It speaks to the towering celebrity power of the NBA ecosystem that one of the year’s biggest transactions doesn’t involve a basketball player. Adrian Wojnarowski, the association’s preeminent Scoop King, is hanging up his iPhone after a 37-year run in the journalism business. Basketball fans know Wojnarowski best for his two-decade tenure at both ESPN and Yahoo Sports, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of seismic, league-altering basketball news was originally filtered through the man’s Twitter account. Wojnarowski told the world that Oklahoma City was breaking up a potential dynasty by trading James Harden to Houston, that Donald Sterling would be ousted from his ownership suite of the Los Angeles Clippers, and that the NBA itself had suspended operations during the alpha wave of the coronavirus. He was, simply put, the most sourced-up man in a world that revolves around transactional favors and access-trading. And now, Woj is riding off into the sunset. He’s set to become the general manager of the basketball program at St. Bonaventure University—a tiny Franciscan school in western New York, and also his alma mater. The NBA is never going to be the same.
Wojnarowski presided over a fundamental reshuffling of the tenets of sportswriting. He entered the industry as an opinion guy—writing columns tinged with old-fashioned newspaper grouchiness. (Consider, if you will, this vintage haranguing of LeBron’s shortcomings in the 2011 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.) But rather than dissolving in a sea of identical cranks, Woj altered his approach in the early 2010s. He scrubbed away any visible partisan leanings and began to deliver cold, punchy information about the league’s dealings—trades, free agency signings, coach firings, locker room friction, and so on—delivered almost exclusively through Twitter, faster than everyone else.
Before long, Wojnarowski had consolidated real influence, to the point that his earth-shifting missives became known, in NBA circles, as “Woj Bombs.” At the peak of his prowess, Woj had evolved into as much of a character in the league’s drama as the players on the hardwood—an elusive, vaguely menacing oracle who knew more than anyone else, and wasn’t afraid to use his powers. Case in point: On Draft Night in 2015, he reported the names of each of the players selected in the lottery before commissioner Adam Silver could even make it to the podium.
But Wojnarowski’s domination of basketball’s media sector was not received without some controversy. This style of reporting necessitates the cultivation of relationships with some powerful people, which naturally casts certain journalistic ethics into question. (How did Wojnarowski gain the privilege of reporting LeBron James’ decision to sign with the Los Angeles Lakers?) He frequently used anonymous sourcing in his posts—a strange bit of editorial leeway, considering the subject of his reporting tended to be the Brooklyn Nets’ backcourt, rather than sealed CIA documents.
But with the dust settled, there’s no doubt that Woj has remade this industry in his own image. The skills he once honed—of storytelling, and adversarial opinion, of big, glossy long-form features—have atrophied in service of the almighty scoop, delivered by any means necessary. Who cares if you might cross a couple lines that might make your J-school ethicist cringe? In 2021, fellow ESPN access merchant Adam Schefter was caught emailing a draft of an unpublished story to an NFL source, effectively allowing them to make any changes they saw fit in the copy. Were fans outraged at this indiscretion? No, not really. Most of them just want to know if Damian Lillard is getting traded to the Milwaukee Bucks or the Miami Heat. And frankly, sports media is in the midst of an ongoing financial freefall, causing former heavyweights in the arena like Deadspin and Sports Illustrated to winnow down their scope considerably. It seems like there is only space left for guys like Woj who are adept at delivering content at its most compact and clickable. The Woj Bombs may be a symptom, but they certainly aren’t the disease.
It’s hard to know where ESPN will go from here. Wojnarowski was central to the company’s basketball media arm, and it doesn’t have a particularly deep roster of scoop-laden acolytes to draw from. That said, last month it was reported that Shams Charania—Woj’s Yahoo Sports protégé turned media rival—was nearing the end of his contract with the Athletic. Shams and his former mentor have battled for the publishing rights to basketball tidbits for years, and with the emeritus out of the picture, perhaps he’ll be absorbed by the mother ship and pick up where Woj left off. There is only one mountaintop in the realm of NBA scuttlebutt, and maybe someone must forever be guarding its summit.
So good luck to Woj on his future endeavors. I honestly can’t imagine how many addled, sleepless nights it takes to be the supreme NBA insider. Often, when Woj appeared on ESPN, he’d be brandishing two different iPhones, which was ostensibly the only way he could keep up with the volley of text threads he kept active with agents, players, and front-office executives. As many have pointed out, managing all the moving parts of a college basketball program during the age of name-image-and-likeness rights doesn’t seem like a particularly relaxing gig, but I’m glad that Wojnarowski has carved out his own plot of happiness. Surely, there are more important things in life than who’s playing shooting guard for the Dallas Mavericks.
