In
the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA), whenever you hear
commentary of the game from the sidelines, whether it is a nationally
broadcasted game on now TNT, ESPN/ABC, and before that NBC and CBS or the
broadcast team of a specific squad of the 30 in the NBA, it is usually done by
male with the sideline reports coming from a female. Well one of the sideline
reporters who seems like an overnight success story, that was decades in the
making has blazed a trail that has taken her to having her voice as part of the
top basketball video game in the world to a seat as one of the voices you hear
during commentary of nationally televised NBA games for “The Worldwide Leader
in Sports.”
Last
year, Doris Burke, born Doris Sable became the first woman to be assigned as a
full-time color analyst for ESPN.
To
put into perspective how big a deal this is not just for the NBA, but the
entire sports world, in a game on Feb. 23 on ESPN between the Minnesota Timberwolves
versus the Houston Rockets when Ms. Burke and her broadcast partner Dave Pasch
are doing the pregame intros for the contest, Rockets’ starting center Clint
Capela stops by her broadcast position to say hello to her, Pasch and sideline
reporter Cassidy Hubbarth. Even perennial All-Star lead guard Chris Paul stop
by to give Ms. Buke a hug.
It
is not just the players though that give their greetings to the West Islip
native, but it fans, who often ask for a picture, even NBA game officials.
Showing their excitement for her that she is commentating their game.
“Sometimes
I pinch myself that I’m courtside at an NBA game and I’m about to watch the
best players in the world do their thing,” Ms. Burke said to HBO “Real Sports’”
Andrea Kramer. “Come on, James Harden is the MVP and he is 50 feet from me
warming up. He’s going to cross somebody over tonight. He’s going to drain a
three and we’re going to have a hell of a time calling it.”
While
Burke’s shattering glass ceiling moment may seem like one of the great success
stories for our times, it was a long, relentless climb up that was nearly 30
years in the making.
For
a very long time, television executives have worked under the assumption that
the last thing most men want is to have a woman explain sports to them. That
their place was to be on the sidelines or doing the pregame and postgame
coverage in the studio. Explaining the X’s and O’s of what takes place on the
NBA hardwood is a man’s job. That theory is being proven very wrong by Ms.
Burke who has shown not only that she can explain the X’s and O’s of college
basketball for men and women, but for the professional game of both men and
women. She did it for the New York Knicks in 2000 on radio, becoming the first
commentator; then as the first to be the primary commentator for men’s
basketball coverage and now NBA coverage on ESPN.
“Just
listen to what I say,” Ms. Burke said. “Don’t look at what does my hair look
like. What is my outfit? Just listen to what I have to say.”
When
Kramer said even if your voice is high-pitched, Ms. Burke’s reply said that she
understands the viewer’s objection to something new. That the initial reaction
is to recoil from, which she has heard from many people. Many have asked what
is she doing there? After those naysayers opened their ears and held their
objections they gave Ms. Burke their thumbs up in saying as she put it to
Kramer, “You’re okay.”
Ms.
Burke fell in love with basketball as a young person growing up in Manasquan,
NJ, where she was the youngest of eight children. She played high school ball
at Manasquan High as the team’s point guard. Her stellar play earned her many
offers from several colleges on the East coast.
Ms.
Burke attended Providence College in Providence, RI. Ms. Sable back then as a
senior led the Big East Conference in assists, while also being named in 1987
the school’s Co-Female Athlete of the Year. In her time there, she was named
Second-Team All-Big East once, and on two occasions made the All-Tourney team
of the Big East Women’s Basketball Tournament. Even with all those
accomplishments on the collegiate hardwood, it was something else that Ms.
Burke got that may never had been possible without basketball.
It
is because Ms. Burke got a scholarship to play for the Friars that she was able
to go to school and become the trail blazing color analyst she is today.
“I
could’ve easily been to be perfectly frank with you, a server on the Jersey
Shore to this day,” Ms. Burke said about what her path would have led to.
Following
her playing career, Burke coached for two years at her alma mater, and while
she loved every minute of it, she gave it up to marry Gregg Burke in 1989,
where she became Doris Burke. The couple had two kids, a son, and a daughter
around 1993 and 1995 respectably.
Ms.
Burke said to Kramer that she wanted to be a wife and a mother, and that she
wanted to stay home for the first several years of her children’s lives.
“There’s
not a working woman out there regardless of her profession who doesn’t struggle
with that work/life balance,” Burke said. “There’s not one.”
Become
a broadcaster became that compromise for Burke where she can stay a part of the
game that she loved, while still being committed to her family.
Burke’s
broadcasting journey began with doing commentary of games at her alma mater,
where she was the only woman on press row.
Burke
great work earned the respect of her peers where she was referred to as “one of
the smartest young broadcasters in women’s basketball.”
With
that said, Burke had her sites set even higher to one broadcast men’s
collegiate games. That became a reality when one day one of the male announcers
for a Big East tilt between the University of Pittsburgh versus Providence was
a no-show. Hours before tip-off, she got the call she had been waiting for.
“So,
no preparation. I know Pittsburgh. I knew Providence,” Burke said, “and oh by
the way, whatever Big East game was on that week, I had watched that too. And
if there was an article on the Big East, I guarantee you I read it.”
The
reality Burke said was that there were many executives pulling there hair out
about having a woman doing color analysis on the Big East Game of the Week.
That
seizing of the moment led to Burke commentating a slate of Big East games in
the Atlantic 10.
In
addition to doing those games. Ms. Burke worked the sidelines on some of the
biggest games of college basketball for ESPN like the great rivalry of the
University of North Carolina Tar Heels versus the Duke University Blue Devils.
Nearly
10 years into her broadcasting career Burke was climbing mountains in the
broadcast field no woman had ever had. She became the first woman to be a color
analyst for a New York Knicks game on local television. The play-by-play
announcer that night, Mike Breen, who does commentary today for the guys from
the “Big Apple” is now the main play-by-play man for NBA on ESPN/ABC, where
since 2009 Burke has served as the sideline reporter for the NBA Finals on ABC.
Ms.
Burke thought that she was pigeon holed way to often as a sideline reporter for
basketballs biggest events like the NCAA Tournament for college and the NBA
playoffs in the pros, while her male counterparts were analysts. One day, she
said to her producers that her taken a secondary role during those moments was
the last straw for her.
“I’m
saying to him, ‘I deserve to work better men’s games as an analyst,” Burke
said. “And I am moaning up a storm, and he said, ‘You need to change your
style.”
Burke
in elaborating on that point made to her by said producer that she had her hair
back in a pony tail at that time. She had some makeup on, but not a lot.
Burke
however pointed out that the male giving her his opinion was wearing a blue
blazer and a power tie, which she said was, “projecting an air of authority.”
Her
thinking was that she need to match that. He went on to say to Burke that she
needed to ditch the blazers and the suits and even if it goes against
everything in your inner being to be evaluated for anything other than what you
say, you are and that you need to “get over it.”
When
Kramer asked Burke about what was going through her mind as she was hearing
this, she that her obsession with hoops and knowing the game inside-and-out and
projecting that to those watching was far more important than worrying that if
people notice her as the most beautiful lady of the moment.
Ms.
Burke however did soften her appearance, with the aide of her family. Her
daughter one time looked in her mom’s closet and says what wardrobe is great
for her mom to wear, what has no business even leaving her closet and what
should be thrown out with the baby and the bath water.
That
change worked as Burke was able to be on the sidelines for some of basketball’s
biggest moments, like when the Cleveland Cavaliers won their first ever NBA
title in 2016 dethroning the defending champion Golden State Warriors on their
home floor in Game 7.
Burke’s
popularity soared to the point where she is featured on 2K Sports’ NBA 2K as
the new sideline reporter for the 2011 version and has been a fixtured ever
since.
She
also caught the attention of the most famous fan of the Toronto Raptors and one
of the world’s most famous Pop music star Drake. He revealed his crush for the
52-year-old Burke on national television, where he wore a shirt with her face
that said underneath it, “Woman Crush Everday.”
“I
know dinner at my house anytime, as long as she comes alone,” he said during a
broadcast of the Golden State Warriors versus Raptors tilt on ESPN about his
dream of meeting Ms. Burke during an interview, which occurred on Drake night
at Air Canada Centre.
Burke
sent out a tweet shortly after @heydb by saying, “@Drake dinner is on,” with a
heart shaped emoji.
For
some in Burke’s position, being around the glitz and glamour of the game from
being able to interview the like of Hall of Famer Reggie Miller early in her
career, and perennial All-Stars, league MVPs and future Hall of Famers like
LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Stephen Curry, she thought she could add more
than what she able to provide in those quick on court interviews with the
players and coaches.
One
person who agreed with her is former NBA head coach of the New York Knicks and
Houston Rockets and ESPN colleague Jeff Van Gundy, who Burke has known since
she played, and he coached at Providence. He did worry though that moment would
never happen for her.
“I
think it’s the whispers of ‘I don’t want to listen to a female when I turn on a
broadcast, you know,’” he said to Kramer about the thoughts of others
particularly fans of the game. “I’ve had people say that to me. What does she
know.”
“They
think their sucking up to you, but what they’re really doing is revealing their
ignorance.”
When
Kramer ask what do you same back? Van Gundy, who has been a colleague of
Burke’s at ESPN since 2007 always says “Doris is the best broadcaster in
basketball, that’s it.”
The
2017-18 NBA season would have marked Burke’s 15th season as a
sideline reporter covering the NBA for ESPN. In September, the job she had
always wanted opened, and Van Gundy urged the fellow Friar to go for it.
“Jeff
called, and he said, ‘Do you want those games,’” Burke said. Her response, “Off
course I do. He said, ‘Than you need to make sure that’s clear to somebody.”
Burke
said in that conversation with Van Gundy that she was not very good at making
those calls.
Like
any good friend, or peer who sees the potential that you have respectfully lit
into her saying, “You earned this opportunity. These should be your games.”
Burke
did take Van Gundy’s advice and put in the call to ESPN’s lead NBA producer and
said that she earned the opportunity to call those games, even though that
person was going to get many calls from others for that opened spot.
While
the producer Burke said did not play his hand initially, but that afternoon
that long awaited call came in and the person on the other end of the line
said, “This was an easy choice for us. We want you to take that job.”
While
shedding a few tears, Burke also said, “You poor your heart and soul into
something, and you’ve taken steps, and you get somewhere. I don’t know if that
I consciously allowed myself to dream that. But it happened.”
“I
started broadcasting in 1992. Calling Providence College Women’s Basketball on
radio with zero listeners. From there to an analyst on the NBA. Think of that
journey and every step in between. It’s special.”
In
the second grade, Doris Burke was introduced to the game of basketball. That
introduction aided in going to college, breaking records at the University of
Providence, to an assistant coach for the Lady Friars and then a journey as a
basketball radio analyst that led her to now being a NBA television color
analyst for ESPN, “The World Wide Leader in Sports.” Along the way, she has
raised to wonderful children, who are in their 20s now, and who according to
Kramer are not really sports fans.
Burke
has broken this glass ceiling with meticulous commitment to getting all the
details and an exhaustive study for each broadcast she does. It is because of
that work ethic that she was selected to enter the Naismith Basketball Hall of
Fame where she will be enshrined as the 2018 Curt Gowdy Media Award recipient
this fall in Springfield, MA.
Doris
Burke has the dream job that she has always wanted. She has worked hard at her
job where she is not only respected by the NBA players and coaches, who take
the time to greet her before games, but by fans and most of all her colleagues
at ESPN and her broadcasting peers, like her main broadcast partner Dave Pasch,
and sideline reporter Cassidy Hubbarth, to Breen, Van Gundy and Mark Jackson,
to the host of “Real Sports” Bryant Gumbel. There is one thing though that she
will never, ever do to keep her high-profile television gig, which would make
all women involved in the “Time Up” movement saying “Amen” for life.
“I
promise you I’m not having plastic surgery,” she said. “I’m 52. I’ve earned
every wrinkle on my face. I actually like my wrinkles, and guess what?”
“There
are a lot of 60-year-old men who have wrinkles, no hair, glasses and nobody
gives a damn. It’s about time that a woman my age or above if she chooses to go
into her 60s as an announcer she should be allowed to do just that.”
Information,
and quotations are courtesy of 2/27/18 episode of HBO’s “Real Sports with
Bryant Gumbel,” with interview conducted by Andrea Kramer; https://en.m/wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Burke;
and 11/16/16 article courtesy of For the Win Section of USA Today www.ftw.usatoday.com
article, “Doris Burke Responded To Drake’s Creepy Mid-Game Dinner Invite with
Heart Emoji,” by Alysha Tsuji.
No comments:
Post a Comment