It's been two years since Dan Le Batard launched his new media company alongside former ESPN chairman Jon Skipper.
The company's been buoyed by Le Batard bringing over his loyal fans from ESPN, and he's filled Meadowlark with several big names and friends like Pablo Torre, Amin Elhassan, and Charlotte Wilder, who all have shows under the media company.
On Wednesday, Le Batard announced one of his company's biggest moves: The "All The Smoke" podcast led by former NBA veterans Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson is moving to Meadowlark Media and the DraftKings Network. The show needed a new home after Showtime Sports said it would be shutting down by the end of the year.
Le Batard admitted on "The Dan Le Batard Show" that he didn't really know Barnes and his team when they met up in Los Angeles last month, which made it shocking for him that the group decided to partner with his media company. But Barnes, who appeared on the show, said that he admired the "authenticity" of Le Batard and that he stood for "more than sports."
Despite being colleagues at ESPN for a few few years, the two were never close. However, they shared a mutual close friend in Rachel Nichols, who is a host on "All The Smoke" and also a part of the show's transition from Showtime to Meadowlark Media.
"[Nichols] has been a huge blessing to myself and [Jackson] and really kind of took us under her arm and broke down the game when we got to ESPN," Barnes told Le Batard.
Le Batard then transitioned into talking about Nichols, who faced a major controversy in 2021 when The New York Times published a story in July 2021 about a recording of her inside a hotel room in Disney World during the NBA bubble in 2020.
The recording of Nichols showed her displeasure over Maria Taylor, a Black woman, being given the role to host the NBA Finals on ESPN which Nichols said was part of her contract.
“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world,” Nichols said in the leaked video. “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.”
The decision by ESPN on Taylor and Nichols' roles came during the height of the murder of George Floyd, which created a lot of social unrest in the nation on top of the ongoing pandemic.
Nichols faced massive scrutiny in the media from the leaked recording which led to her being taken off ESPN airwaves before finally parting ways with the network in early 2022. Taylor left ESPN just weeks after the recording was leaked.
Nichols' hosting roles on NBA's "The Jump," now called "NBA Today," and as the host of the NBA Finals were then given to Malika Andrews, who is also a Black woman.
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Le Batard asked Barnes what he could share about the situation given that Le Batard believes what happened to Nichols was "super dirty" and "conspired," calling out the New York Times and ESPN for their roles in stirring up public attention.
Barnes, who was working for ESPN at the time of the incident and has been defensive of Nichols in the past, clearly could not reveal all the details he was aware of, but seemed to agree with Le Batard's stance.
"I could say it was unfortunate," Barnes said. "When she told me what happened, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that ESPN and these other companies were just going to let her catch fire and not speak the truth."
Le Batard also pointed out the difficulty that Barnes and Jackson must have faced given the civil unrest coming out of the George Floyd murder, especially considering how Barnes and Jackson are two Black men who are "trying not to be anti-Black woman."
This is highlighted even more by the fact that Barnes and Jackson were two of the most active media members in calling for action after the George Floyd murder in large part because Jackson was actually friends with Floyd.
Barnes said he wished he could have done more to resolve the situation between the three women at the time.
"In the position I was in at the time I was in, I wish I could have got those three women together and sat down and really got to hear what happened. Not what the machine tells you happened, but what really happened. What was promised to Rachel, what was in Rachel's contract, how Rachel was feeling regardless of the color," Barnes said. "This is an opportunity of a lifetime particularly for women to be on the sidelines. It's not about color, it's about: You gave my job to someone else because of the political climate that the world was in, and I wasn't okay with that."
Barnes also wished that Nichols would learn how Taylor and Andrews were affected by her comments.
"Obviously, how it was taken, everyone is entitled to the way they digest something, but without knowing the whole story from the outside looking in, I understand how those women took it," Barnes said.
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The two brought Nichols in on "All The Smoke" in September 2022, and they started their partnership by asking Nichols about her departure at ESPN. Nichols explained the entire situation, including how the recording came from a private conversation, and that she was actually given a contract extension by the network before the leaked audio came out.
"I thought we had put things behind us, and unfortunately I think there were still some people who had bad feelings and they held onto this tape for a year," Nichols said. "When there was a point they wanted some leverage with their own situations, they fed it to the press."
She also apologized to Taylor during the interview.
"I will say now what I said then: I feel very sorry that any of this touched Maria Taylor because she's a fellow woman in this business. It wasn't her fault what was going on," Nichols said. "To even bring her into it, that was a mistake on my part."
Nichols said she tried to reach out to speak with Taylor, but Taylor declined.
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