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- Former ESPN staffer Amin Elhassan has accused NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski of racism.
- Woj is just the latest ESPN employee to be caught in the fire following the leaked audio of Rachel Nichols.
- Check out more sports coverage at BroBible here.
While there is always some sort of drama brewing at ESPN, the finger-pointing and insider controversies are perhaps at an all-time high at the moment after the Rachel Nichols audio was leaked on July 4.
The private conversation obtained and then released by The New York Times took place inside the NBA’s Disney bubble last year.
After filming an episode of ‘The Jump’ from inside her hotel room, Nichols did not turn off all of her camera/audio equipment before venting about losing the NBA Finals hosting position to Maria Taylor. Nichols alleged that Taylor only got the gig because she was black and that ESPN was pressured into making a “diversity” hire.
Nichols’ conversation and comments were the main stories from the Times‘ leak, but lost in the story was ESPN NBA insider Adrian ‘Woj’ Wojnarowski calling Nichols “a bad teammate.”
Not everyone overlooked Woj’s comment, however, certainly not former ESPN NBA insider Amin Elhassan. He joined ‘The Dan Le Batard Show’ on Tuesday and accused Woj of being racist while explaining why, in his opinion, Woj’s comments about Nichols being a bad teammate are hypocritical.
“Are you f–king sh-tting me?” Elhassan asked.
“This guy is going to call someone a bad teammate? For real? For real? Do we want to talk about the black careers that he put a foot on because he was threatened by? Do we want to talk about that? Do you wanna talk about the new breakers – with an ’s’ – of diverse background, who have rapports with players that Adrian doesn’t have? That he saw as threatening because his sources are all front office people?
Elhassan clearly believes he knows something about Woj that those outside the ESPN bubble don’t. He also went on to say that Woj “can’t talk to LeBron” because he doesn’t have that rapport with him or other superstar players that other reporters have.
Woj was with Yahoo Sports before joining ESPN in 2017, which resulted in the four-letter network cutting ties with Marc Stein, a white reporter. Stein was ESPN’s top NBA insider before Woj arrived on the scene.