2024 NBA Finals: ESPN's Doris Burke makes history in Game 1 of Mavericks vs. Celtics

Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals tips off tonight in TD Garden in Boston. The Eastern Conference champion Celtics face off against the Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks for this year's NBA title.

If Boston wins the NBA Finals, that will bring the franchise's total NBA championships to 18, the most in league history. But this NBA Finals series will already make history regardless of the winner. On the broadcast, ESPN announcer Doris Burke will become the first woman to serve as a game analyst on the television broadcast of a championship final in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB).

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It's the latest achievement in a decades-long broadcasting career. Here's how Burke got here:

Doris Burke's basketball career

Burke's family moved from New York to New Jersey when she was 7 years old. Per NBA.com, the family's new home included a basketball left behind by the prior owner. Burke's mother gave it to her and told her to go play at the nearby park.

“It feels like I picked up the ball at seven years of age, and I haven’t put it down since to be perfectly honest with you,” Burke said. “I’ve played it, coached it, and now covered it since I was seven years old … if there is a ball being tipped up and I’m lucky enough to be there, that makes me really happy.”

She later starred for the Manasquan High School girls' basketball team and graduated as the school's all-time leading scorer.

That career earned her a spot with the Providence Friars women's basketball team. She started in 87 consecutive games in her career and average 12.1 points and 5.3 assists per game. Burke was a two-time All-Big East selection in 1986 and 1987 at guard and graduated as the program's all-time leader in assists with 602.

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Doris Burke's broadcasting career

Burke's broadcasting career began in 1990 as a radio analyst for Providence women's basketball games. In that same year, she started a decade-long run as an analyst for Big East and Atlantic-10 conference women's basketball. She later made history as the first woman to call a Big East men's basketball game. In 1997, she called games on the radio during the inaugural WNBA season.

Three years later, Burke made history as the first woman to call a New York Knicks broadcast. Starting in 2009, ESPN named Burke as a sideline reporter for the NBA Finals. For the 2017-18 NBA season, ESPN promoted Burke again to national NBA game analyst, the first woman to hold that role. In 2020, she became the first woman to call the Conference Finals and NBA Finals on radio.

Prior to this season, ESPN named Burke to its lead NBA broadcasting team alongside Mike Breen and Doc Rivers. Rivers later became the Milwaukee Bucks head coach and J.J. Reddick later replaced him.

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