This season kicks off the first under a new media deal for the NBA that sees NBC, Peacock and Amazon Prime joining ESPN and ABC to broadcast games. Under this new deal, there will be national NBA games happening every night of the week, which means these networks will need a lot of broadcasters and analysts to call these contests.
While NBC and Amazon will need to put together broadcast teams, ESPN already has plenty of commentary teams that have spent years together and could continue going with them. However, the network is choosing to make a change to their top commentary team as ESPN announced that Tim Legler will be replacing Doris Burke on their lead broadcast team:
ESPN today announced its deep roster of NBA game commentators for the 2025-26 season. Veteran analyst Tim Legler will join ESPN’s lead NBA broadcast team, which includes Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen, analyst and NBA Champion Richard Jefferson and reporter Lisa Salters.
Legler, Breen, Jefferson and Salters will call the NBA Finals on ABC, the Conference Finals, high-profile first and second round games during the NBA Playoffs, a Christmas Day game and NBA Saturday Primetime on ABC – the marquee, national NBA game of the week. Legler is celebrating his 25th anniversary with ESPN, having served as an analyst since 2000.
ESPN today also announced it has reached a multi-year extension with analyst and Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame broadcaster Doris Burke. Burke will continue to call high-profile NBA games on ESPN and ABC, including the NBA Sunday Showcase series. Her assignments will include full slates of games throughout the regular season and the NBA Playoffs. Burke will regularly work alongside play-by-play voice Dave Pasch. With this new deal, Burke’s tenure at ESPN will extend more than 35 years. She first covered basketball for ESPN in 1991 and has since been assigned to 17 NBA Finals, including six as a game analyst between ABC and ESPN Radio, as well as 11 as sideline reporter on ABC.
Burke has long been considered one of the top NBA analysts and as was noted in the announcement, she isn’t going anywhere as she has agreed to a contract extension with ESPN and will still be broadcasting games alongside Dave Pasch. Even still, it would be interesting to know why ESPN decided to make the change with Legler joining the lead broadcast team.
Regardless, there will be plenty of Burke and Legler doing their normal excellent work as analysts throughout this NBA season.
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