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.
Caitlin Clark has the entire sports talk industry turned upside down right now. Clark and the Indiana Fever have been playing nonstop since the season started and between the attention and pressure, she has struggledout of the gate. On top of that there's how she's being treated by other teams, which has not been very nicely, culminating in a cheap shot from Chennedy Carter over the weekend.
On Monday's episode of The Pat McAfee Show, the eponymous host got out from behind the desk and did a whole presentation about how important Clark is and how jealous all the haters are. He did this is in a McAfee-specific fashion as he swore on ESPN and identified Clark as the "white b----" who has lifted the entire sport.
Monday's Pat McAfee Show opened with a Caitlin Clark PowerPoint:
"I would like the media people that continue to say, 'This rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class'. Nah, just call it for what it is — there's one white bitch for the Indiana team who is a superstar." pic.twitter.com/psGNQXts5O
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 3, 2024
"I would like the media people that continue to say this rookie class, this rookie class, this rookie class. Nah. Just call it for what it is," said McAfee. "There's one white b---- for this Indiana team who is a superstar. And is it because she stayed in Iowa, put an entire team on her back, took a program from nothing to a multiple-year success story?"
"Is it because she would go on to break the entire points records in the history of the NCAA? Not just the women's by Kelsea Plum - shout out - but also "Pistol" Pete Maravich's. The dude's record as well. Is there a chance that people just like watching her play basketball? Because of how electrifying she is. What she did. What she stood for. How she went about going what she went for? Maybe. But instead we have to hear people say that we only like her because she's white. And she's only popular because the rest of the rookie class is doing what they're doing. That's a bunch of bulls----. And we think the WNBA, more specifically, their refs, need to stop trying to screw her over at every single turn. What you have is somebody special. And we're lucky to have her in Indiana."
McAfee also discussed the "Eminem effect," playing a clip of 50 Cent saying people didn't want to give Eminem credit because he was white. "Let's just take that into the WNBA situation," said McAfee. "That it is just a bunch of racist people who will only watch if a white superstar is there." Then the show put up pictures of Diana Taurasi, Sabrina Ionescu, Kelsey Plum and Breanna Stewart. "I think what we're trying to say is what the WNBA currently has is what we like to describe as a cash cow. There is a superstar."
All-in-all, a very colorful presentation by McAfee, who continues to make it clear that he can do whatever he wants on ESPN. Including defending Clark by trying to make sense of why so many people apparently hate her. By whatever means necessary.
Charles Barkley made a guest appearance on ESPN's NHL analyst desk during Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final, joining the likes of Mark Messier, P.K. Subban and Steve Levy in between the first and second periods of Monday night's game.
Levy hinted at the potential for Barkley to make the leap over to ESPN, jokingly referring to him as the "newest member of ESPN's NBA coverage" while introducing the 61-year-old.
Steve Levy wasted no time trying to convince Charles Barkley to join ESPN's NBA coverage during his guest appearance on ABC's coverage of the Stanley Cup.
"Steve Levy, Mark Messier, P.K. Subban, and the newest member of ESPN's NBA coverage?"👀pic.twitter.com/WhLPgNFReT
"Welcome Mark Messier, P.K. Subban and the newest member of ESPN's NBA coverage? Maybe?" said Levy at the start of the segment.
Rather than immediately address his job, Barkley comically changed the topic and mentioned that Messier owes him $5,000 stemming from a delay of game penalty he took during his playing days.
After discussing Barkley's hockey fandom and his relationship with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, the crew circled back to the topic of Barkley's employment. The NBA Hall of Famer joked that he wished he had a job lined up and that he was back on LinkedIn.
With the NBA on TNT crew facing an uncertain future, the prospect of Barkley joining ESPN's NBA coverage isn't all too far fetched, and Levy wasted no time stirring the pot in that regard.
