Maria Taylor
has joined NBC less than a week after her contract with ESPN
expired.
NBC is formally
making the announcement during its primetime Olympic show Friday
before a replay of the opening ceremony.
Taylor had been
with ESPN since 2014 but her contract expired Tuesday. Her last
assignment for the network was Tuesday night at the NBA Finals,
where she was the pregame and postgame host for the network’s “NBA
Countdown” show.
ESPN and Taylor
announced Wednesday that they could not agree on a new contract.
Her first assignment for NBC will be the Tokyo Olympics.
Taylor had
hosted “NBA Countdown” since 2019 as well as being a reporter for
“College GameDay” and ABC “Saturday Night Football” since 2017.
ESPN had been
discussing a contract with Taylor for over a year but things
reached a boiling point over the past month. Taylor rejected an
extension last year and the two sides were far apart heading into
the NBA Finals. Then came a New York Times report detailing
comments her colleague Rachel Nichols made about Taylor last year
during the NBA’s restart in Florida.
Nichols, who is
white, was introduced in September 2019 as the NBA Finals host but
the network later decided to promote Taylor, who is Black.
Nichols said in
an accidentally recorded phone call obtained by the Times: “I wish
Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football,
she covers basketball. 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
apologized on July 5 while hosting “The Jump.” She was slated to be
the sideline reporter for the Finals, but was pulled off the
assignment.