The Rex Ryan Derby will be more compelling than the Jets’ season.
Ryan’s six-year reality show with the Jets — biting one-liners, hilarious skits, Mark Sanchez tattoos, and Super Bowl guarantees — has created off-the-chart expectations among television executives that he will be outrageous, a comedian, and a trash-talker creating controversial headlines in the NFL pre-game show business after he gets fired by Woody Johnson. That’s an awful lot to ask and way too much to expect.

Ryan has the league’s network business partners falling over themselves to bring Rex TV to their studio shows — where the panelists talk in sound bites, a Ryan specialty — or perhaps to their broadcast booth as a game analyst, where he can break down a game with the best of them.
They look at Rex and they see the next John Madden.
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The free agent Yankee closer was said to be seeking a four-year $50 million deal equivalent to what the Phillies paid Jonathan Papelbon in 2012 – a figure the Yankees insisted they had no intention of approaching.

He and Kyrie Irving donned “I Can’t Breathe” warmup T-shirts, given to them by Jarrett Jack, in support of those remembering Eric Garner’s death.

 

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Basketball royalty meets actual royalty as LeBron James welcomes Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The Brits are so much like us, they’re practically Canadian. They speak our language, join us in both our valiant and wrongheaded wars. It’s only natural we want them to love us, love our games.
Except they don’t. Not really, no matter how hard we try to transplant our professional sports overseas and generate even more revenues. The Brits don’t need our American football because they have their beloved rugby to fill that violent niche. They don’t really get our basketball, not viscerally, not like the Italians, French and Spaniards.


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It started with Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls star who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” during warm-ups before a game last Saturday in Chicago.
Then on Monday, LeBron James, the N.B.A.’s most prominent player, its biggest superstar, wore the same black shirt during warm-ups before Cleveland’s game with the Nets in Brooklyn. Not for the first time, James walked straight into the politically charged arena that many professional athletes traditionally try to avoid.

James’s teammate Kyrie Irving also wore the shirt during warm-ups, as did four Nets players: Jarrett Jack, Deron Williams, Alan Anderson and Kevin Garnett.
The “I Can’t Breathe” phrase that has become a rallying cry for protesters in the wake of a grand jury’s decision not to indict a New York police officer whose chokehold on an unarmed black man, Eric Garner, led to the man’s death on Staten Island in July.
Some of those protesters demonstrated outside Barclays Center before Monday’s game. In the past, they might not have expected the explicit support of James. But as he nears his 30th birthday, James has come to embrace a role in which he is willing to speak out on real-world issues.
In the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, the uproar created by Donald Sterling’s inflammatory remarks last spring, the decision by a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., not to indict a police officer in the shooting death of Michael Brown, or now, the Garner case, James has shown a willingness to get involved.
On Monday, James spoke briefly about Garner before the game, wore the T-shirt and spoke to reporters again after the game.
“Violence is not the answer, and retaliation is not the solution,” James said. “As a society, we have to get better. It’s not going to be done in one day. But we all have to do better.”
James also said: “If it feels important to me, then I respond. If it doesn’t, I don’t. There’s a lot of issues I haven’t talked about. For me it’s about knowledge, it’s about the gut feeling.”
The decision by James, Irving and the other players to wear the T-shirts was applauded by Cavaliers Coach David Blatt, who said the players had a right to express how they felt.
“It has an impact; those guys know that,” Blatt said.
“Obviously we’re not on the front line of this movement,” said Garnett, a 19-year N.B.A. veteran. “But I think it’s important to give to these communities and support these communities.”
Irving said he planned to continue wearing the T-shirt before games “for a while.”

That, in turn, may create some problems for Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, who released a statement Monday in which he said he respected “Derrick Rose and all of our players voicing their personal views on important issues.”
“But my preference would be for players to abide by our oncourt attire rules,” the statement added.
It is not known whether Silver plans to meet with any of the players to discuss protest guidelines. The N.F.L. opted not to fine five St. Louis Rams players who entered the field before a recent game against Oakland with their hands raised in the “Don’t shoot” pose that was used by protesters in Missouri.
The T-shirts players wore on Monday were distributed by Jack, who said before the game that he had heard that James wanted one. He had them delivered to Cleveland’s locker room.
James said he had worn his T-shirt in part as a show of solidarity for Garner’s family.
“It was a message to the family, that I’m sorry for their loss,” James said.

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Leave it to Lionel Hollins to be unaffected by what was happening Monday night at Barclays Center. Hollins has been around. He has famous friends. And with British royalty choosing to watch his team play against the Cleveland Cavaliers during a foray into Brooklyn, Hollins took the opportunity to share his views on celebrity culture.
“I’m not impressed by people,” Hollins, the coach of the Nets, said an hour before the opening tip. “I know a lot of people with money that I wouldn’t want to hang with.”
It should be noted that Hollins was speaking generally and was not referring to Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, or Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, who arrived in the third quarter. Nor was Hollins referring to Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who were courtside for the Cavaliers’ 110-88 victory.

Of greater concern to Hollins was LeBron James (also rich, also famous) and the play of Hollins’s own team (slightly less rich, slightly less famous), although Hollins appeared to be in the minority. Actual basketball merely formed the backdrop for an unusual day of hoops-related activity in New York.
The Cavaliers collapsed on Nets center Mason Plumlee (1) in the first half. Cleveland won, 110-88. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Phil Jackson spoke. James soared. Protests were staged. Royals gawked. And the Knicks went a day without losing a game, if only because they did not play.
While protesters gathered outside Barclays Center over the decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, several players, including James and the Nets’ Deron Williams, wore matching “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts during warm-ups — a reference to Garner’s words as he was placed in a chokehold.
“As a society, we have to do better,” James told about 30 reporters in the visitors’ locker room before the game.
By the end of the night, Hollins was voicing his approval for the players’ actions.
“They should be political,” he said. “They should be about social awareness. Basketball is just a small part of life.”
LeBron James on Monday. Several players, including James and the Nets’ Deron Williams, wore matching “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts during warm-ups. Al Bello/Getty Images
James had 18 points and 7 assists for the Cavaliers, who were beginning to ease away from the Nets when the royal couple approached their seats early in the second half. The Cavaliers’ Kevin Love was at the free-throw line. He could sense the arena standing en masse, with people reaching for their phones.
“Yeah, it was a little bit more of a distraction than people waving towels,” Love said. “I just tried to make the second shot. But it wound up being about a foot short.”
Between the third and fourth quarters, Jay-Z and Beyoncé traversed the 50 feet to greet the royal couple. An armada of photographers captured the moment. It was fairly surreal, given that the Cavaliers and the Nets were trying to attend to their own business. Love huddled with his coach, David Blatt.
“I really wanted to talk to the royal couple, as a European,” Blatt said. “But I missed my chance. Instead, I coached a good team in a good basketball game.”
Some seven hours before the start of the Nets’ game against the Cavaliers, and about 30 miles north of Barclays Center, a spectacle of a different and more muted sort played out when Jackson emerged from his self-imposed cocoon of silence at the Knicks’ training facility in Greenburgh, N.Y. Ahead of the team’s three-game trip to New Orleans, San Antonio and Boston, Jackson opted to make his first public comments since Nov. 10 — back when the Knicks had lost only five games.
Protesters outside Barclays Center on Monday. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
“There’s some resistance to discipline, order and culture change, and things like that,” Jackson said. “I’m calling it a crucible, what we’re going through here.”
It was part of a 20-minute debriefing that served as a portal into Jackson’s thinking as he presides over a 4-18 team. Jackson, the son of a minister, said his father would have encouraged the reporters sitting in the back row to move to the front. (Jackson actually used the word “pew.”)
But it was unnecessary. The room was small, and Jackson planned to be direct.
“I think you can hear me fine,” he said.
Jackson tiptoed a fine line between being critical and hopeful, impossible to pin down. He chastised J. R. Smith for lacking leadership on the team’s second unit — “J. R. had a really bad week out in Texas and Oklahoma,” Jackson said, referring to a recent stretch of games — before pivoting and lauding Smith’s improved effort.
The Knicks' president, Phil Jackson, in November. “I’m calling it a crucible, what we’re going through here,” Jackson said. Jason Szenes/European Pressphoto Agency
And while Jackson said he was disappointed with how the team was playing, he added that he was pleased with its competitive spirit. But instead of relying on “rote memorization,” the players needed to “find the actions that are credible” within the offense, he said. It was Phil-speak at its finest.
“I think, right now, we have a loser’s mentality because we’re not finishing games,” he said.
Jackson said that he had already determined which players on the team were capable “learners,” as he labeled them, and those who were not. But he said he would not make moves solely for the sake of making moves, and he again stressed the importance of preserving financial flexibility in moving forward.
Jackson summoned one of his favorite words — process — in describing the team’s struggles. Although he said he had been encouraged by some of the Knicks’ recent games, including their narrow loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night, they have yet to figure out how to win games consistently — or basically at all.
Still, Jackson did not rule out a trip to the postseason. The Eastern Conference is an incubator for foundering teams. The Knicks are one among many. It counted as optimism on an otherwise bleak day in Greenburgh.
Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, center, with, from left, the N.B.A. global ambassador Dikembe Mutombo, Commissioner Adam Silver and the N.B.A. executive Kathleen Behrens. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
And while the atmosphere in Brooklyn was more charged, more volatile — and partly for reasons that had nothing to do with the royal couple or Jay-Z — it was abnormal in other ways. Most of the seats at Barclays Center were filled once the game started at 7:40 p.m. Nets fans usually show up late.
Among the early arrivals was Jay-Z, in his customary spot near (and basically on) the Nets’ bench. Beyoncé and the royal couple were fashionably late.
It was abundantly clear as the night wore on that two teams just happened to be playing basketball. Everything else was the real theater. Dikembe Mutombo, the former N.B.A. great, sat with the royal couple to help promote their foundation’s new partnership with the league. The Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. tossed footballs to fans.
Afterward, James presented the royal couple with Cavaliers jerseys and cupcakes.
“I gave them a present,” James said, “and I thanked them for coming here to America to watch our game.”
For the Nets, who are accustomed to playing in front of uber-fan Mr. Whammy and thousands of Brooklynites, it was an unusual scene. Only losing felt familiar.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — About 25 miles southeast into the desert here, away from the glittering array of skyscrapers that rise into the clouds, lies a sparkling new stadium that is home to one of global rugby’s biggest events.
It is, in many ways, completely incongruous: The stadium is next to a camel-racing track and in the heart of a country whose national rugby team did not officially exist until 2011. But the stadium’s setting is also perfect.
For years, rugby was primarily the province of a handful of nations in Europe (England, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, France and Wales) and a few from the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). The sport, while undeniably popular, lacked reach.

In recent years, though, rugby has blossomed worldwide, in large part because of the expansion of one particular form of the game. Rugby sevens, a streamlined and faster-paced version of the traditional style known as rugby union, is the form that will be used when rugby makes its Olympic debut at the 2016 Rio Games — a reality that has accelerated a change in rugby’s scope.
Players from Brazil, left, and Fiji last week in Dubai. The addition of rugby sevens as an Olympic sport has driven the sport's growth. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
The growth has been stark: In 2008, the top 10 countries in terms of rugby participation were the nine listed above, plus Argentina. By 2010, Japan, Sri Lanka and the United States had moved into the top 10, while a number of other countries with minimal rugby histories were posting strong showings at international events on both the men’s and women’s sides.
“I was a basketball player — I played down in the post,” Andrew Amonde, captain of the Kenyan team, said in an interview. “I did not start playing rugby until about seven years ago. But since then, it has become the No. 2 sport in Kenya, behind football. Now we play in front of big crowds, in the big stadiums. Everyone in Kenya knows what the sevens team is doing.”
The attraction for players and fans in countries like Kenya, Portugal, China and the United States is the simplicity of rugby sevens. Traditional rugby uses 15 players per side, and its pace can grind, as games stop frequently for organized plays like lineouts, in which a player on the sideline tosses the ball between two lines of opposing players, or scrums, in which players from both teams push against each other in a large mass while the ball is rolled underneath to resume play.
In rugby sevens, rhythm, movement and speed are the dominant characteristics, and it can feel as if there are acres of open field, as each team has only seven players. Instead of standard rugby’s 90-minute games, rugby sevens is played in two seven-minute halves, making for a breakneck pace that generally features constant one-on-one battles in which players shimmy and juke as they sprint for the goal line.
“It’s a game of evasion,” said Zack Test, a former walk-on for the University of Oregon football team who has become one of the leading scoring threats for the United States team. “Imagine if they took away the offensive and defensive lines in football. The speed you would have left is what rugby sevens is all about.”
Fans in Dubai last week. Rugby sevens uses fewer players and shorter games, with fewer interruptions for plays like scrums. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Rugby sevens is not a new game; its roots can be traced to the late 1800s. But for most of its history, the game was seen as more a social form of rugby, something teams might use at end-of-season training sessions or as a light and lively tournament game.
The game’s popularity began to grow in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when international rugby’s governing body, now known as World Rugby, began a global series of events. The biggest surge came in 2009, when the International Olympic Committee voted to add rugby for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games.
Suddenly, the spotlight on the game grew brighter, and interest rose quickly in events like the one in Dubai last week, which was part of a multifaceted Olympic qualifying process. Some countries, including Russia and China, quickly made rugby part of the physical education curriculum in schools in an attempt to fast-track the sport’s development.
“I played rugby before, but there were not very many of us,” said Sun Tingting, the captain of the Chinese women’s team. “The possibility of the Olympics changed everything. It would be the honor of our lives to be in the Olympics, and we had not imagined it was possible before.”
That carrot looms everywhere. Sonny Bill Williams, one of New Zealand’s most prominent players, is one of several stars expected to make a switch to rugby sevens in preparation for the Olympics. Canadian sports officials are investing more than $1 million a year in rugby development, and the United States has its rugby sevens players working full time at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.
The Sevens Stadium in Dubai. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Pedro Netto, the coach of Portugal’s team, which has more modest Olympic aspirations, said he hoped to bring his team of amateur players together much more often in the approach to the Games, and he said his country’s Olympic committee, which generally has few resources, had given him a modest amount of money to help.
“We are using it to go to the players’ bosses and ask them to let the players out for longer training camps and tournaments,” Netto said. “It is not perfect, but rugby sevens is a game where anyone can win. Our team is proof of that.”
Mark Egan, the head of competitions and performance for World Rugby, said there had never been any question that rugby sevens was the best form of the game to be featured at the Olympics. While purists might prefer 15-man rugby, staging a 12-team tournament in a sport in which two games a week is considered the maximum was not feasible, he said. In rugby sevens, teams can play three games a day.
Rugby sevens also bridges genders better, Egan said, making it particularly appealing for the Olympics. Egan estimated that 160 of the 204 countries with Olympic committees also had rugby federations, with nations like Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador having recently established governing bodies in large part because of the sport’s simplicity.
“We’re not guaranteed a place in the Olympics beyond 2020,” Egan said. “We know that we have to deliver a quality product, and we think rugby sevens offers a real festival feel — an open, accessible, entertaining game for both men and women that is easy to understand but still fun to watch.”
The scene at the Sevens Stadium here last week was emblematic of that sentiment. Opened in 2008, the complex had the capacity to hold about 100,000 fans — most of them expatriates — for the three-day event, which included youth and adult team tournaments alongside the professional men’s and women’s matches. On Friday, many fans arrived in costumes — there was a particularly impressive pack of “Star Wars” storm troopers who kept their masks on despite the beating sun — and the stands filled throughout a day of action that stretched for nearly 12 hours.
As always, there were surprises. Sevens rugby’s greatest trait may be its “volatility,” according to Mike Friday, the United States men’s coach, and results can be difficult to predict. A fledgling Brazil team took France to the limit, and Canada upset Wales; the Russian women very nearly knocked off New Zealand and England, and Scotland stunned Samoa, one of the sport’s powerhouses despite its tiny population. In past years, Kenya has beaten New Zealand and Australia in rugby sevens, though this year South Africa’s men and New Zealand’s women took home trophies.
“What sevens does is allow any country to think it has a real, live chance,” said Friday, who has also coached in England and Kenya. “In rugby, there are plenty of games where you’d bet your mortgage on the result. In sevens, you’d be better to hold on to your money.”

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