Thursday, August 28, 2025
ESPN is reportedly demoting analyst Doris Burke and replacing her with Tim Legler on its NBA Finals broadcast team, according to reports.
Burke, a Providence College (PC) Hall of Fame basketball player, had been named to the top broadcast team alongside Mike Breen for ESPN after Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson stepped down in 2023.
Now 60, Bruke made sports broadcasting history as the first female analyst to call an NBA Finals game.
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Breen, Legler, and Richard Jefferson will now reportedly make up the finals team. The news was first reported by The Athletic.
For those of you who are not familiar with Burke’s PC roots, she was a point guard out of New Jersey on the PC women’s basketball team in the mid-1980s. PC Women’s basketball at the time was slightly overshadowed by the Rick Pitino era for PC men’s teams.
She achieved All-Big East status in 1986 and 1987 and was named All-American in her senior year in 1987. She is the all-time leader in assists for the PC women. The Friars’ administration recognized her status in the PC basketball world by inducting her into the PC Hall of Fame in 1999. Her first basketball broadcasting job? Announcing the PC women’s games in 1990 on the campus radio station WDOM.
While her track record is solid and provides a proven record of excellence to be chosen by ESPN/ABC to be one of the analysts for this year’s NBA finals, her choice has not escaped criticism. Not unexpected. The NBA has millions of male fans who cannot fathom a woman being able to analyze the nuances of pick and rolls or offensive charging foul calls.
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