Albert was named to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2015, and was recognized by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997.His final series will be the Eastern Conference finals; Philadelphia is the top seed in the East, and the Nets are No. 2. The No. 4-seeded Knicks will make their first postseason since 2013.Albert said in a statement that his 55 years in broadcasting had “flown by.”“Now, I’ll have the opportunity to hone my gardening skills and work on my ballroom dancing,” he said.Richard Sandomir contributed reporting. More

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      What Channel Is the Masters On? How to Watch and Stream It

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      Coverage of the Masters Tournament is split across a number of television networks, streaming platforms and websites, making it confusing to understand how to watch. The good news is that there are a number of viewing options, some of them free, for golf fans.Here is how you can catch Sunday’s final round.The main actionThe traditional television coverage of the tournament’s final round, which will culminate with somebody donning a green jacket, can be seen on CBS from 2 to 7 p.m. Eastern time. That coverage will be simulcast in the CBS Sports app and on the Paramount+ streaming service.All-day coverageGroups begin teeing off in the morning, however, and you can start watching the Masters with your coffee. On the Masters livestream there are four different “channels” to watch:Featured groupsAmen CornerHoles 15 and 16Holes 4, 5 and 6These options all begin and end at different times, depending on when the first golfers reach the different holes, but the featured groups channel kicks things off at 10:25 a.m. Eastern. The featured groups are Paul Casey and Billy Horschel (10:30 a.m.), Bryson DeChambeau and Harris English (11 a.m.), Justin Spieth and Brian Harman (2:10 p.m.) and Justin Rose and Marc Leishman (2:30 p.m.).You can watch the Masters livestream in a number of different places. ESPN+, Paramount+, the CBS Sports app, CBSSports.com and Masters.com all carry it.Other stuffIf you are more interested in analysis from talking heads and footage of golfers practicing before their tee times, the Golf Channel is live from the Masters both before and after the main coverage on CBS. If you miss the final round, encore coverage begins almost immediately, at 8 p.m. Eastern on the CBS Sports Network. More

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      in Football

      With 17 Games, the N.F.L. Evolves for Streaming Generation

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      The last time the league expanded its regular season 43 years ago, it was evolving for TV broadcasts and priming for an offensive era.We come to praise the 16-game N.F.L. schedule, but also to bury it.The 16-game regular season was the Platonic ideal of professional sports scheduling for 43 years, in part because the number 16 itself is a neatly divisible, perfect square of almost fearful symmetry. Each team’s schedule could be easily subdivided into even numbers of divisional games and interconference matchups. With the addition of a bye week in 1990, the 16-game schedule occupied almost precisely one-third of the calendar year, making football season feel comprehensive yet brisk and intense, unlike the sprawling 82-game N.B.A. and N.H.L. seasons that nearly overlap themselves.Unfortunately, the 16-game schedule is going the way of the leather helmet. The N.F.L. formally announced Tuesday that its regular season would expand to 17 games, rubber stamping a move team owners have been preparing for over a year. Farewell, even numbers and familiar statistical benchmarks! Say hello instead to Super Bowls that take place on Presidents’ Day weekend and mediocre playoff teams that boast winning percentages of 52.941176.The expanded schedule means expanded revenues for the league, of course. The new 17-game season dovetails with the recently announced 11-year, $110 billion media rights agreements with broadcasters and streaming services that take effect in 2023.But the N.F.L. is not merely adding a week of games. The league is evolving so it can become an even larger part of a changing culture and multimedia ecosystem, just as it was doing when it expanded the regular season from 14 games to 16 in 1978.That year, the N.F.L. did much more than add two games to its schedule. It introduced wild card teams so it could add an additional round to the playoffs. League owners also enacted sweeping rule changes designed to increase passing and scoring, which would become something of a habit for them over the next four decades. The new rules permitted blockers to open their hands to push defenders without incurring holding penalties and prohibited defenders from dragging wide receivers around the field behind motorcycles. (More precisely, the rampant and often vicious downfield contact that made defenses like Pittsburgh’s “Steel Curtain” so effective became illegal.)As a result of relaxed rules and the 14 percent longer schedule, pre-1978 statistics looked quaint just a few seasons later. The All-Pro Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese threw for 2,252 yards and led the league with 22 touchdowns in 1977. By 1984, Dan Marino shattered existing records with 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns while playing beside some of Griese’s former teammates.Before the arrival of the 16-game schedule, the N.F.L. preseason lasted six grueling weeks. The regular season did not begin until the third week of September and ended in mid-December, followed by two short weeks of playoffs. Even Super Bowls were held on Sunday afternoons, as if they were just another game, until the end of the 1977 season. Starting in 1978, the regular season and playoffs essentially took their modern footprints and culminated in a prime-time television spectacular.Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula, center, posed with quarterbacks Earl Morrall and Bob Griese, right, in 1973, just before the team finished an undefeated season with a Super Bowl victory.Mark Foley/Associated PressPro football’s changes were so pronounced and swift that the advent of the 16-game season looks in retrospect like Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. The game’s history before 1978 is sepia-toned, with fans in parkas and fedoras huddled on icy bleachers watching grizzled, hung over quarterbacks who smoked cigarettes during pregame warm-ups (as John Facenda narrated the scene). Everything after 1978 is in vivid color, faster-paced and poised for the era of cable television, satellite packages, video games and fantasy sports.The 16-game schedule provided a durable framework as the N.F.L. expanded from 28 to 32 teams and six to eight divisions, increased the number of playoff participants from 10 to (as of last year) 16, added bye weeks, introduced Sunday and Thursday night television packages and conditioned football fans to watch live coverage of off-season events like the draft and scouting combine. The schedule was so well-structured in later years that fans knew which opponents their favorite team would face next season the moment the previous one ended. Yet droves of fans tuned in to watch schedule announcement shows anyway.The new 17-game schedule arrives at another time of rapid change. The N.F.L. has long embraced fantasy football and is now welcoming legalized gambling partnerships. Media rights have been awarded to streaming services in addition to traditional TV broadcasters, and the league is expected to use some of the extra games to expand its international presence. Just as it ditched bell-bottoms and abandoned midcentury trappings in 1978, the N.F.L. in 2021 is putting away its cargo pants, downloading TikTok and getting ready to appeal to zoomers.Traditionalists howled in the first years after the N.F.L.’s 16-game expansion, when old records were easily eclipsed and men with nicknames like “Hacksaw” and “The Assassin” ceded the stage to golden boys like Joe Montana. Purists will also fret in the weeks and months to come about a supposedly diluted product with too many games and playoff teams.Come winter, those same naysayers will surely end up rushing to finalize their fantasy lineups before plopping on a bar stool or sofa for that extra week of games. Within a few years, we will all grow accustomed to wild card teams with 9-8 records, commonplace 5,000-yard passing seasons and play-by-play announcers on 5K-resolution broadcasts updating the point spread after halftime. The 16-game era will then feel grainy and fusty by comparison.On a related note, the N.F.L. also shortened its preseason by one game. No one will complain about that change. More

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      in Football

      N.F.L. Signs Media Deals Worth Over $100 Billion

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      The new deals with broadcasters and streaming services pave the way for team owners to add a 17th regular season game to the schedule and to recoup revenue lost with reduced fan attendance in 2020.The N.F.L. signed new media rights agreements with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon collectively worth about $110 billion over 11 years, nearly doubling the value of its previous contracts.The contracts, which will take effect in 2023 and run through the 2033 season, will cement the N.F.L.’s status as the country’s most lucrative sports league. They will also set the stage for the league’s owners to make good on plans to expand the regular season to include a 17th game and charge more for broadcasting rights.The league’s soaring revenues will aid far-reaching plans for the next decade, a period when team owners hope to expand the N.F.L.’s already robust calendar, make deeper inroads into overseas markets and increase the football audience via streaming services. The N.F.L. is poised to more than recoup the roughly $4 billion in losses wrought by not having maximum capacity attendance at games in 2020.“Along with our recently completed labor agreement with the N.F.L.P.A., these distribution agreements bring an unprecedented era of stability to the League and will permit us to continue to grow and improve our game,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.According to four people familiar with the agreements who requested anonymity because they were not authorized by the N.F.L. to speak publicly about the deals, CBS, Fox and NBC will pay more than $2 billion each to hold onto their slots, with NBC paying slightly less than CBS and Fox. ESPN will pay about $2.7 billion a year to continue airing Monday Night Football, but also to be added into the rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl beginning in 2026. The agreement with ESPN starts one year earlier, in 2022, because its current contract expires one year earlier than the others.Each of the broadcasters’ deals include agreements for their respective streaming platforms, while Amazon will show Thursday night games on its Amazon Prime Video service.“Over the last five years, we started the migration to streaming. Our fans want this option, and the league understands that streaming is the future,” said Robert K. Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and chairman of the N.F.L.’s media committee.The N.F.L. has not yet announced who will broadcast Sunday Ticket, a subscription service that lets fans watch out-of-market weekend games that are not broadcast nationally. DirecTV has the rights to that service through 2022.The jump in revenue will not initially change the fortunes of players, who are locked into a 10-year collective bargaining agreement narrowly ratified in March 2020. Under the terms of that labor deal, players will see a bump in their share of the N.F.L.’s revenue, up to 48.5 percent from 47, while team owners negotiated the option to add a 17th game to the regular season schedule in 2021, something players had long opposed.It will be the first major expansion to the N.F.L. season in more than four decades, when teams began playing 16 games, up from 14, in 1978.Player salaries in the next few years will rise moderately because most media agreements are graduated, with the first year of a new deal worth only marginally more than the last year of an expiring deal. N.F.L. team owners are expected to formally approve the additional game at their annual meeting in late March, when there is likely to be little dissent. Once the additional game is approved, players and team owners will work out the calendar logistics, which could include eliminating one of the four preseason games teams are required to play and adding a second bye week to each of the 32 team schedules.Many other competitive issues will also have to be resolved, as extending the regular season by one game could also affect other fixtures in the N.F.L. calendar that were adjusted last season because of the coronavirus pandemic. The owners voted on Dec. 16 to make the extra game an interconference matchup so as to not affect playoff tiebreakers. But still unresolved are the timing of off-season workouts, the start dates of training camps and the regular season’s start and end dates.The league was able to fully complete its 2020 season on schedule in part because it worked hand-in-hand with the N.F.L. Players Association to hammer out Covid-19 protocols and a raft of other rules.The union’s executive director, DeMaurice Smith, has said that no decision would be made “without an eye to what we’ve learned this year.” “March and April of 2021 is not going to look like March and April of 2018 and 2019,” he added.The labor deal also included an expanded playoff format, with an extra team added in each conference, more limited training camps and a relaxation of the rules governing the use of marijuana.Many players initially balked at the idea of a longer regular season, which they said increased their chances of injury. But the team owners were eager to expand the regular season as a way to entice the league’s national television partners to pay more for broadcast rights.All of the N.F.L.’s national media agreements — which together have an average annual value of nearly $8 billion — were set to expire over the next two years. ESPN’s deal to show Monday night games was scheduled to end after the 2021 season, while agreements with CBS, Fox, NBC, DirecTV, Verizon and Amazon were in place through the 2022 season.Before the coronavirus pandemic, many television and digital media executives said the N.F.L. had the upper hand in negotiating major increases in rights fees because the league had a long-term labor deal in place and because its programming took less of a ratings hit than other broadcasts of U.S.-based sports during the pandemic. Ratings for regular season football fell just 7 percent, compared to 20 percent for prime time broadcast television and even larger declines for other marquee sports events like the Masters, the N.B.A. finals and the Stanley Cup finals.N.F.L. games are also the most watched programming on television by far, making up 76 of the 100 most watched television programs in 2020.Other leagues have also signed new agreements with big increases during the pandemic. The Southeastern Conference received nearly a sixfold increase in money for its marquee college football games, while the N.H.L. will almost assuredly see its media payments double when it finishes selling its rights. More

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      in Soccer

      Fenerbahce vs. beIN Is Turkey's High-Stakes Rivalry

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      A feud between a top Turkish soccer team and the league’s broadcaster is rooted in taped chants, time stamps and club rivalry. But the fight’s cost could be enormous.The offending chant had been broadcast during Turkish league matches for months before anyone noticed it. The refrain, a variation of which is often heard in stadiums around Turkey, ends with a profanity directed at Fenerbahce, one of the country’s biggest and richest clubs.For months, it had been included in the prerecorded crowd noise that has become the soundtrack to live sports in empty stadiums in the coronavirus era. And for months, no one in Turkey said a thing — until January, when a keen-eared observer noticed the chant in the background of games involving one of the league’s smallest teams.Now, it is the latest flash point in an increasingly bitter dispute pitting Fenerbahce — a Turkish soccer team which has millions of passionate fans and is led by one of Turkey’s richest men — against beIN Media Group, one of the world’s largest buyers of sports rights.Fenerbahce has seized on the revelation about the chants as proof of its long-held belief that the Qatar-based broadcaster, through its beIN Sports Turkey subsidiary, had an agenda against the club. The fight has sabotaged interviews and played out in on-field protests, perceived injustices and, most recently, a lawsuit in a Turkish court. It could have serious financial consequences for the entire league, and the club is showing no sign it will relent.Until a court ruling ordered Fenerbahce to stop, the club sent its players onto the field in shirts critical of beIN Sports.Gokhan Kilincer/Reuters“It would be too naïve to consider all these consecutive incidents as honest human mistakes,” Fenerbahce said in comments it attributed to its secretary general, Burak Caglan Kizilhan. “We believe our arguments are extremely valid and concerning.”The tension between one of Turkey’s biggest clubs and the league’s official broadcaster has come at a sensitive time for Turkish soccer. BeIN Sports, through its local subsidiary, pays about $360 million for the television rights to the league’s matches.Now, with most of Turkey’s biggest teams, including Fenerbahce, heavily in debt, the league is planning a new television rights sale. And beIN is wondering if staying involved in Turkish soccer is worth the trouble.“Why would we deliberately try to disenfranchise one of the biggest clubs in Turkey?” a beIN Media Group spokesman said of Fenerbahce’s accusations. “It doesn’t make any sense, commercially or otherwise.” Like multiple people interviewed for this article, the spokesman asked that his name not be used, to avoid drawing the wrath of Fenerbahce and its fans.Even before the latest skirmish, the situation had driven beIN executives to distraction. Fenerbahce, through its president, Ali Koc, had been making claims about beIN for months. For example, the team has repeatedly accused beIN of selecting television angles and replays on its broadcasts that cast Fenerbahce or decision for and against the club in a negative light or, alternately, to accentuate the positives of its opponents.In response, Fenerbahce has mounted hashtag campaigns — amplified by its millions of followers — on social media, dressed its players in anti-beIN gear and even had them wear shirts with a logo doctored to read “beFAIR” to interviews conducted by the network. When the club signed the former Arsenal star Mesut Özil in January, journalists from beIN Sports Turkey — the official league broadcaster — were barred from his first news conference.The network has tried in vain to lower the temperature. After the chants in the television soundtrack were revealed, beIN officials immediately issued an apology. But rather than dampen the flames, its statement stoked more fury.The apology, according to Fenerbahce, had intentionally been issued at 7:05 p.m. — 19:05, according to the 24-hour clock. The timing was no accident, according to Fenerbahce; 1905 was the founding year of its greatest rival, Galatasaray. To the club, even the apology served as confirmation of the network’s agenda.“Conspiracy and paranoia is part of the culture in Turkey,” said Emre Sarigul, a co-founder of Turkish Football, the largest English website solely devoted to Turkish soccer.Barred from Turkey’s stadiums by the pandemic, many Fenerbahce fans have backed the club’s hashtag campaign on social media. Chris Mcgrath/Getty ImagesSarigul described machinations in the top division as more akin to W.W.E., the popular American wrestling franchise, where actions are frequently choreographed to elicit maximum reaction. “It’s entertainment,” Sarigul said. “You’re often going there for the drama and not for the football on show.”“When something goes wrong,” he added, “you blame ‘them.’ But no one knows who ‘them’ are.”For beIN, a network that has faced challenging situations in its other markets, the experience in Turkey has been bewildering. It conducted an investigation into how the anti-Fenerbache chants had made it onto broadcasts and concluded that human error was to blame.In what appeared to be a conciliatory gesture toward Fenerbahce, it then fired the two staff members directly responsible. But the two employees turned out to be Fenerbahce fans, prompting the club to revive its claims of mistreatment.As a result, beIN is considering walking away from the fight, and the league. The network, bankrolled by the Qatari state, has always absorbed losses from its right deals, but in recent years it has withdrawn from several of them and cut its staff amid a long-running, and costly, piracy dispute. It has allowed deals with the top leagues in Germany and Italy to lapse, and recently withdrew from one with Formula 1.The Turkish dispute has taken a toll on beIN executives. Some of the network’s non-Turkish staff members have been rotated out of the country, and at least one new one, Rashed al-Marri, was brought in from Doha to take charge of operations in Turkey and in particular to handle the relationship with Fenerbahce. But nothing seems to be bringing down the temperature.In late February, the company went to court to prevent Fenerbahce from continuing a weekslong campaign that had targeted the broadcaster at its stadium and on its social media channels by using the colors of the beIN logo but replacing the words with the slogan “beFAIR.”A result was that Turkish subscribers to beIN’s matches were presented with a panoply of protest banners, sideline electronic advertising boards and even the Fenerbahce players themselves covered in beFAIR-branded slogans.The logos forced beIN to change how it broadcast the matches and conducted interviews with Fenerbahce players. Directors were instructed not to display shots of the players in the beFAIR gear during warm-ups or interviews. Keeping the messages out of live-action shots proved more difficult.Asked by The New York Times to explain the essence of its campaign, Fenerbahce took several weeks to reply before providing a multiple-page treatise that went into great detail about how it had been slighted by beIN’s coverage this season.Fenerbahce’s response was laced with the language of conspiracy theory. “If our arguments are considered individually, they would not make much sense,” said Kizilhan, the general secretary, “but seeing them as the parts of a puzzle, it shows the big picture clearly.”Kizilhan acknowledged that some of the nuances of the fight would be difficult to understand for anyone “without having clear understanding and knowledge of local intricacies and ingredients of Turkish football.”One of those intricacies involves Fenerbahce’s rivalry with Galatasaray. The club continues to argue that beIN’s Turkish operation is stocked with individuals sympathetic to its rival, which it accuses of working deliberately to sabotage its season. (Some of the audience for that charge may be internal: Fenerbahce has not won a league title since 2014, and Koc, one of Turkey’s richest men, will stand for another term as club president next year.)Fenerbahce’s president, Ali Koc, has threatened to start a boycott of beIN Sports over his club’s complaints.Associated PressSome beIN executives have been targeted directly, including Hande Sumertas, a former Galatasaray official who is now responsible for media rights at the network. Sumertas has become a lightning rod for fan criticism to such an extent that her name is regularly a trending topic on Twitter in Turkey.Things reached a head earlier this year when a referee turned commentator went on television to insult Sumertas as “brainless.” BeIN issued a strongly worded statement at the time, vowing to use all means at its disposal to defend Sumertas and emphasizing that her role gives her no control over the content of the channel’s broadcasts.But Fenerbahce doubled down, with Kizilhan charging that Sumertas could not work objectively because of her previous work at Galatasaray.“Our concerns and allegations are not over specific individuals but over a systematic approach toward our club,” Kizilhan said, before adding, “BeIN Sports would be wise to re-evaluate their hiring processes and human resources.”Fenerbahce and Galatasaray players before a match in February. Their clubs’ bitter rivalry is another thread in the Fenerbahce-beIN feud.Kenan Asyali/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Turkish soccer federation, which treads a fine line in order not to inflame the huge fan bases of any of its top teams, has been eager to avoid the issue. But in late January, its chairman, Nihat Ozdemir, was asked about the feud. Ozdemir said he did not believe the anti-Fenerbahce chants had been broadcast deliberately, and said the relationship between Turkish soccer and beIN Sports was mutually beneficial. “I don’t think they would want to get out of here,” he said.But while beIN’s new emissary, al-Marri, has spoken with Fenerbahce’s management, the relationship shows no signs of improving.When a court last week ordered Fenerbahce to stop using the beFAIR logo, the team simply changed the language of its protests. On Thursday, in its first home game since the injunction, Fenerbahce’s stadium was festooned with new protest slogans. One message covering the seats at its Sukru Saracoglu stadium implored Fenerbahce fans to “break their games.”Another, darker one was a warning: “Fenerbahce cannot be challenged!” More