Doris Burke

Doris Burke ( Sable; born November 4, 1965) is an American sports announcer and analyst for NBA on ESPN, NBA on ABC, College Basketball on ESPN, and College Basketball on ABC games. She formerly worked as an analyst for WNBA games on MSG and has worked on New York Knicks games. Burke was the first female commentator to call a New York Knicks game on radio and television.

In 2023, ESPN named Burke to its No. 1 NBA commentary team. She became the first woman to serve as a game analyst on television for a championship final (the 2024 NBA Finals) in one of the four major North American professional men's sports leagues.

Early life Doris Sable was born in West Islip, New York. At age seven, she moved to Manasquan, New Jersey, where she was raised. The youngest of eight children, Doris started playing basketball in the second grade. and was recruited by several eastern colleges. As a senior in 1987, Burke was the college's Co-Female Athlete of the Year.

Broadcasting career Burke began her broadcasting career in 1990 as an analyst for women's games for her alma mater on radio. The same year, she began working in that role for Big East women's games on television. In 1996, she began working Big East men's games. From 2009 to 2019, Burke served as a sideline reporter for the NBA Finals on ABC. Until 2017, she worked as an analyst in select regular season and playoff games. She has appeared in each edition since.

In 2013, Burke signed a multi-year contract extension to serve as an NBA commentator for ESPN. On November 13, she debuted on ESPN's NBA pregame show NBA Countdown alongside analysts Jalen Rose and Avery Johnson.

In 2017, Burke became a regular NBA game analyst for ESPN, the first woman to be assigned a full regular-season role at the national level. She replaced Doug Collins, who left ESPN for a job with the Chicago Bulls, but continued sideline reporting for the conference finals and the NBA Finals until 2019. In 2020, Burke began calling the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals on ESPN Radio, making her the first woman to call the conference finals and NBA Finals on radio.

In August 2023, ESPN/ABC announced that Burke and former NBA coach Doc Rivers would join Mike Breen on its lead broadcasting team, replacing Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, whom the network laid off earlier that year. Burke is the first woman to serve as a television analyst for a major American men's championship and the first woman TV analyst for the NBA Conference Finals and the NBA Finals.

Personal life Burke is divorced from Gregg Burke (head golf coach at University of Rhode Island), with whom she has two children. Honored for her pioneering work, Burke was selected by the Basketball Hall of Fame as the 2018 Curt Gowdy Media Award winner. For their first match of March 2019, the women of the United States women's national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman they were honoring on the back; Tobin Heath chose Burke.