The saga of Rachel Nichols divorce with ESPN was a very public one.
A leaked tape of Nichols from her hotel room during the 2020 NBA bubble in Disney World was released to the public. The tape revealed Nichols' frustration about how her role as lead host of the NBA Finals was being given to Maria Taylor, a Black female.
“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," Nichols said.
Nichols was taken off the air at ESPN following the comments, and eventually parted ways with the network in early 2022.
On an episode of Dan Le Batard's "South Beach Sessions" that aired on Dec. 22, Nichols spoke how she dealt with the aftermath of her departure from the network, including remembering that ESPN was not the end-all, be-all of sports journalism.
"The thing that was really helpful was, I didn't start at ESPN," Nichol said. "ESPN didn't give me my card to be a journalist ... I had established my identity and who I was, I had worked for multiple big media companies. So I had the perspective and had always sort of seen it as, 'Yeah, I'll work here for a while. I'm gonna work somewhere else, because I've worked other places before I got here and I'll work other places after I get here and that kind of thing.'"
Prior to ESPN, Nichols had worked for places like CNN and Turner Sports and written for the Washington Post. She even had an initial stint with ESPN in the 2000s until the early 2010s before leaving for a few years.
She also saw legendary sports broadcaster Marv Albert as someone who went through a public controversy but was still able to turn his career around to become one of the best in the industry.
Related: Matt Barnes speaks candidly about Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor's ESPN controversy
"There's so many different people who have gone through so many things that you learn as you get older in the business," Nichols said.
She said that she also had to realize when she left ESPN that it isn't the only place to make a name in sports media, especially because of the rise of other forms of media. She said she had already started to realize that even while a part of ESPN, but it was hard to truly grasp the concept from within.
"The barrier to entries were falling and what people were actually watching and listening to was not the traditional stuff, but you can know that but when you're in that ESPN world, there's a lot of sort of Stockholm Syndrome of, 'This is the only thing that matters,'" Nichols said.
After months away from the spotlight, Nichols has returned to the sports media spotlight through several roles, including with SHOWTIME Basketball and now as a frequent guest of FS1's "Undisputed."
Nichols did not get into the actual falling out with ESPN, something that Le Batard said she requested for the interview. Le Batard admitted that he hopes to talk to her about it down the line.
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