It’s gameday for the Phoenix Mercury.

Cindy Brunson arrives at the Verizon 5G Performance Center, where the Mercury practice, for their 10 a.m. shootaround. 

No, Cindy won’t be playing in tonight’s game — her playing days ended in high school after undergoing her third knee surgery. No, she won’t be coaching either. Instead, she’ll be sitting courtside, calling the game as the team’s official play-by-play voice in her first full-time season with the team.

At the practice facility, she looks to see who might be injured and who is ready to go for tonight’s matchup against the Dallas Wings. She learns Skylar Diggins-Smith, who is averaging 17 points per game this season, is out with a non-COVID-related illness. Depth is already an issue for the team with stars Kia Nurse rehabbing her ACL and Brittney Griner, who has been unlawfully detained in Russia since Feb. 17, 2022, and it shows with the team starting off the 2022 season 2-2. Cindy will mention this key absence at the top of tonight’s broadcast.

Once she’s finished at shootaround, she picks up her boards from FedEx, or Kinko’s as she still calls it. The boards have key stats printed in a giant font, so she can quickly glance at them throughout the game. She then reviews the last meeting between the Mercury and Wings and the last games the two teams played, mining for any interesting nuggets she can bring up during the broadcast, before she heads to Footprint Center in Downtown Phoenix.

This isn’t the life Cindy would have imagined when she first started working at ESPN in 1999 or even in 2012 after anchoring hundreds of “SportsCenter” broadcasts. She wanted to be the next Linda Cohn and work as an analyst at ESPN for a couple more decades. That had been her dream since her days in college, something her classmates at Washington State University can attest to. 

“I thought I was going to be at ESPN for 25 to 30 years,” Cindy said. “I didn’t see anything different for myself because I was having a good time living my dream.”

So what changed? How did someone already living the dream at ESPN become the play-by-play voice for a WNBA team?

From Airball to Nothin’ But Net

Cindy’s mother thought Cindy only wanted to watch football with her dad and his buddies as a way to get out of doing her chores. Why else would a first grader be interested in football? Cindy was actually developing a real love for the game. Determined to earn a spot on the couch and out of snack and beverage duty with her mom, she grabbed an encyclopedia and learned all of the officiating signals, so when she walked into the room with the snack and beverage tray, she could criticize the officiating. 

“My dad looked at me, and his friends looked at me, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool. She really knows what she’s doing,’” Cindy said. 

That moment relieved her of her snack and beverage duties and cemented her seat on the couch. It was during those hundreds of hours watching football when she decided she wanted a career in sports broadcasting.

Basketball quickly replaced football as her favorite sport once she started playing. Unlike football, she had a tactile relationship with basketball, even earning a college scholarship. Now, it’s her favorite sport to cover.

While she was proficient in football and basketball, her unfamiliarity with one sport was about to tank her career.

Mike McQuade, Cindy’s boss and now ESPN’s vice president of studio production, called Cindy into his office at ESPNews. Everyone at ESPN starts off with ESPNews, which she likens to a Major League Baseball team’s farm system. Despite being a diehard sports fan, her lack of familiarity with the NHL showed.

“What in the world?” McQuade said. “You’re great with everything. What is your deal with hockey?”

Instead of threatening to replace her if she couldn’t improve, McQuade did the unexpected: he asked her what he could do to help.

An extremely grateful Cindy said, “Mike, I am a listen learner. If somebody can take the pronunciation guide and say it into a tape recorder for me so that I can hear the names. Once I hear them, it doesn’t matter how they’re written. I’ll get it right. That’s what I need.”

“Okay, done,” McQuade said.

To his word, he had a production assistant sit down and record the pronunciation guide, which, thanks to Cindy, is now standard for every sport at ESPN.

That humbling experience would pay dividends when Cindy made her “SportsCenter” debut in February 2001 and became the first biracial woman to host the show. With it being the NBA’s All-Star Weekend and both the NFL and MLB seasons having already ended, the NHL dominated the broadcast. Her first thought was karma, but because McQuade had put her in a position to succeed, she was prepared and ready to excel. 

Pivot to Play-by-Play

A basketball player can’t legally move without dribbling the ball, or they’ll be called for travelling. That’s where pivoting becomes valuable. It allows a player to maneuver around their defender without lifting their foot, giving them enough space to take their shot.

Cindy had to take a lesson from her days playing hoops and pivot her career when her husband, Steve Berthiaume, landed a job with the Arizona Diamondbacks as their television play-by-play voice. This would move them from Bristol, Connecticut and Cindy’s dream job at ESPN. With only 30 Major League Baseball television play-by-play jobs, she wasn’t going to ask her husband to delay his dream in order for her to continue living hers, so the couple moved to Phoenix.

Without a Plan B, she was unsure what the next step in her career would be, but she knew one thing for sure: she had to stay close to women’s basketball. She saw the Pac-12 Network as her opportunity to do just that.

Odele Hawkins, the network’s director of talent and development, told Cindy that she should leave her analyst chair behind and switch to play-by-play. Cindy’s new role would be to paint the picture of what is happening on the court and then defer to her color analyst to provide commentary on why it’s happening.

“There are so many times in your life that you run into people who can see from 30,000 feet — for you — better than you can, and she was one of those folks,” Cindy said. “And I’m grateful.”

A mid-career transition that may seem daunting for some was relatively easy for Cindy. Already stats-based and information-driven in her analysis, she had practically been doing play-by-play for years at “SportsCenter.” She served as the in-studio “point guard” for former WNBA players Rebecca Lobo and Kara Lawson and former WNBA head coach and general manager Carolyn Peck, deferring to them for their expertise.

She knew what to say to elicit great analysis beyond the box score.

“She sets me up really well,” said Joan Bonvicini, Cindy’s color analyst partner and the former University of Arizona women’s basketball head coach. “She’ll ask me a question a lot of times, you know, ‘Why is this happening? Why are they calling a timeout? What do you think they’re saying?’ I think she does a great job of intuitively knowing what fans would want to know.”

Cindy knows what fans want to know because she’s been a diehard fan of women’s hoops for decades. She breathes her passion into the broadcast and is always thinking of how to grow the game. One year, she even used the money she normally allocates for Mercury season tickets to travel to every WNBA venue and see each team’s version of success.

A Whole New Ball Game

Tied with two seconds left in the game, Kalani Brown inbounded the pass to Kelsey Mitchell who passed the ball to Sydney Colson. With one second left, Colson launched the ball over two defenders from half-court.

“Colson from half-court…for the win,” Cindy called from the booth, arms raised in utter disbelief.  

Colson sealed the win with Athletes Unlimited’s first buzzer beater half-court shot in the women’s professional league’s first season. For Cindy, that moment was the highlight of her five weeks calling games for Athletes Unlimited. 

Like Colson’s shot, Cindy’s job offer from Athletes Unlimited was equally unexpected. When she met Eileen Hauser, a former big wig for Nike, she never expected it would lead to another play-by-play opportunity — and not just any opportunity. Cindy would become the first black woman to be the play-by-play voice of a professional sports league.

“Now when I take jobs, I don’t take them just for me,” Cindy said. “I take them for the young black and brown folks who are watching me and aspiring to be like me, with them in mind. I want to give them something to shoot for.”

Cindy understands from personal experience the power of seeing someone that looks like you succeed. She rarely saw anyone that looked like her on TV, but when she saw the few that did, like Jayne Kennedy on “The NFL Today” and Robin Roberts on “SportsCenter,“ her sportscasting dream suddenly seemed possible.

She welcomes any opportunity where she can inspire someone in the same way she was inspired. When Angel Gray, an ESPN college basketball analyst and former basketball player, saw Cindy fill in as a play-by-play caller during a Mercury broadcast in 2015, she realized she didn’t have to be analyst. She could do what she really wanted: play-by-play. Now, she is the official play-by-play voice for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

“When I was interviewing with the Mercury, I said, ‘Bottom line, I don’t want Angel to be the only person that I impact in this way. If you afford me this opportunity, not only will you get the best, but I can help the next generation,’” Cindy boldly told her future employer.

Her time with Athletes Unlimited would serve as her indoctrination into professional women’s basketball, preparing her for her opportunity with the Mercury. She already had experience calling games at the collegiate level, but now she had the chance to call games featuring WNBA stars, preparing her for the WNBA’s faster paced games and elite level of play.

When the five-week season ended, Cindy was left wanting more. She can’t wait for season two to start, and she hopes she’s the one in the booth calling the games. 

“I’ve already told them if they dare hire anybody else, I will punch them in the throat,” Cindy said with a laugh.

But until she gets that call, she’ll continue making broadcast history as a member of the first all-female broadcast team in Mercury history.

The Ball’s in Her Court

Cindy pulls up to the Footprint Center two hours before tip-off. She likes to get there early to watch the arena come to life. 

The smell of freshly popped popcorn wafts through the building. The security personnel arrive and complete their security checks. In thirty minutes, the X-Factor, the Mercury’s loyal legion of fans, will pour into the stadium after waiting outside in the 95°F desert heat— it’s only May by the way. She can feel the anticipation building.

She then walks around the court three or four times. Looking for the little things. Taking in every angle. Envisioning different scenarios she might have to call. If a player tries a deep three and ends up in a seat, what will she say?

As the players make their way out onto the court, she can hear the squeaking of their sneakers, the bouncing of the balls, and the snapping of the net with each made shot. 

“There’s just an electricity with that that just feeds your soul as a broadcaster,” she said.

She takes it all in one last time before sitting down at the table to get ready to call the game. She looks up at the giant scoreboard and thanks whoever made this all possible.

“I get paid to talk about hoops,” Cindy said. “That is the best part, and to have courtside seats, [that’s] not terrible.”