After months of speculation, it appears that ESPN is set to officially demote Doris Burke.<\/p>\n
According to The Athletic\u2018s Andrew Marchand<\/a>, the Worldwide Leader in Sports has decided to remove Burke from its top NBA team and will replace her with Tim Legler.<\/p>\n While seismic, the news of Burke\u2019s demotion doesn\u2019t come as a surprise. Just ahead of the start of the 2025 NBA Finals, Marchand reported<\/a> that her spot in ESPN\u2019s top basketball booth wasn\u2019t guaranteed moving forward<\/a> and that the network would consider making a change in the ensuing offseason.<\/p>\n In many ways, Marchand\u2019s report cast a shadow over Burke\u2019s broadcasting duties throughout her second NBA Finals, which was already under scrutiny as she, Mike Breen and Richard Jefferson failed to find chemistry in their first season as a trio. Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle publicly criticized the timing of the ESPN leak<\/a>, while Jefferson donned a t-shirt<\/a> that read \u201cmy favorite broadcaster is Doris Burke\u201d during an appearance on ESPN\u2019s broadcast of the Women\u2019s College World Series during the Finals.<\/p>\n Yet despite the public support, it appears that ESPN officials have opted to push forward with the demotion, which comes as ESPN\u2019s new media rights deal takes effect for the 2025-26 season. According to Marchand, Breen and Jefferson will remain in the network\u2019s No. 1 NBA booth and will now be joined by Legler, who was one of the candidates who auditioned to join Breen and Burke last season in a role that ultimately went to Jefferson.<\/p>\n But while it may have been expected, the change also means that ESPN will have a different NBA Finals booth for the fourth time in as many years. After firing Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson following the 2023 Finals, the network replaced them with Burke and Doc Rivers, only for Rivers to take the Milwaukee Bucks head coaching job midway through the 2023-24 campaign. JJ Redick replaced Rivers and called the 2024 Finals alongside Breen and Burke before taking the Los Angeles Lakers head coaching job, with Jefferson ultimately completing the three-person booth in 2025.<\/p>\n With ESPN set to host the next 11 NBA Finals, the network is undoubtedly hopeful that the trio of Breen, Jefferson and Legler will bring it some much-needed stability. As for Doris Burke, Marchand reports that she\u2019ll likely move to ESPN\u2019s No. 2 NBA booth and is currently in talks regarding a contract extension with her current deal set to expire after the upcoming season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After months of speculation, it appears that ESPN is set to officially demote Doris Burke. According to The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,59978,459,82,55362],"class_list":{"0":"post-104777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-doris-burke","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tim-legler"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}