When the 2024 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks begin on Thursday night, ABC/ESPN’s Doris Burke will be making history of her own.
Burke, who was named to the lead NBA broadcasting crew for ABC/ESPN ahead of the 2023–24 season, is officially the first woman to call any major men’s championship in the United States in history.
The long-time reporter will join Mike Breen and J.J. Reddick courtside for the game as they’ve done throughout the entire NBA season.
Burke is set to work all of the NBA Finals games this season as ABC is the primary broadcaster for the games.
Tonight, Doris Burke is set to make history as the first woman to call any major U.S. men’s championship on TV. pic.twitter.com/jR7ujRJgq0
This isn’t the first time Burke’s name will be written in the history books. One of her other significant career moments came in 2017 when she was named a regular NBA game analyst for ESPN, making her the first woman to hold this position for a full season. She called the NBA Finals for ESPN Radio back in 2020, making her the first woman to do so.
James Cameron's Titanic came out in theaters on December 19, 1997. It made billions of dollars at the box office. It was released on VHS in September 1998 and DVD in August 1999. For nearly three decades it's been one of the most enduring pieces of popular culture, based on one of the most famous events in history. For 26 years it's been referenced, parodied, celebrated and rewatched. It's hard to believe there's a way to talk about this movie that hasn't already been covered.
And yet Joe Buck may have done it.
On Friday afternoon Buck was watching Titanic, as most people are wont to do. Near the end of the film, while Buck sat in a chair next to his neatly made bed, the former longtime voice of the World Series and current voice of ESPN's Monday Night Football, posted a video to his X / Twitter account pointing out a continuity error.
It turns out Buck really doesn't like how James Cameron sunk that boat and he could no longer keep it inside. So he made a video explaining his issues with the way this famous scene was shot. He did this while recording his television from across the room. Buck is completely off camera. Except for his feet.
Here’s an opportunity twitter - sorry, X - to tell me again that I’m stupid. Please, I’m begging you pic.twitter.com/z1iMP7Ck9J
"This shot doesn't make any sense," Buck says. "It's going in and now it's flat? Now you see the back of the ship. Going... There's no continuity there. This thing is going in nose down. The Titanic piece that is written there—hould be up in the air. Going in. This way. Instead all of a sudden it goes this way? What? It's always bothered me. One more time. It's going in vertically. K? The back of the ship's in the air. So if you're going to have the writing of the Titanic—it can't be that way! Now it's flat into the water? Now watch, it's going to be flat again... with the back. No! That would have been pointed up the other way. It would have been pointed away. Terrible."
We are not here to litigate the movie Titanic, which made $2.2 billion dollars in theaters on a budget of $200 million and was the highest grossing movie of all-time until Cameron released Avatar more than a decade later.
What we are here to litigate is the gratuitous shots of Joe Buck's feet in this video. Do you know how distracting something has to be to take people's eyes of Kate and Leo here? His toes have more screen time than Bill Paxton. If you were ever looking for an argument against vertical video, this is it.
Football season can't come soon enough. We need Buck and his bare feet grinding game tape, not crushing plot holes.
On Monday, reports emerged that ESPN had won the Jason Kelce sweepstakes. The Athletic's Andrew Marchand reported the Worldwide Leader was to ink the former Philadelphia Eagles center to a deal that would add him to the Monday Night Countdown desk, the network's pregame show for Monday Night Football. On Wednesday, Kelce responded.
Sitting virtually across from his brother Travis on their latest episode of New Heights, Kelce made sure to say right off the bat that these reports are not yet set in stone. He has not put any pen to paper. With that out of the way the former All-Pro waxed poetic about how much of an honor it would be to work for ESPN, the very same network that he and Travis watched every single day as burgeoning sports junkies when they were young.
"Nothing's been offically inked yet or announced yet, but obviously there's been a lot of reports out there about me going to ESPN," Kelce said. "I think time will take care of that. But it's a tremendous honor to be considered to potentially work there. That network was everything Travis and I watched growing up.
"We talk about it all the time. We had Rich Eisen on here last year on the show. We talk about all these guys we grew up watching. We lived watching ESPN. SportsCenter, before phones, that was the only way to get all the coverage. We were glued to the TV each and every day. The fact that I may, potentially, probably, will be working there is pretty darn cool, man."
Between these comments and the previous reports it is all but certain Kelce will be on our televisions next fall, and he's clearly very excited about it. As are we all.
Kelce's magnetic personality is going to make him a quick television star, and the sky is the limit if he learns how to leverage his extensive football knowledge into engaging monologues for the audience. He probably won't be asked to do a ton on Monday Night Countdown, which is just as much about recapping the previous weekend's action as it is analyzing the game ahead.
But there will be plentiful opportunities for Kelce to flex some broadcasting muscle by doing the same thing that made New Heights popular: be a large, gregarious man who loves the game of football. And he also happens to be the brother of Taylor Swift's boo.
It will be fascinating to watch his career unfold. Until then, ESPN should rest easy knowing they're likely landing someone who appreciates what it means to work there.
1. The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most iconic franchises in all of sports. The news of who will get their head-coaching job is big. It’s important. It’s significant.
For sports media nerds like myself, though, the subplot to the Lakers' coaching job is much more fascinating. And that subplot is the battle between ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
There isn’t a reporter vs. reporter duel that gets more attention from sports fans than Woj vs. Shams.
The Woj vs. Shams grudge match came to the forefront early Thursday morning when Wojnarowski broke the news that the Lakers are targeting UConn’s Danny Hurley as their next head coach.
BREAKING: The Los Angeles Lakers are targeting Connecticut’s Dan Hurley to become the franchise’s next coach and are preparing a massive, long-term contract offer to bring the back-to-back national champion to the NBA, sources tell ESPN. pic.twitter.com/6WPrigPvAW
Now, at the end of the day, who breaks the news is hardly that important. There’s no shame in Shams getting this one wrong. Sometimes sources aren’t accurate or a team changes its mind. Basically, s--- happens.
What made this particular Woj vs. Shams incident stand out is that ESPN’s biggest gun, Adam Schefter, even weighed in to send a message, whether it was intended or not.
“Hurley has been at the forefront of the Lakers’ search from the beginning of the process,” per Woj. https://t.co/Sbs5yzXS1d
Again, whether intended or not, that sentence about Hurley being at the forefront of the search from the beginning is a direct shot at Shams.
Like I said, who ultimately breaks the news of the Lakers' next coach isn’t going to change anything. But Woj coming in to throw a bomb all over Shams's earlier report makes for very entertaining tweets and memes.
2. A brand-new episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina dropped this morning and it features an interview with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, who shares information and gives updates on the biggest news in sports media.
Topics covered include the latest developments with the NBA's future TV deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon and where things stand with Warner Bros. Discovery/TNT. Marchand also reveals what he thinks NBC's plan is for a lead broadcast team, what will happen with the Inside the NBA crew of Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal, whether Barkley could end up at ESPN and why the relationship between TNT and the NBA deteriorated.
Following Marchand, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY joins me for our weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week's topics include new sports TV shows that are on the radar and the Yankees' dominance. Plus, we read the latest Apple reviews for SI Media With Jimmy Traina.
3. In Tuesday’s Traina Thoughts, I wrote about the ridiculous notion by some people that you need to know about the WNBA’s history in order to opine on the WNBA.
Just as nonsensical as that take is this take.
Hope all the “just talking heads” are tuned into @WNBA games tonite and tomorrow and the next nite and so on…..so they can equip themselves with a deeper sense of this league. And all of these opinions are great but let it come from watching the entire league.
Nope. You absolutely do not have to watch non–Caitlin Clark WNBA games if you do not want to. No sports fan or talking head has to watch anything they are not interested in. You are not required to have a “deeper sense of the league” to opine on general topics in any sport.
4. Pat McAfee WAS a punter, so it’s not totally shocking he’d have a good leg, but this was a hell of a pass.
5. If you missed the news last week, it was announced that ESPN sold two college football playoff games to TNT. College football released its postseason schedule on Wednesday and now we know why ESPN would pass up on airing a pair of playoff games.
On Saturday, Dec. 21, TNT will air two first-round playoff games at noon and 4 p.m. ET.
It just so happens that two NFL games will take place at the same time.
Texans at Chiefs will air at 1 p.m. ET on NBC while the Steelers visit the Ravens at 4:30 p.m. on Fox.
OFFICIAL RELEASE: The College Football Playoff has announced dates, kick times and broadcast information for the 2024-25 playoff, the first year of the expanded 12-team format.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 5, 2024
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: The longtime ABC news program, 20/20, debuted on this date in 1978. This seems like the perfect reason to post this clip that every old-school wrestling fan knows well.
