Rachel Nichols has a new job.
Nichols will join Showtime’s basketball coverage as both a host and producer and will “contribute to multiple programs and projects across multiple platforms,” the network said in a release.
“I’ve been so fortunate to live my dream job alongside some of the best journalists in the business for more than 25 years, and this new development deal with Showtime Sports gives me my most broad playing field yet,” Nichols said in a statement Friday. “They’ve asked me to produce, create and host new sports programming across platforms, working alongside Hall of Famers, multiple guys with championship rings and an uber-creative team behind the camera. We’re going to have so much fun.”
Nichols is best known for her work in creating and hosting ESPN’s The Jump, but her career would son come to a halt after she complained about ESPN reporter Maria Taylor’s increased NBA coverage at the network, claiming that Taylor was given that work in part due to the network’s “crappy longtime record on diversity.”
Taylor, who is Black, served as ESPN’s host for coverage of the 2020 NBA Finals, an assignment Nichols was reportedly expected to receive.
“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 said. “Just find it somewhere else.”
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Nichols agreed to a settlement with ESPN, which officially ended her tenure with the media organization.
For the first time, she addressed the controversy while speaking on “All The Smoke With Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
Nichols discussed the incident, noting that the recording was taken of her while she was in a Florida hotel room to work on site for ESPN’s NBA coverage. The line was broadcasting for hours, she said, but no one at ESPN told her. “One person decided to just sit and watch and start spying on me, like I was their own personal television show,” Nichols said. “When they heard something they thought was juicy, they picked up their cell phone and they started recording me.”
At issue were hosting duties for ESPN’s annual coverage of the NBA Finals, which she had been assigned as part of contract with the sports-media outlet. However, ESPN executives wanted to give Taylor those responsibilities and pressured Nichols to give them up.
“I feel very sorry that any of this touched Maria Taylor, because she is a fellow woman in this business. It wasn’t her fault that any of this was going on,” says Nichols. “To even bring her into that was a mistake on my part, and that it caused her to be upset in any way — I don’t want to be that person.”
Nichols says she tried to arrange a meeting with Taylor, but was unable to do so.
Taylor is now working for NBC Sports, where she was recently named the host of “Football Night in America.”
