2 weeks Ago By Danny Chau
Before he became the bespectacled gatekeeper of the NBA’s shadowy inner sanctum of power brokers and politicians, before he became an online oracle for the Worldwide Leader, Adrian Wojnarowski was a Yahoo Sports columnist who turned Eastern Conference finals gamers into verses out of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. His prose was all fire and brimstone; all killer, all filler: “The Championship of Me comes crashing into a primetime cable infomercial that LeBron James and his cronies have been working to make happen for months, a slow, cynical churning of manufactured drama that sports has never witnessed,” Wojnarowski opened his excoriation of LeBron’s infamous 2010 The Decision . “As historic monuments go, this is the Rushmore of basketball hubris and narcissism.
The vacuous star for our vacuous times. All about ‘Bron and all about nothing.” It was such a banger of a lede, Woj would go on to paraphrase himself in the kicker.
Wojnarowski’s lyricism was the opposite of ethereal—bogged down by the weight of something unseen, influenced by private conversations unheard. It always felt like he was channeling something outside of himself. In his time living his dream as a sportswriter, he’d made connections, built bridges, tunneled his way into the very heart of the league’s operation.
Over the past 15 years, we’ve more than gleaned what his muse was all along: the innermost thoughts and intentions of the agents and front-office executives that make the NBA go. Transliterating his proximity to power into prose was exhausting work, so he found a new angle. He broke news.
He broke all of the news . With the power of social media, he broke it more prolifically and more efficiently than had ever been possible. In his nearly two-decade career, Adrian Wojnarowski ruined NBA drafts and greased the wheels of an entire basketball media industry.
In that time, he developed a protégé and then feuded with him. For better or worse, he reshaped sports journalism in his image, to an impossible standard built through interpersonal connections and leverage that few could ever hope (or wish) to reach. And just like that, he’s out.
On Wednesday morning, the final Woj bomb was dropped: Wojnarowski is leaving ESPN—and retiring from sportswriting altogether—to become the general manager of St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball program. For a while, the clearest glimpses into Woj’s humanity were his earnest tweets about his beloved Bonnies.
In a year when Bill Belichick and Nick Saban have gone from monolithic sports villains to weirdly funny dudes on talk shows, Wojnarowski’s life change sparks a similar sympathetic warmth. In short: Hell yeah, Woj. Live your dreams.
Of course, the sudden exit of a ubiquitous presence in the NBA space leaves us with more questions than answers. Let’s run through a few of them. There’s only one person who has that answer, but fatigue had to have factored into his decision.
For years, Woj was a news-breaking automaton with a faulty thesaurus plug-in installed . There was a thrill in seeing just how long he’d burn the midnight oil for a top-tier scoop. Woj became an architect of our basketball consumption.
The anticipation he’s conditioned the public to feel—that at any moment, a league-shifting transaction could be announced—is a big reason why the NBA is now considered a year-round league. But recently, where the Reply Guys of yore would race to respond with their favorite LeBron insults, there have been far more tweets of concern, sincere or not: Come on, Woj, go to bed. He’s finally heeding the call.
It would be a convenient time to rethink the model, at the very least. ESPN’s commitment to Woj in 2017 felt like a means of slapping its brand onto an established entity whose ubiquity overflowed ESPN’s bounds. It gave him a podcast, it gave him generous airtime, but it was made abundantly clear on broadcasts—because his head was always tilted down, with his texting thumbs moving in syncopated rhythms—that his product was always direct-to-consumer.
Woj drew massive traffic to his own social media feeds. Not all of that funneled back to ESPN, but such was the trade-off of employing the most famous NBA reporter. Related In a fitting tribute to Woj’s ultimate legacy in the world of sports media, ESPN’s newser of his retirement was coauthored by Pete Thamel, Jeff Passan, and Adam Schefter—the Wojs of their respective sports: college football, MLB, and NFL.
The Worldwide Leader has built its coverage around these pillars, ensuring that intel will always flow through its auspices first . ESPN’s architecture relies on the authoritative oracles in their respective silos. Without Woj, it’ll have to create a new one.
And say there was someone out on the market who could fill Woj’s void, someone whose contract with another major sports publication expires this year. Someone 25 years younger, whom ESPN could plan to build around for the long haul—less as a writer, more as a personality. What might that look like? Yeah, probably.
Absolutely. By all accounts, Shams is deeply committed to the grind and learned from the best. He’s been doing this since he was a teenager, badgering agents over the phone in class; Woj saw his determination and hired him to work alongside him at Yahoo.
They became rivals when Woj departed for ESPN and Charania for The Athletic . It was only three months ago that their ongoing scoop-sparring led to the JJ Redick debacle with the Lakers , one of the most topsy-turvy coaching hires in recent memory. It’ll be lonely at the top, but Shams is built for this.
He has no extenuating obligations or responsibilities that take precedence over his job. For Woj, the work was becoming a burden, which he made clear in his statement. “I understand the commitment required in my role and it’s an investment that I’m no longer driven to make,” Woj wrote.
“Time isn’t in endless supply and I want to spend mine in ways that are more personally meaningful.” Woj has a wife and two kids. At long last, he can celebrate a birthday without having to step out to write about a 27-year-old long-shot training camp invite’s exhibit 10 contract signed by an Eastern Conference bottom-feeder to appease an agent.
With Woj out of the picture, all of those easy layups are Charania’s for the taking. Get those buckets, Shams. This isn’t the first time a sportswriter has worked their way into a front office: Lee Jenkins and Luke Winn—both previously of Sports Illustrated —have made that leap.
But neither had the kind of cachet that Woj immediately steps into St. Bonaventure with. More than any bit of exclusive reporting he’s done over the past 15 years, how Woj builds up Bonnies basketball in the still-early days of the NIL era will show us just how well he’s leveraged his connections in the basketball world and beyond.
His responsibilities will reportedly include recruiting and NIL allocation. There’s no mystery as to how he might be able to curry favor in those realms of college basketball. He made his intentions clear on his way out of Bristol: “I am hopeful that I can bring value in a lot of areas to our basketball program and open doors for our young men’s futures in ways both professionally and personally,” Wojnarowski told ESPN.
There’s no reading between the lines here: He has the resources and connections to get players paid. In building a reputation for looking out for players’ futures both at the NCAA level and beyond, there’s a nonzero percent chance Woj can find ways to transform the program in ways similar to the early years of John Calipari’s time with Kentucky. One imagines it’s similar to what he’d once written about LeBron, who, like Woj, sat on the precipice back in 2010: He has been prancing around the edges for too long now, angling for a transcendent existence he believed his brand could bring him.
Only, it’s all a mirage. It’s all vapor until he does the heavy lifting that comes now, that comes in the shadows of Magic and Larry, Michael and Kobe. This isn’t about selling an image to Madison Avenue, about pushing product through all those dazzling plays across the winter months.
This is an MVP’s time, his calling, and there was LeBron James standing in the middle of the Cavaliers’ locker room at 11:25 p.m., staring in a long mirror, fixing his shirt before the long walk down the corridor to the interview room.
James stood there for five seconds and 10 and maybe now 20, just staring into the mirror, just taking a long, long look at himself. For the first time in his career, the first time when it’s all truly on him, maybe the sport stood and stared with him. Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter Check your inbox for a welcome email.
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