It looks like Kwame Brown had a perfectly good gripe against Rachel Nichols.
Back in May, the former NBA player was in the midst of going off on Matt Barnes, Stephen Jackson, and Gilbert Arenas when he turned his attention to Rachel Nichols. He went against “The Jump” host and how she talks about black people. Brown hosted a live broadcast where he called Nichols the B-word and a “long-nosed mor fer.”
Fast forward to July and Nichols is in the news after The New York Times published audio of her making comments about colleague Maria Taylor. Nichols made these comments in July 2020 after ESPN told her that Taylor, who is Black, would be hosting coverage of the NBA Finals instead of her. During the call, Nichols can be heard saying that she feels like Taylor is only being promoted over her due to ESPN’s long and terrible record on diversity.
Via NY Times:
Nichols: So they said to me ‘Hey instead of hosting the NBA Finals, how about you do Doris [Burke, ESPN commentator]’s sideline reporter job for the NBA Finals?’ [pause] ‘Cause guess what that would clear the way for?
Mendelsohn: For her to do it full time.
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Nichols: For Maria to do the hosting full time.
Mendelsohn: Yeah.
Nichols: So I have declined. I don’t know what their next move is, but they are feeling pressure because of…all of that, and I’m trying to figure out, like how to just…you know, my thing is, 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.”
Mendelsohn: “I don’t know. I’m exhausted. Between MeToo and Black Lives Matter, I’ve got nothing left.
Nichols: [laughs] Been thinking about it? And at like 2 in the afternoon three days from now you’re going to text the perfect Twitter thread.
Mendelsohn: You could actually generate a really interesting conversation about how it’s just so very white male for them to turn two women on each other to compete over the one spot that’s dangling over them.
Nichols: Right.
Mendelsohn: A broader conversation about all the spots that should be under consideration.
Nichols: There isn’t just one seat at the table for a minority of whichever version this week we’re trying to please.
Mendelsohn: If you think about it, this is precisely the problem we’ve been talking about for a long time now which is white men – it is an example of the one Black person in the boardroom [inaudible]…you don’t get to have a Black woman in a prominent spot and feel like “OK, the work is done.” And you certainly don’t get to say, “OK, we have a white woman, we have a woman in a critical seat, and now we’re going to put a Black woman in that same seat. The question is, what are the other seats that white males are in? That should be under consideration.
After that, Kwame Brown started trending heavily on Twitter as a result. Check out some of the tweets: