Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Doris Burke

We still have a long way to go. Because the reality is that I'm 52-years-old. And how many 55 to 60-year-old women do you see in sports broadcasting? How many? I see a lot of 60-year-old men broadcasting. The physical appearance and natural aging of all the men doing this job don't matter.

The reason I'm fiendishly drawing end-of-game plays when I'm taking notes is what if I screwed up something down the stretch of a game?

As an interviewer, I don't think you can dance around the subject. Certainly the interview subject knows if you are dancing, and the viewer knows that you are dancing. If it's a hard question, you just have to ask it.

Every telecast, I still have butterflies and a little bit of nerves. But I think the nerves help. It elevates my attentiveness.

I've had more coaches in pregame meetings apologize for cursing. I'm like, I swear like a pirate. You don't have to worry about that.'

I've earned every wrinkle on my face. I actually like my wrinkles. And guess what? There are a lot of 60-year-old men who have wrinkles, no hair, glasses, and nobody gives a damn.

I was, at times, painfully shy as a kid and all the way through college.

In college, I had bad hair, bad clothes, bad teeth, and bad skin. That was not a great combination for being a sports announcer.

Honestly, it's been 25 to 28 years of just slow, methodical, taking step-by step progress. I've been very lucky.

If there's anything I'm proud of in my career, it's that I've been able to hang in there and keep progressing over the years.

The players and the coaches have been my soft landing spot, and those men and their acceptance of me and the respect they've shown to me on the air, that has changed fans' opinion of me.

It's about time that a woman my age or above, if she chooses to go into her 60s as an announcer, she should be allowed to do just that.

The last time I played basketball it was eight weeks after I delivered my second child. You know that expression - the mind believes and the body would not follow? That was me on that particular day.

I feel like I've been playing, coaching and covering basketball my entire life.

My career is a very happy accident. I never studied communications.

I believe if the players and coaches respect my viewpoint of the game, then fans will as well. And full credit there goes to the NBA and to ESPN. They are willing to put people like me in a position to do this.

In 1990, I was an assistant coach at Providence College, but I knew I wanted to get married and have children. I did not think I could be a great basketball coach and be a great mom.

I feel like every repetition, every game, every practice that I'm allowed to watch, I'm picking up some small piece of information, a nuance about the game or a coach's philosophy.

If the NBA teaches us anything, you have to have talent to win.

If anyone listens to the mantra that Brad Stevens seems to live by, which is to keep making that next right play, Gordon Hayward seems to be that guy.

From the time I was very little and I first picked up a ball, in the back of my head I thought I would coach the game.

Now that my responsibilities are exclusively NBA, I watch two NBA games a night, usually fall asleep in the third quarter of the west coast game.

Listen, I want to be considered attractive. Am I going to undergo surgery to make myself younger? No.

LeBron James is going to be somebody that I look back on and think, yeah I got to not only watch one of the all-time great players in the history of the sport, but I also had the opportunity to interview him at some of the most critical moments of his career.

I've said this quite often, there was a certain stretch in my career where my gender held me back.

I want girls to dream big and to think that there is nothing that is impossible.

I knew unequivocally I wanted children and that I wanted for at least a certain stretch of time to be a stay-at-home mom.

I remember being in a parking lot, I think it was in New Mexico, I was to be at a shoot-around at 9 A. M. their time. And I got off the phone with Sarah and Matthew and I sat in that parking lot and cried for a little bit. Because I had been away so much. It got to the point where I was calculating how much time I had been away from the kids.

My dad was a construction worker. I was the youngest of eight kids. There were not a lot of extra resources around.

There are moments where you can be seduced by Andrew Wiggins.

I talk a lot about Jackie MacMullan. Think about the trust and the equity Jackie has built with people in this game. When you watch her work, there is such a high level of respect given. It's hard to describe it, but you can see it when players engage with her.

My whole push was I wanted to do all basketball.

The year I left coaching to get married, Providence College decided to put its women's basketball games on radio, and because I had played and coached in the program, the athletic director asked if I'd like to give it a try.

One thing I'm amazed at is the younger generation of female broadcasters and what they've achieved, and the first person to come to mind is Candace Parker. I remember Candace when she first joined the TNT team, and I marveled at how comfortable she was right away in the television environment.

There is something powerful about sitting courtside and watching closely the interactions of players with their teammates, with their opponents, with their coaching staff.

One thing everyone knows about the NBA is that it's very difficult for young players to win at a high level.

And I loved every single second of being an assistant coach. I loved it.

The NBA is the single most progressive, inclusive, open-minded sports league in the country.

I've loved basketball my entire life and to be able to cover this sport is a privilege that I don't take for granted.

I am mindful of the fact that I played women's college basketball, that I coached women's college basketball.

I obviously preferred the analyst role to the sideline role because your opportunity to impact the broadcast was drastically different.

I always put my head down, work as hard as I can, and sort of let the chips falls were they may.

You can criticize ESPN for a lot of things, but one thing you have to give them credit for is their willingness to put women in nontraditional roles.

When I started my career, I can say my interviewing skills were not my strong suit.

There's not a shot in hell I ever thought I'd be a broadcaster for a living.

People have asked me, 'Do you consider yourself a trailblazer?' Absolutely not. And the reason I say this is, I am aware of the women who came before me.

Miami is a remarkably resilient, opportunistic team.

I've been the beneficiary of very good timing and some forward-thinking bosses who were willing to put women in places they hadn't yet been.

Going back as far as I do covering men's college basketball, the objections to me being an analyst never came from inside the game. The players and coaches have always showed me the utmost respect and quite frankly my gender has never felt like an issue inside the game.

I was a very shy kid. The only place I had confidence was in between the lines of a basketball court.

I started broadcasting in 1992, calling Providence College women's basketball on radio. From there to an analyst on the NBA. Think of that journey and every step in between. It's special.

When I was 7, we moved to Manasquan, where I picked up the game of basketball.

When my son was born, I was still playing in a summer league in Rhode Island.

I take enormous energy from the players on the court.

A lot of tough players come out of Jersey. Tough-minded kids. That's what I was.

It is hard to put into words how grateful I am to continue my career with ESPN.

I do believe 100 percent that Black lives matter and that the cause to achieve and pursue equality supersedes basketball.

My strength is that I know the game so well. Whatever shortcomings I had because of lack of experience, I could always overcome those because the bottom line was, I knew the game.

The older I've gotten, the more I have paid attention to disparities, or what I consider to be different treatment.

Ultimately we all only have our reputation, and it is nothing more than a series of small decisions you make every single day.