Sources: Kate Scott to call Sixers games on NBC Sports Philadelphia, replacing Marc Zumoff – The Philadelphia Inquirer

NBC Sports Philadelphia is making history with its replacement for longtime Sixers announcer Marc Zumoff.

The network has hired Kate Scott to call games this season, according to sources not authorized to speak publicly. 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.

NBC Sports Philadelphia and Scott did not respond to requests for comment.

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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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. While she has limited experience calling NBA games, Scott has been calling college basketball games for the Pac-12 Networks for several years.

Expected to return 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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