A veteran sports journalist will not report from the sidelines during the NBA Finals after a leaked private conversation revealed her suggesting that her black colleague Maria Taylor was awarded the 2020 NBA Finals hosting gig because of her race, ESPN revealed on Tuesday.
Rachel Nichols, who is white, will continue to host her daily television show The Jump but will not join the Finals during live coverage, according to the network. Malika Andrews will serve as a sideline reporter during the series instead of Nichols, who did the job throughout the 2021 playoffs and has been a staple at ESPN.
“We believe this is [the] best decision for all concerned in order to keep the focus on the NBA Finals,” ESPN said in a statement.
ESPN’s coverage decision follows the publication of a report detailing a private call Nichols had last July with LeBron James’s adviser, Adam Mendelsohn, and agent, Rich Paul, during which she vented about ESPN’s decision to offer Taylor rather than herself the opportunity to host the 2020 NBA Finals.
“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said during the July 13, 2020 call, which was recorded and saved on an ESPN server after she apparently forgot to turn off her video camera, according to the New York Times.
“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,” Nichols added. “Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”
Nichols was upset about the network’s decision and was “unloading to a friend about ESPN’s process, not about Maria,” she told the New York Times.
The call eventually made its way around to other ESPN employees, including Taylor, and set off an internal firestorm among Nichols’s colleagues who cover basketball.
Taylor told network executives after Nichols’s call was passed around that she did not plan to continue hosting the 2020 finals but later changed her mind.
“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 executives at the time.
“Simply being a front facing black woman at this company has taken its toll physically and mentally,” she added.
Nichols’s 2021 playoff appearances on NBA Countdown, the show accompanying live game coverage, were all prerecorded so as to avoid making Nichols and Taylor interact, the outlet reported.
The drama over the call reignited in May when executives reportedly urged Taylor to interact with Nichols live on air or else they would disallow any live interaction between Taylor and reporters.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Nichols apologized for her comments on Monday, two days after the publication of the report detailing this recent conflict surrounding the call, saying that she did not want to draw attention away from the finals.
“The first thing they teach you in journalism school is don’t be the story, and I don’t plan to break that rule today or distract from a fantastic Finals,” Nichols said during her show. “But I also don’t want to let this moment pass without saying how much I respect, how much I value our colleagues here at ESPN, how deeply, deeply sorry I am for disappointing those I hurt, particularly Maria Taylor, and how grateful I am to be part of this outstanding team.”
Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks airs Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
