Awful Announcing
"They stressed it was my choice, they weren't telling me to do this, because it was in my contract. But they were putting a lot of pressure on me. I was being told 'Well, you're not a team player.'"
Nichols' show was canceled in August. She's now reached a settlement with ESPN over the time that was left on her contract.
"We respect and acknowledge there are a variety of feelings about what happened and the actions we took. The details of what took place last year are confidential, nuanced and complicated personnel matters."
"There has not been one Black person that I can think of right now that has not gone through hell at ESPN."
Nichols served as the sideline reporter for this broadcast team during last year's Finals and this year's Western Conference Finals, as well as for most regular-season broadcasts they did this season (including their Christmas Day game).
Implicitly or explicitly saying someone got a job because of their skin color is obviously wrong, but also harmful.
This certainly doesn't feel like the end of the conversation.
"I woke up to HUNDREDS of Tweets YELLING AT ME and I had no idea what was happening!"
On the first day of this year's playoffs, the NBA Countdown cast discussed not appearing on that show over restrictions on reporter interviews that were seen to promote Rachel Nichols, the latest fallout from Nichols' 2020 call where she offered criticisms of Maria Taylor.
"You went on Kevin Durant's podcast, and you were saying these things. So we in the media are not creating the clickbait. You and Kevin Durant are creating the clickbait."
An ESPN employee took cellphone recordings of a video feed from Rachel Nichols' hotel room that was running without her knowledge while she was on the phone. Someone then leaked some of those recordings.
