Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I watch Ernie Johnson do the celebration at the conference championships, I marvel at how smooth he is. The guy is just the consummate pro.
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.
The WNBA changed the equation for a young female broadcaster who wanted nothing more than to remain close to the game, and call basketball games.
I've had a couple along the way, including an NBA official, who admitted to a little bit of skepticism when they first saw and heard me on the game.
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.
I certainly don't think we're past the point in history where a woman's physical appearance may play some part in job availability or job acquisition.
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.
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.
I'm not naive to the fact that my gender has at times helped me. Employers are now thinking, 'Let's get perspectives that are different than the ones we have.'
Had I considered over the course of time the moments where maybe I was the first woman to do this or that, it would have scared the absolute daylights out of me.
What's fascinating to me is the NBA has become a 365-day-a-year sport with near 24/7 coverage. And it has become that because the appetite of the fan dictates that.
I definitely want to be a doting grandmother. I love babies. My colleagues will tell you if I'm in an arena and there's a baby in my vicinity I'm holding that baby.
On TV, only a handful of people can move the meter so to speak - only a handful of personalities can move ratings. LeBron seems to single-handedly affect those ratings.
There is something powerful about sitting courtside and watching closely the interactions of players with their teammates, with their opponents, with their coaching staff.
For me to even think about attending a college or university would have been a real financial hardship. It would not have happened. That basketball scholarship changed my life.
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.
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 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.
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.
There's not an athlete in the world who doesn't deal with the same issues you and I have: frustrations with our family, dealing with tragedy or loss, or happiness and a child's birth.
I love the game of basketball, and it has shaped my life since I was seven years old. But as a broadcaster it took me a good 10 to 15 years to relax and allow myself to enjoy the job.
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.
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.
For men's college coaches through to the NBA, I think basketball people are basketball people. When you start talking the game, gender has gone out the window, and they just talk basketball with you.
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 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.
When I started women's college basketball coverage, it was exploding. I happened into a men's college basketball game because of a mistake, someone not showing up. So I've sort of been the beneficiary of good timing.
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.
The first time I did a men's game, it was strictly because of an emergency. I went down with no preparation, but I was a fan and knew the teams. And I knocked them dead, so the next year, I had a package of men's games.
There will always be a certain segment of the population who turns on an NBA game or turns on a college game and hears my voice and objects to my presence. I've conceded that. I can't please everybody. I don't even try.'
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.
I had no background in communications but what I did have was an excellent education from Providence College and a love of basketball. That afforded me the chance to be good on my feet and stay afloat while I learned the media business.
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 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.
Because of the standing in society, because women's basketball does not draw the interest that major professional sports leagues or men's college basketball draw, Geno Auriemma is never going to be recited by the sports fan at-large as the greatest coach in history.
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.
The one thing I would say is, I do think women are evaluated differently than men. How we look, what is our age? Do you see a ton of 55-year-old women in sports television? No. But there are men in their 60s and 70s across many networks who are still in sports television.
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.
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.
Dick Vitale always used to say to me, 'Remember, this is an entertainment medium.' People are not tuning in to a game to know how smart you are about basketball; they wanna enjoy it. And it took Dick years of saying that for me to settle in and say, 'It's also okay for me to have a little fun on the air.'
Please don't misunderstand, I actually enjoyed the hecticness and the opportunity to cover women's college basketball. But the reality is as a young broadcaster the vast majority of my games came in men's college basketball and my viewership as a fan came in men's college basketball because that was what was available to me.
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.