Rachel Nichols is entering rare territory.
In June, she will become the 13th person to host the NBA Finals, a list that includes broadcasting legends Bob Costas, Brent Musburger and Howard Cosell. Despite the relative exclusivity, it is a fairly thankless job. Other than Costas and Musburger, nobody has done it more than four times.
Nichols was cognizant of the short-lived nature of the role when Sports Media Watch caught up with her at All-Star weekend on Friday.
“Oh man, let me get through one year, okay? And then we’ll see how it goes from there,” she said, laughing. “I feel very fortunate to be able to do it. I started out being a newspaper writer, so to get to be the TV host of the Finals, just for Game 1 — I’m going to be really excited about it, and then I’m going to hope that I get to do Game 2, and Game 3, and we’ll see from there.”
The Finals role is part of a ramped-up presence for Nichols this NBA season. Last summer, ESPN elevated her four-year-old The Jump to its NBA pregame show of record. Instead of just airing in its low-key weekday afternoon timeslot, it now precedes ABC’s highest-profile games.
The promotion means a larger audience and bigger stakes. “There’s definitely more eyes on it. We feel real responsibility and are very grateful, frankly, that the network has trusted us with something that feels so significant.”
The rapid rise of The Jump, and Nichols, was no foregone conclusion. Nichols was a prominent reporter and correspondent during her first stint with ESPN from 2004-13, but that role does not always lead to bigger things. She previously served as a print reporter for The Washington Post, a position she began while still in Chicago attending Northwestern. (She started out as a “snot nosed, 18-19 year old” stringer covering the Michael Jordan/Scottie Pippen Chicago Bulls, the latter of whom is now a regular guest on her show.)
While Nichols credits every stage of her career for her current status, a turning point would seem to be her tenure with CNN and Turner Sports from 2013-16. It was there that she began hosting her own show, Unguarded with Rachel Nichols. While the series lasted less than a year, the opportunity was a significant step in her career. “I loved it there,” she said of CNN/Turner, where she also worked as an NBA sideline reporter. “Getting the chance to for first time host a show that I had creative input into was such an amazing experience.”
For its part, ESPN under then-president John Skipper regretted letting her get away. According to a Sports Business Journal profile published last year, when Skipper and Connor Schell began developing a new NBA studio show, Nichols’ name came up as a possible host.
“I was never thinking I was going to leave TNT/CNN,” Nichols said Friday, “but it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.”
Nichols’ pitch for the show was that “it should feel like talking about basketball with your friends, but what if one of your friends was Tracy McGrady. We want it to feel like a knowledgeable show, we want it to feel like it’s where everything’s happening, it’s the place where your friends want to gather and hang out.”
Her vision has thus far been an unqualified success. As The Jump settles into its pregame role, the bar will be raised — and set by Turner’s formidable Inside the NBA, now celebrating its 30th season. Attempts to compete with Inside have taken many forms, from NBC’s ill-fated choice of Jayson Williams as its answer to Barkley to ESPN going without a traditional host for two years.
Can The Jump close the gap? “We don’t have to, because we’re on at 3:00 in the afternoon and they’re on at night, so we don’t go head-to-head with them,” Nichols said tongue-in-cheek. “That show is so much fun, I worked on that show when I was with TNT. I love those guys, and they’re a model of everything you want to be.”
As the platform, and the expectations, grow higher, Nichols is keeping things simple. “I think we’re just going to keep trying to be a basketball show that real basketball fans watch.”
