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Taylor Rooks is unapologetic about the close friendships she’s built with the athletes she covers.
This summer, the host of Amazon Prime Video’s NBA on Prime attended the weddings of NBA stars Tyrese Haliburton and Donovan Mitchell on back to back days, she told Bridget Condon during the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit on Tuesday. Kevin Durant is also a “close friend,” she said—he attended her wedding last year, and she’s an equity partner in his company, Boardroom, she said.
Rooks doesn’t believe those relationships compromise her work; if anything, they can make it easier to have difficult conversations.
“I actually think it sometimes might make it a little bit easier,” she said. “Largely because a lot of those tough conversations, you’re just having already.”
For example, she said during Mitchell’s wedding she had a discussion with the Cavaliers star about why he hasn’t been able to get his team over the hump. Although Mitchell has had a stellar career, including seven All-Star appearances, he’s only made the conference finals once, last season, when his team was swept by the Knicks. “What is it about your play?” she said she asked him. “Are you not elevating your teammates?”
Having private conversations about topics like that makes it easier for her to ask hard questions when she’s sitting down for a televised one-on-one, Rooks said.
“It’s about honesty,” she told FOS. “Those questions are fair. Your story is your story.”
She doesn’t worry about breaking the trust of a close friend who is also an athlete she covers. “I think that one of the reasons you end up sitting with me is because there is the trust that exists,” she said. “And that trust really is this daily deposit, both with the audience and with the person that you’re interviewing.”
Her friendship with Durant dates back years. Rooks said that she first met Durant when she was a sophomore in college and traveled to Florida to cover the All-Star Game.
“KD sees this little girl running around trying to get people to answer her questions,” she said. “He said, ‘you can ask me.’ It was my first big interview.”
Nowadays, Rooks considers Durant a “close friend,” but that hasn’t stopped her from asking him tough questions on camera. “We have done tons of interviews, some that were exclusives,” she said.
Reporters getting too close with the people they cover can lead to backlash, especially for female reporters who are often scrutinized differently than their male counterparts. She previously addressed that in a 2025 Substack post, writing there are people who feel she “should change my personal relationships with athletes simply because I’m a woman (despite the fact that male reporters have built their entire careers on access and relationships).” She doubled down on that point during Tuned In.
“This is a relationship business,” she said. “This is about maintaining relationships, building relationships.”
Rooks is able to remain level-headed thanks, in part, to a simple rule she’s been living by for years: Ignore the online critics.
“I let go of online criticism a long time ago,” she told FOS. People who go online to criticize me… It doesn’t register with me. Because I know what’s true about my life, my credibility, my profession.”
