ESPN hoops analyst Doris Burke was interviewed Wednesday by the Louisville Courier-Journal’s Adam Himmelsbach, and amongst the topics covered (her collegiate playing career, treatment of female journalists, Greg Popovich’s brusque replies) is a January 30 on-camera exchange with Kevin Durant in which Burke was thought to be mocking KD’s faith :
That game I covered for Heather Cox, who has two young kids and had something that night and basically asked if I could replace her. It was a hectic day. To preface it, the year before in the NBA finals, I’d interviewed Danny Green after his big game, and he kept thanking God and then would answer the question. And that summer I got 10 photocopies from an anonymous man with anti-God, anti-religion sentiment. It was kind of a weird thing, but whatever.
Durant’s sort of caught me off guard, because usually when someone acknowledges God they then move on to the question I asked. Looking back, I regret being sort of caught off-guard, because I didn’t mean to in any way belittle his beliefs as a Christian. But I was unaware of the furor until the next day when I got off a plane in Louisville and there were messages from my bosses and ESPN PR saying we may need to think about addressing this.
Was it addressed?
There was an Oklahoma City columnist who basically ripped me pretty good. I basically said, ‘Listen, I’m a Christian. I’m in no way, shape or form trying to belittle Kevin Durant’s beliefs. He surprised me a little bit with his humility, frankly, and for not taking any credit for his play.