It might be an unconscious habit, like biting one’s fingernails or blaming others for what you did all by yourself. ESPN’s dishonesty — its selective use and exclusion of “facts” — continues to stand out as habit-formed.

Last week, ESPN fired foul-mouthed, ethnicity-slinging field reporter Marly Rivera for a withering verbal attack on a rival Yankee Stadium reporter — also a female — that was so vulgar it immediately came to Roger Goodell’s attention for inclusion in the Super Bowl halftime show.

Rivera told The Post’s Andrew Marchand, who was reporting on the story, that she previously had “a sterling reputation across baseball.”

I guess that depends on who you asked. Maybe she meant a John Sterling reputation. The first time I heard her work, she struck me as astonishingly unprepared or a fraud in service to concocting and promoting a racial hustle.

Former Athletics backup catcher Bruce Maxwell, a biracial man of modest baseball achievement, was the only major leaguer to take a knee during the national anthem in 2017 in the wake of the Colin Kaepernick controversy.

In 2020, ESPN’s Rivera, attempting to portray Maxwell as a sustaining martyr of “systemic racism in America,” found and interviewed Maxwell, who was catching for a Mexican team.

The theme of the interview: Maxwell had been banished from MLB because he was a black man who publicly demonstrated against systemically racist American institutions.

In fact, the 7:45-long interview began with Rivera “asking” Maxwell: “We all know what happened. You knew what could happen by taking that knee. Why did you do it?”

Maxwell answered as Rivera had obviously prodded, as if he’d sacrificed his MLB career to escape slavery, as if he were a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. And Rivera indulged him as if he were the noblest of humans who’d devoted his life to the cause of all that is good.

I waited, as a matter of what couldn’t be ignored and minimal honesty, for her or him to at least mention the significant flip-side of this story. But it never arrived, not even a hint.

Neither the A’s nor MLB banned Maxwell. In fact, the A’s invited him back. What Maxwell and Rivera were selling to ESPN and its audience was a load of race-based bull, the kind of overnight-delivery myth that needlessly, senselessly and historically becomes “factual.”

For starters, had the A’s or MLB dumped Maxwell for taking a knee, we certainly would have immediately heard. The A’s actually issued a statement of support for Maxwell.

For finishers, in October 2017, a month after he took that knee, he was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.  His victim was a female food deliverer. TMZ reported, “The woman says she was making a routine delivery from Geno’s Pizza and Cheesesteaks in Tempe, Ariz., when Maxwell answered the door and stuck a gun right in her face.” He later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct.

Who’s to say that incident prompted the end of his association with the A’s, rather than his race or pregame protest?

But none of that made Rivera’s ESPN’s report nor the “Racist America Strikes Again” ESPN online columns that followed Rivera’s Maxwell interview.

Such facts would have ruined the story, the one about racist America remains eager to keep blacks down and out.

That Marly Rivera was fired last week for something else that was indefensible doesn’t reduce her or ESPN’s guilt in irresponsibly exaggerating an inflammatory racial story. And if Rivera was canned for her vulgar spew heard off the air, how do we explain ESPN’s ongoing courtship of Pat McAfee?

The ex-NFL punter appeals to ESPN because he’s known and cherished for his eagerness to be vulgar on the air and for attaching his presence to pro wrestling to attract and sustain a target audience of young, desensitized misanthropes.

And ESPN knows it.

Also last week, ESPN football analyst Robert Griffin III checked in with his opinion of the Jets’ signing of Aaron Rodgers.

In December, Griffin, a black man, spoke a horrifying racial slur on the air. He escaped without a bruise, let alone a suspension, as the slur he spoke was obviously a slip and made no contextual sense. ESPN let it immediately die, no harm no foul.

Of course, white veteran ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler was immediately fired, his career destroyed, for ESPN’s claim that he called Venus Williams “a gorilla” when that made zero contextual sense as he clearly referenced her “guerrilla” tactics.

And Muhammad Ali, who racially denigrated Joe Frazier as “a gorilla,” remains the namesake of ESPN’s Humanitarian Award.

Reader Rich LePetri asks for some help in explaining Yankees manager Aaron Boone’s strategy Sunday against the Blue Jays.

In the bottom of the fifth of a scoreless game the Yankees would lose, 5-1, DJ LeMahieu led off with a double. The Yankees’ next three batters — Oswaldo Cabrera, Oswald Peraza and Kyle Higashioka, none hitting better than .234 — then struck out.

None tried to move LeMahieu to third, all swung away, as if they were established sluggers.

Thus LePetri’s question is this: “Why?”

Well, on YES, neither Michael Kay nor Paul O’Neill even seemed to notice it.

Slowly, perhaps, the NBA is beginning to realize its fans are not to be taken for granted. Slowly.

This season, instead of NBA Finals games beginning at 9:10 p.m. EDT to cover both coasts’ network ratings desires, no game is scheduled to start after 8:30,  thus more than half the nation’s population will have a shot to see regulation games end before 11 p.m.

The madness is here, there, everywhere:

Tuesday in Pittsburgh, the Pirates led the Dodgers, 7-2, when Bucs manager Derek Shelton pulled consecutive spotless relievers to play bullpen roulette. The Bucs lost, 8-7.

Wednesday in Cinccinnati, the Rangers led 5-0 after six when Texas manager Bruce Bochy pulled a spotless reliever to go bullpen prospecting. The Rangers lost, 7-6.

By the way, reader Will O’Toole asks if MLB analytics factor players’ inclinations to run to first versus dogging it.

Dick Groat, among the best U.S. athletes of the past century — All-American basketball player at Duke, All-Star and 1960 NL MVP shortstop with the Pirates — died Thursday at 92. For 40 years, he was the radio analyst on Pitt basketball games. He was also the great uncle of golf star Brooks Koepka.

There is always three hours of compromise attached to Yankees TV and radio broadcasts.

As heard during the week, Ryan Ruocco, Michael Kay’s regular sub on Yankees telecasts, should first establish himself as a calm and credible play-by-player before selling himself as a strained and feckless speaker of the clever.

Friday night, YES identified a low slider as a “sweeper,” and a dead-straight 98 mph inside fastball as a “sinker.”

Graphic of the week, submitted by reader Ken Ferber, via a “screengrab” during the NFL Network’s draft coverage: “Raiders have not won a playoff game since losing Super Bowl XXVII.”