Michelle Beadle left ESPN in 2019, but she just spoke on a key moment from her time there.
Beadle spoke on the "Awful Announcing Podcast" and elaborated on past claims she made that NBA superstar LeBron James tried to get her fired from ESPN because she made fun of his infamous "The Decision" in 2010.
She explained this time around that James wanted her replaced from ESPN's pregame show "NBA Countdown."
"He's a powerful dude, there's no getting around that. He is an empire and entity upon himself, and all respect for building such a powerful entity on name and doing it well," Beadle said. "I don't think they replaced me immediately, and that was, I guess, somebody's way of kind of having my back but it didn't feel like it."
Beadle was replaced in 2019 by Rachel Nichols, who she claims may have also played a role in getting her off the show.
"Some people I don't trust in this business — that's one of them," Beadle said.
Nichols would also leave The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) -) network a few years later after a recording of her was leaked in which she was critical of ESPN's upper management favoring another analyst, Maria Taylor, and claiming that it was because she was Black.
Beadle said she couldn't help but laugh at that issue when she was watching it from the outside.
"You hear things, you know things, you're told things, and then you get to sort of stand away and watch the house burn. You're just like, 'Holy Cow,'" Beadle said.
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In 2017, Beadle replaced another prominent host, Sage Steele, on the same show. But Beadle denied that she had any involvement in Steele's removal.
"I know that narrative was floated around there too. I didn't have to. The decisions that were made had been made," Beadle said. "I know Sage felt very much that she had been blindsided. I wasn't told she was blindsided. I wasn't told she was blindsided, I knew what was coming. So who knows? That's a Sage question. You have to ask her what she had heard or was told."
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