Last week, Lisa Byington made history as she was named the play-by-play voice of the defending NBA champions, the Milwaukee Bucks, for Bally Sports Wisconsin. History is not uncommon for Byington as she became the first woman to do play-by-play for the men’s NCAA Tournament back in March and in 2017, she was the first woman to call college football for the Big Ten Network.
On Thursday, Byington was a guest on Spain and Fitz (57:20 mark) to talk about her role as a game-changer in the industry. She mentioned in her interview with the Bucks and Bally Sports Wisconsin that she was asked how she would handle being the first female ever in this role.
“I said, this is nothing new to me. We battle this every single day of our lives, the no’s, the not yet’s, the you are not good enough because you are a woman,” Lisa Byington said. “I said look, this is my story, this is what I have become accustomed to because I have lived this day-in, day-out, hour-in, hour-out. So, I am going to throw it back at you? Are you ready for this? I think the fact that they hired me was their answer.”
While Byington did not think this was a possible option a year ago, after calling games in the NCAA Tournament she decided that the sky’s the limit for what she can do in the industry and her agent, Gideon Cohen, at Excel Sports Management, opened the door to this job opportunity.
“You don’t chase history, sometimes history finds you. Sometimes people recognize something in you that you might not recognize in yourself. Some of these opportunities that I have had, there’s always had to be people that kind of opened those doors for me. When the idea of the Bucks job opened up, let’s go for it and we did.”
Lisa Byington will be joined in the booth by analysts Marques Johnson and Steve Novak as well as sideline reporter Zora Stephenson. She said that she will follow their lead a lot over this next year as she is “excited to be a part of their team.”
