Secretly Recorded Conversation Fuels Cat Fight Between ESPN Anchors

More News For You

One of ESPN’s more popular anchors, Rachel Nichols was caught on camera scheming with LeBron James’ publicist to sabotage a co-worker. The secret conversation got out and the resulting fallout was glorious.

Nichols was working out of a hotel room just as the NBA Playoffs were getting started and at some point accidentally left her camera recording while she had what was supposed to be a private conversation with Adam Mendelsohn about how to prevent a fellow Black female anchor from stealing her job. All the while, the feed was being sent back to the network’s studio where someone had the foresight to record the whole thing.

In the first snippet posted by the Times, you can hear Nichols venting to Mendelsohn — who’s a PR/comms wiz — about how ESPN had approached her with the idea of doing sideline reporting during the Finals that year, as opposed to hosting — a task Nichols has shared on and off lately with Maria Taylor, another rising star … who’s African-American.

Nichols goes on to say of Maria shortly thereafter … “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.” She adds, “Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

In a 2nd audio snipped … Mendelsohn is heard giving advice to Nichols about how she could frame the dynamic of ESPN pitting two females against each other in order to gain leverage, even if it would potentially be at Maria’s expense. He also had some interesting thoughts on #MeToo and BLM, saying he had “nothing left” and was exhausted … in what sounds like what he (and perhaps Nichols) considered phony pandering/appeasing at the executive level.

Soon, news of the conversation began to spread among ESPN workers and eventually made its way to the higher-ups. Now the network needs to do some serious damage control and hope that Nichols doesn’t sue them and Taylor won’t just quit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *