Dallas Basketball

The Message, As ESPN's Doris Burke Tests Positive for COVID-19 After Working Mavs Game

The Sports World - and the Rest of the World - Continues to Get Hit With Bad News as ESPN's Doris Burke Tests Positive for COVID-19 After Working that 'Final' NBA Dallas Mavericks Game
Mike Fisher|
The Message, As ESPN's Doris Burke Tests Positive for COVID-19 After Working Mavs Game
The Message, As ESPN's Doris Burke Tests Positive for COVID-19 After Working Mavs Game

DALLAS - As if we needed a reminder that COVID-19 doesn't care about your age, your gender or your celebrity, ESPN sideline NBA reporter Doris Burke has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, she announced during a taping of The Woj Pod with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Burke, 54, is just the latest in a stunningly long line of NBA people who have tested positive as part of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of the Dallas Mavericks - whose game she worked for ESPN on that fateful "last night'' of NBA basketball -  we know of no such cases, and obviously we hope it stays that way ... with owner Mark Cuban's Mavs making their contributions to "Feed the Fight'' from a responsible distance.

But around the sport of basketball? Coaches, players and staffers are, like the rest of us, among the many who have interacted, unknowingly, in recent weeks. ... making most of us susceptible to the spread of COVID-19.

Burke's visit with Woj was a typical effort from the reliable and relatable broadcaster. She talked of her symptoms, the experience along the path to her recovery and the importance - somehow not yet grasped by far too many of us - of social distancing, self-quarantining and safety.other measures to combat this global pandemic.

Here's for the hope that as awful as it is that Burke or anyone else he plagued with the virus, activism by high-profile people like her help raise awareness as to the very real seriousness of this pandemic.

On a substantially lighter note, DallasBasketball.com's famed "75-Member Staff'' is also playing it safe ... but also podcasting. Catch the "Step Back'' above.

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Mike Fisher
MIKE FISHER

Mike Fisher - as a newspaper beat writer and columnist and on radio and TV, where he is an Emmy winner - has covered the NBA and the Dallas Mavericks since 1990. He has for more than 20 years served as the overseer of DallasBasketball.com, the granddaddy of Mavs news websites.

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