More twisting and turning in the Rachel Nichols/ESPN saga.

After being yanked from her sideline gig during the NBA Finals, she’s now been pulled off the network entirely, according to several plugged-in media folks:

Marchand says that Nichols has a year left on her contract and will still be paid; she just won’t be on air. That sounds like a great deal. Sign me up for that.

He also says ESPN “will create a new daily NBA afternoon show… Look for it to be more like NFL Live, according to sources.”

If you missed this story the first time, or when it was developing, basically what happened is that a recording surfaced where Nichols was heard telling another person that she didn’t want Maria Taylor to take her job at ESPN because of diversity reasons. She was essentially standing her ground, and calling out ESPN for a “crappy” diversity record, but got crushed by Twitter and was branded a racist and all of this stuff. She later apologized, and then ESPN made the talent switch for the Finals, and Taylor ultimately left and went to NBC.