As an interviewer, I don't think you can dance around the subject. Certainly the interview subject knows if you are dancing, and the viewer knows that you are dancing. If it's a hard question, you just have to ask it.
Doris Burke
There will always be a certain segment of the population who turns on an NBA game or turns on a college game and hears my voice and objects to my presence. I've conceded that. I can't please everybody. I don't even try.'
We still have a long way to go. Because the reality is that I'm 52-years-old. And how many 55 to 60-year-old women do you see in sports broadcasting? How many? I see a lot of 60-year-old men broadcasting. The physical appearance and natural aging of all the men doing this job don't matter.
I remember being in a parking lot, I think it was in New Mexico, I was to be at a shoot-around at 9 A. M. their time. And I got off the phone with Sarah and Matthew and I sat in that parking lot and cried for a little bit. Because I had been away so much. It got to the point where I was calculating how much time I had been away from the kids.
The WNBA changed the equation for a young female broadcaster who wanted nothing more than to remain close to the game, and call basketball games.
I want girls to dream big and to think that there is nothing that is impossible.
For me to even think about attending a college or university would have been a real financial hardship. It would not have happened. That basketball scholarship changed my life.
The last time I played basketball it was eight weeks after I delivered my second child. You know that expression - the mind believes and the body would not follow? That was me on that particular day.
I was a very shy kid. The only place I had confidence was in between the lines of a basketball court.
When I started women's college basketball coverage, it was exploding. I happened into a men's college basketball game because of a mistake, someone not showing up. So I've sort of been the beneficiary of good timing.
There's a reason Craig Sager is beloved, and it's the beauty and the magic of what Craig Sager does.
One thing I'm amazed at is the younger generation of female broadcasters and what they've achieved, and the first person to come to mind is Candace Parker. I remember Candace when she first joined the TNT team, and I marveled at how comfortable she was right away in the television environment.
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.
I had no background in communications but what I did have was an excellent education from Providence College and a love of basketball. That afforded me the chance to be good on my feet and stay afloat while I learned the media business.
LeBron James is going to be somebody that I look back on and think, yeah I got to not only watch one of the all-time great players in the history of the sport, but I also had the opportunity to interview him at some of the most critical moments of his career.
Now that my responsibilities are exclusively NBA, I watch two NBA games a night, usually fall asleep in the third quarter of the west coast game.
The first time I did a men's game, it was strictly because of an emergency. I went down with no preparation, but I was a fan and knew the teams. And I knocked them dead, so the next year, I had a package of men's games.
There is something powerful about sitting courtside and watching closely the interactions of players with their teammates, with their opponents, with their coaching staff.
I take enormous energy from the players on the court.
If there's anything I'm proud of in my career, it's that I've been able to hang in there and keep progressing over the years.
I was, at times, painfully shy as a kid and all the way through college.
In 1990, I was an assistant coach at Providence College, but I knew I wanted to get married and have children. I did not think I could be a great basketball coach and be a great mom.
I obviously preferred the analyst role to the sideline role because your opportunity to impact the broadcast was drastically different.
And I loved every single second of being an assistant coach. I loved it.
The year I left coaching to get married, Providence College decided to put its women's basketball games on radio, and because I had played and coached in the program, the athletic director asked if I'd like to give it a try.
Listen, I want to be considered attractive. Am I going to undergo surgery to make myself younger? No.
I've had more coaches in pregame meetings apologize for cursing. I'm like, I swear like a pirate. You don't have to worry about that.'
The older I've gotten, the more I have paid attention to disparities, or what I consider to be different treatment.
The reason I'm fiendishly drawing end-of-game plays when I'm taking notes is what if I screwed up something down the stretch of a game?
My whole push was I wanted to do all basketball.
There's not a shot in hell I ever thought I'd be a broadcaster for a living.
In college, I had bad hair, bad clothes, bad teeth, and bad skin. That was not a great combination for being a sports announcer.
I talk a lot about Jackie MacMullan. Think about the trust and the equity Jackie has built with people in this game. When you watch her work, there is such a high level of respect given. It's hard to describe it, but you can see it when players engage with her.
Miami is a remarkably resilient, opportunistic team.
If anyone listens to the mantra that Brad Stevens seems to live by, which is to keep making that next right play, Gordon Hayward seems to be that guy.
Every telecast, I still have butterflies and a little bit of nerves. But I think the nerves help. It elevates my attentiveness.
When my son was born, I was still playing in a summer league in Rhode Island.
My dad was a construction worker. I was the youngest of eight kids. There were not a lot of extra resources around.
From the time I was very little and I first picked up a ball, in the back of my head I thought I would coach the game.
I knew unequivocally I wanted children and that I wanted for at least a certain stretch of time to be a stay-at-home mom.
The players and the coaches have been my soft landing spot, and those men and their acceptance of me and the respect they've shown to me on the air, that has changed fans' opinion of me.
The NBA is the single most progressive, inclusive, open-minded sports league in the country.
I do believe 100 percent that Black lives matter and that the cause to achieve and pursue equality supersedes basketball.
I am mindful of the fact that I played women's college basketball, that I coached women's college basketball.
When I was 7, we moved to Manasquan, where I picked up the game of basketball.
I've been the beneficiary of very good timing and some forward-thinking bosses who were willing to put women in places they hadn't yet been.
I feel like every repetition, every game, every practice that I'm allowed to watch, I'm picking up some small piece of information, a nuance about the game or a coach's philosophy.
Honestly, it's been 25 to 28 years of just slow, methodical, taking step-by step progress. I've been very lucky.
My career is a very happy accident. I never studied communications.
Ultimately we all only have our reputation, and it is nothing more than a series of small decisions you make every single day.
