NBC Sports Philadelphia is making history with its replacement for longtime 76ers broadcaster Marc Zumoff.
The network announced Wednesday it has hired Kate Scott to call Sixers games this season. The move makes Scott the first full-time female broadcaster of any major sport in Philadelphia television history and just the second woman to handle full-time play-by-play duties for an NBA team.
“As a kid playing hoops alone in my driveway, I actually used to imagine I was Allen Iverson; the clock would wind down in my head, people would scream, ‘You’re too small! You don’t belong!’ But I’d fade away, hit the shot, and the crowd in my mind would go wild,” Scott said in a statement. “To now get the opportunity to be the voice of that team is incredible, and I look forward to earning the respect and trust of the phenomenal city of Philadelphia, and 76ers fans everywhere, one call and one game at a time.”
Scott is something of a trailblazer in broadcasting. She’s the first woman to call an NFL game on the radio, the first to call college football for the Pac-12 Networks, and last year she was the play-by-play voice for the first all-female NHL broadcast. Scott also called basketball games during the Tokyo Olympics this year, soccer games during the Copá America for Fox, and was part of the first all-female broadcast of a Golden State Warriors game last season.
Now, the Clovis, Calif., native will be traveling across the country to fill the shoes of one of Philadelphia’s most beloved broadcasters, known to most simply as “Zoo,” who retired in June after having called Sixers games for 27 years.
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“Kate’s energy, passion and tremendous knowledge of the game of basketball made her the ideal candidate to usher in a new era of 76ers basketball on NBC Sports Philadelphia,” said Chris Heck, the team’s president of business operations.
Scott will be just the second woman hired as an NBA team’s television play-by-play voice. Last week, the Milwaukee Bucks hired Lisa Byington as their play-by-play announcer, replacing retiring announcer Jim Paschke. Locally, Dei Lynam has been the color analyst on DETV for the Wilmington Blue Coats, the Sixers’ G League affiliate.
“When I graduated from Cal in 2005, I didn’t see play-by-play as a future for me. I thought reporting and anchoring was my ceiling, and that was only 16 years ago,” Scott told the Mercury News in March. “We’ve made some amazing strides, but now the next step is to normalize things. It’s up to us to show the next generation that this is definitely something you can do. And we need to show the people doing the hiring that we’re good at this.”
Scott is expected to make her NBC Sports Philadelphia debut during the preseason. Although she has limited experience calling NBA games, Scott has been calling college basketball games for the Pac-12 Networks for several years.
Returning as the network’s color analyst is Alaa Abdelnaby, who is entering his sixth season calling Sixers games. NBC Sports Philadelphia is also expected to once again have no sideline reporter during Sixers broadcasts, a trend that began when Serena Winters was among those laid off by the network in August 2020.
Until last month, Scott co-hosted The Morning Roast on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco. She also calls college football games on the radio for Learfield alongside former ESPN host and Eagles defensive lineman Mike Golic.
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