{"id":83285,"date":"2022-10-01T00:21:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T00:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rachel-nichols-lands-at-showtime-sounds-off-about-espn-exit\/"},"modified":"2022-10-01T00:21:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T00:21:56","slug":"rachel-nichols-lands-at-showtime-sounds-off-about-espn-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rachel-nichols-lands-at-showtime-sounds-off-about-espn-exit\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Nichols lands at Showtime, sounds off about ESPN exit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nearly a year after ESPN removed Rachel Nichols from its airwaves, the longtime NBA reporter has a new job at Showtime, where she will work as a host and reporter on everything from podcasts to documentaries to potentially a new monthly show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last summer, Nichols was removed from ESPN’s NBA coverage after the New York Times published a leaked audio recording of Nichols, who is White, complaining about a job she had been asked to give up to fellow NBA host Maria Taylor, who is Black.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nichols, on a phone call she didn’t know was being recorded, suggested that if ESPN wanted to improve its record on diversity, the network shouldn’t do it by giving Taylor Nichols’s contractually guaranteed job as host of the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rachel Nichols is back on the air, but the fallout at ESPN is just beginning<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In her first appearance on Showtime on Friday, Nichols joined the video podcast, \u201cAll the Smoke,\u201d with former NBA players Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, and publicly offered for the first time every version of the events that led to her ESPN departure. She suggested that the recording of her had been strategically leaked and said much of the frustration she had meant to express in the leaked call stemmed from the difficulties of being a woman in the sports media business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI feel sorry that any of this touched Maria Taylor,\u201d Nichols said. \u201cShe She’s a fellow woman in the business. It’s not her fault what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nichols, a former reporter for The Washington Post, added that human resources investigated the tape and found she didn’t need to be disciplined. \u201cI thought we had put things behind us, and unfortunately there were still some people who had bad feelings and held on to this tape for a year,\u201d she said. \u201cJust kept it in their pocket. And when there was a point they wanted some leverage with their own situations they fed it to the press.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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ESPN declined to comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The saga began, Nichols explained, in 2019, when she was given a new contract that guaranteed her hosting duties for the NBA Finals. A year later, as racial protests swept the country, ESPN asked her to give up what she called a \u201cdream job\u201d to Taylor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nichols believed that ESPN was asking a woman to fix a diversity problem and would not have asked its main college football host, a man, to step aside for Taylor in the same way. \u201cDo you think ESPN would ever say to Rece Davis, ‘Hey, we want to give Maria this opportunity; you go be the sideline reporter?’ \u201d Nichols said on the podcast. \u201cThey don’t say that to men.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The recording was made from Nichols’s hotel room in Orlando during the NBA bubble in 2020. She said the camera was inadvertently running in her hotel room for hours and that someone at ESPN had used a cellphone to record the video of her and then circulate it around ESPN.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nichols said she attempted to call, text and set up a meeting with Taylor to apologize but that Taylor was not interested. After the tape was published last year, Nichols was removed from NBA Finals coverage, and later in the summer she was removed from the network’s airwaves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Taylor also left ESPN and now works for NBC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly a year after ESPN removed Rachel Nichols from its airwaves, the longtime NBA reporter has a new job at Showtime, where she will work as a host and reporter on everything from podcasts to documentaries to potentially a new monthly show. Last summer, Nichols was removed from ESPN’s NBA coverage after the New York …<\/p>\n

Rachel Nichols lands at Showtime, sounds off about ESPN exit<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":83152,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rachel-nichols-jumps-to-showtime-after-turbulent-espn-exit\/","url_meta":{"origin":83285,"position":0},"title":"Rachel Nichols Jumps to Showtime After Turbulent ESPN Exit","date":"September 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Rachel Nichols basketball-journalism career has taken a new bounce. The longtime sports reporter is joining Showtime's sports division, where she will work on the unit's basketball content vertical as both a host and producer. \u201cWe are delighted to welcome Rachel Nichols to the Showtime Basketball family,\u201d said Brian Dailey, senior\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":83109,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rachel-nichols-joins-showtime-basketball-addresses-espn-departure\/","url_meta":{"origin":83285,"position":1},"title":"Rachel Nichols joins Showtime Basketball, addresses ESPN departure","date":"September 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"We now know what's next for Rachel Nichols. Nichols was pulled from ESPN programming last August following a year-plus of reporting and discussion over Nichols' 2020 comments on Maria Taylor in a phone conversation that also wound up recorded on ESPN servers, the internal and external sharing of those comments,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":84297,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/ex-espn-host-rachel-nichols-says-colleagues-spied-on-her\/","url_meta":{"origin":83285,"position":2},"title":"Ex-ESPN Host Rachel Nichols Says Colleagues ‘Spied’ On Her","date":"October 2, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Former ESPN sportscaster Rachel Nichols said on Showtime's All the Smoke podcast this week that the leaked audio resulting in her exit from the sports network was obtain by someone \u201cspying\u201d on her in her hotel room. Nichols job joining Showtime Basketball as a sportscaster and host, her first NBA-focused\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15784,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/maralee-nichols-not-surprised-by-khloe-tristan-baby-news-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":83285,"position":3},"title":"Maralee Nichols not ‘surprised’ by Khlo\u00e9, Tristan baby news: report","date":"July 16, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Maralee Nichols is allegedly not \u201csurprised\u201d that Tristan Thompson is expecting another child with his ex Khlo\u00e9 Kardashian, according to a new report. \u201cShe's truly focused on raising Theo,\u201d a source told Us Weekly Friday, adding that the 31-year-old fitness trainer is \u201cnavigating motherhood as a single mom.\u201d Thompson, 31,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":74810,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/tristan-always-knew-about-maralee-nichols-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":83285,"position":4},"title":"Tristan always knew about Maralee Nichols’ baby","date":"September 22, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Khlo\u00e9 Kardashian said Tristan Thompson \u201calways knew\u201d about Maralee Nichols' baby \u2014 but pushed her for another one anyway. In the premiere episode of \u201cThe Kardashians\u201d Season 2, which was released Thursday on Hulu, the Good American co-founder revealed her and Thompson's surrogate was implanted with an embryo \u201cdays before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/F2VZGN5MNNA5NPXTFOXQKGFPV4.jpg&w=1440","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}