Report Details Friction At ESPN Stemming From Comments By Rachel Nichols About Maria Taylor

For the past few weeks, ESPN has had serious internal issues over its coverage of the NBA centered on comments made by Rachel Nichols about Maria Taylor. During a recorded phone call in July 2020 with Adam Mendelsohn, Nichols suggested Taylor had been given hosting duties of NBA Countdown because she is Black.

“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.”

Nichols also talked about how she viewed her position at ESPN.

“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.”

To avoid having Taylor and Nichols interact this season, all of Nichols’s appearances on NBA Countdown were prerecorded. Shortly before the playoffs, 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 on the edict, which led to a tension-filled call with Jimmy Pitaro. Adrian Wojnarowski called Nichols a bad teammate, while Jalen 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’s contract with ESPN expires in less than three weeks.