Introducing Kerith Burke, NBC Sports Bay Area's Warriors sideline reporter

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First things being first, her first name is Kerith. Not Keri, not Keridith and definitely not Keith, despite any stubborn insistences of your autocorrect function.

She is Kerith Burke, signed off the free-agent market by the NBC Sports Bay Area team as part of its baseline-to-baseline coverage of the reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors.

Burke will serve as sideline reporter for all Warriors games by NBC Sports Bay Area. In addition to providing in-game interviews and updates, she will offer insight and analysis on various other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

Having spent more than a decade in news and sports on both coasts, Burke arrives with solid credentials, including four years at Sportsnet New York (SNY), where she covered the UConn women’s basketball team and hosted the “Geno Auriemma Show.”

Burke covered women’s basketball, primarily as a sideline reporter, during NBC’s coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. The Bay Area resident also is familiar with the NBA, the Warriors in particular, and last season filled in as Warriors sideline reporter for two games on NBC Sports Bay Area.

“It’s just basketball,” Burke says. “I know this game. The players might be celebrities, but they’re just people. I think the fact that I don’t put anybody on a pedestal -- I don’t really fan-girl over anybody -- it’s just people in a sport I’ve covered for years. That’s the way I look at it. I think that’s the healthiest way to look at it. That doesn’t mean I don’t know their popularity and how much they’re loved.”

Burke believes sports figures have the right, if not an obligation, to utilize their platform to address social issues, describing such participation not as social activism but as “common freaking sense.”

A graduate of the Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University -- the same school attended by Warriors All-Star guard Klay Thompson -- Burke occasionally plays basketball, enjoys hockey and college football but insists the only teams she actively roots for are the Cougars.

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