Rachel Nichols Reveals The Shocking Details Behind Her ESPN Scandal: “One Person Decided To Just Sit And Watch, And Started Spying On Me Like I Was Their Own Personal TV Show…”

Rachel Nichols revealed the disturbing series of events that led to her being recorded while making her now infamous comments on ESPN and Maria Taylor.

4 Min Read

Rachel Nichols has been one of the more prominent women in the sports television world for a long time at this point. She has worked with a lot of the major sports networks like TNT, CBS, and most notably ESPN, with whom she had two separate stints, with the second one ending in controversy.

Nichols had rejoined ESPN in 2016 after leaving in 2013 and things were going great for her as she had become one of the faces of the network. Her show The Jump earned a lot of praise and the network decided that she was to host the 2020 NBA Finals. 


Rachel Nichols Reveals The Shocking Details Behind Her ESPN Scandal

She even had that written into her contract, but ESPN later came to Nichols asking her to step aside from Finals duty for Maria Taylor, something she wasn’t keen on doing. She was informed around the time she was entering the Bubble that year that Taylor was going to take over Finals duties and Nichols expressed her frustration to Adam Mendelsohn during a phone conversation in which she stated that Taylor was getting the job because ESPN was coming under fire for their poor record when it came to diversity. The conversation was recorded discreetly, and it led to her being removed from sideline duty for the Finals, and she soon stopped appearing on the network. It was announced recently that she is joining Showtime after her release from ESPN earlier this year and Nichols spoke about how the conversation was recorded.

(starts at 5:52 mark):

“It was a different set of equipment than I had been using to broadcast at home. So my very first day I’m there I’m using the new equipment and I didn’t know that if you leave a particular app running in the background that the line from my hotel room to Bristol would stay open.”

“Unfortunately that entire time nobody back at ESPN told me that there was an open line to my hotel room and that anyone who looked at the feed could see me. No one shut it off, decided ‘Oh she clearly doesn’t know she’s being watched unpacking.’ or doing all these other things. And at least one person decided to just sit and watch, and started spying on me like I was their own personal TV show, and when they heard something they thought was juicy they picked up their cellphone and started recording my conversation on their cellphone.”

How out of bounds you might feel Nichols was to say what she said during that call, it was wrong on ESPN’s part to not tell her that the feed was active. Everyone has a right to privacy and whoever this individual was who spied on her should be ashamed.

Nichols now gets to move on from this as a part of the Showtime crew and it is not a surprise that she went there. Stephen Jackson was one of her most vocal defenders when this whole story came out and she now gets to work in a more welcoming environment over there.

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Gautam Varier is a staff writer and columnist for Fadeaway World from Mumbai, India. He graduated from Symbiosis International University with a Master of Business specializing in Sports Management in 2020. This educational achievement enables Gautam to apply sophisticated analytical techniques to his incisive coverage of basketball, blending business acumen with sports knowledge.Before joining Fadeaway World in 2022, Gautam honed his journalistic skills at Sportskeeda and SportsKPI, where he covered a range of sports topics with an emphasis on basketball. His passion for the sport was ignited after witnessing the high-octane offense of the Steve Nash-led Phoenix Suns. Among the Suns, Shawn Marion stood out to Gautam as an all-time underrated NBA player. Marion’s versatility as a defender and his rebounding prowess, despite being just 6’7”, impressed Gautam immensely. He admired Marion’s finishing ability at the rim and his shooting, despite an unconventional jump shot, believing that Marion’s skill set would have been even more appreciated in today’s NBA.This transformative experience not only deepened his love for basketball but also shaped his approach to sports writing, enabling him to connect with readers through vivid storytelling and insightful analysis.
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