ESPN shakes up No. 1 NBA broadcast team: What role will Doris Burke play?

There is reportedly going to be a shakeup at ESPN’s top NBA broadcast team.

Analyst Doris Burke has been demoted from the network’s No. 1 team, the same outfit that covers the NBA Finals, and has been replaced by Tim Legler, the Athletic reported Thursday, August 28.

The Athletic reported that Legler will join play-by-play veteran Mike Breen and fellow analyst Richard Jefferson, who were Burke's partners on the broadcast in the previous two NBA Finals. The Athletic also reported that Burke could likely end up on ESPN’s second team.

ESPN did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

Burke, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, had been ESPN’s lead analyst and had covered two consecutive NBA Finals. In 2024 she became the first woman to be a broadcast analyst for a major U.S. men’s sports championship event. Four years earlier, during the NBA Finals held in Orlando against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Burke served as an analyst on ESPN radio, becoming the first woman to handle analyst duties during an NBA Finals on any platform.

When the network appointed Burke as a national game analyst for the 2017-18 season, she set another milestone, becoming the first woman to hold that role.

Burke, who also covered men’s and women’s college basketball and the WNBA, has covered basketball for the network since 1991.

Legler joined ESPN in 2000 and has been a game analyst on the network and on ESPN Radio and a frequent contributor to marquee programming like SportsCenter. Legler, 58, played 10 seasons in the NBA, from 1989-2000.