J-Speaks: Longtime NBA Sideline Reporter Gets Promoted

In a career of broadcast sports that has seen her be a trailblazing sideline reporter, and color analyst for college basketball, and both men’s and women’s professional hoops, Doris Burke will add another first to her Hall of Fame resume. 

On Monday, Sports Illustrated reported that ESPN. “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” announced that Burke, formerly Doris Sable, will become a regular NBA game color analyst, commentating regular season telecasts as well as the NBA playoffs. 

Burke, who has been working with ESPN, as the color analyst for WNBA games in 1997, will become the first woman at the national level to be assigned a full season rotation of games as an NBA game analyst. 

This will not be Burke’s first rodeo as over the last couple of years, she has worked select NBA games as the No. 2 commentator, but will now be a regular. 

Burke will still be the lead NBA sideline reporter for the NBA Conference Finals, and the NBA Finals. 

This opportunity came about after long time NBA analyst for the network Doug Collins left to become the new Senior Advisor of Basketball Operations for Chicago Bulls, where he used to coach. 

“To have an opportunity to be more involved with one of the most important properties at ESPN is an honor,” Burke said on Monday. 

This is on the heels of the Yankees’ Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) announced the week prior that their longtime sideline reporter Sarah Kustok would serve as the full-time color analyst for the Brooklyn Nets, making her the only woman handling the analyst duties solo for an NBA team. 

This news of Burke’s promotion comes at a time where other women have morphed from sideline reporters into color analyst on NBA broadcasts. Longtime sideline reporter for FOX Sports Southeast Stephanie Ready, who has worked the sidelines for NBA on TNT in the past during the postseason became the first woman to become a full-time NBA game analyst as member of the three-person team that includes her, Eric Collins, and former Hornets player Dell Curry since the 2015-16 NBA campaign. 

Hall of Famer Ann Meyers Drysdale for years has been a part of the Phoenix Suns television broadcast team. 

In the middle of the 1990s, Hall of Famer and former WNBA head coach of the Phoenix Mercury Cheryl Miller, who brother is fellow Hall of Famer of the Indiana Pacers, and current NBA on TNT color analyst Reggie Miller often rotated as a sideline reporter, studio analyst for TNT, and back then for TBS. In November of 1996, she became the first female analyst to call a national televised NBA game when the Miami Heat played at the Los Angeles Clippers on TBS. 

Burke, born in West Islip, NY on Nov. 4, 1965, and raised in Manasquan, NJ, Burke’s basketball journey began when she started playing the sport in second grade. 

After a standout amateur career as the point guard at Manasquan High School, she was not recruited by several colleges on the East Coast. She chose to attend Providence College in Providence, RI, where she also played point guard for the Friars. 

In her senior year in 1987, the then Sable led the Big East Conference in assists. In her collegiate career, she a Second-Team All-Big East selection once, and on two occasions made the All-Tourney Team of the Big East Women’s Basketball Tournament. 

In her senior year, Burke was the Providence’s Co-Female Athlete of the Year. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Health Service Administration/Social Work, and the school’s all-time leader in assists, and as of 2012 was still second in the school’s history in that category. Burke later graduated from Providence with a Master’s in Education. 

Two years after graduating, the then Sable married Gregg Burke in 1989 after he proposed to her in Cliff Walk on Valentine’s Day in 1990. The couple had their first child, daughter Sarah in 1992. Their second child, son Matthew was born in 1995. They divorced subsequently. 

Her broadcast career began in 1990 as a basketball analyst for her alma mater’s women’s games. Burke also that same year did commentary on Big East Women’s games on television, and six years later worked Big East’s Men’s games. 

In 1997, Burke became the lead color analyst for ESPN’s Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) coverage, and has been the leading voice of TV and radio of the New York Liberty. 

In 2000, she became the first woman color analyst for a New York Knicks game on radio and television. 

Starting eight years ago, Burke became the sideline reporter ABC’s coverage of The NBA Finals. One year later was featured as the sideline reporter for 2K Sports’ NBA 2K11, and has been on the last seven editions, including the newest one out now 2K18. 

In Oct. 2013, Burke made headlines when she signed a multi-year contract extension to serve as an NBA color commentator for ESPN, and then on Nov. 13, 2013 joined NBA analyst Jalen Rose, and now Alabama Men’s Basketball Head Coach Avery Johnson as ESPN’s NBA pre-game show “NBA Countdown.” 

This past season, “NBA Countdown” was hosted by ESPN’s “Sportsnation” Michelle Beadle, newest Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady, Chauncey Billups, and “Pardon the Interruption’s” Michael Wilbon. 

While Burke has risen to the highest status as a broadcaster, and sideline analyst, she has paid it forward passing on her knowledge to the next generation of color, play-by-play, and sideline women analyst. 

Recent edition to the Naismith Hall of Fame Rebecca Lobo, who is works alongside Ryan Ruocco broadcasting WNBA games for ESPN the past few years, said at her Hall of Fame speech earlier this month, she thanked Burke and sideline reporter Holly Rowe for showing her the ropes of becoming a great broadcast analyst. 

Burke’s promotion to full-time lead analyst as Rachel Nichols said on Tuesday’s edition of “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN is as she said is, “overdue.” 

There is no one who knows the game more, having played the game, and reported on the game than Doris Burke. Seeing her, Ready, Kustok, and Ready rise to the positions they are as color analyst is special, and gives something for all little girls and young broadcast journalists to aspire to. 

“Basketball fans are better off every time she’s on a broadcast,” Nichols, the mother of twin girls said on Tuesday. “I can’t to hear more from her this season. It’s going to be great.” 

Information, and quotations are courtesy of 9/8/17 7:30 p.m. NBATV broadcast of the 2017 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony; 9/25/17 www.si.com story, “ESPN’s Doris Burke Will Be the First Woman in National Role As a Regular NBA Game Analyst,” by Richard Deitsch; 9/26/17 3 p.m. edition of “NBA: The Jump,” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols, Israel Gutierrez, and Scottie Pippen; www.celebrity-divorce.com/biography/doris-burke; www.google.com and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Miller.