It now may be long forgotten because Adrian Wojnarowski’s legendary run as an NBA insider was built on 280-word tweets, but before the first “Woj bomb,” as his news scoops are known, he was an award-winning general sports columnist for New Jersey’s Bergen Record.
When he left the paper in 2007 for a new venture called Yahoo Sports, it was only a 2.5-magnitude tremor. While in hindsight the move may seem obvious with the millions Wojnarowski would rake in, the power he would amass and the countless stories he would break, it wasn’t the case back then.
In fact, Wojnarowski once told me a story about one of his top Bergen Record editors saying to him on the way out, “I’m worried that no one is going to hear from you again.”
Wojnarowski had the same thought.
But the Yahoo Wojnarowski was one of the most dominant sports writers ever, not only breaking nearly every NBA story as the David to ESPN’s Goliath but then opining with biting commentaries about the league and its biggest names. He would go after everyone from David Stern to LeBron James. It was a sports journalism sight to behold.
This was the peak of Wojnarowski’s powers, combining his reporting and writing ability to the highest level.
While he grew up in Bristol, CT, home of ESPN, he seemingly never wanted to be part of the network. He would rail against it with a Michael Jordan-like rage in his determination to defeat it and its army of insiders, who failed to have Woj’s relentlessness.
Any time ESPN failed to credit his Yahoo scoops, it just added fuel, the same way Jordan would take any real or perceived slight personally.
By 2017, after a decade of domination, ESPN finally had enough and made Wojnarowski such an incredible multi-million dollar offer, he had to go. While he was still on top of all the news at ESPN, he wasn’t Yahoo Woj, where he reported with a scalpel and cut with an ax. At ESPN, he was still excellent, just not as tough.
His fame, though, and his omnipresence and his competition with The Athletic’s Shams Charania grew to epic levels as he added more TV to go along with his tweets. Wojnarowski had once been Charania’s mentor at Yahoo, and now they would go head-to-head.
On Twitter, now X, they would face off to determine the winner of the moment in seconds. NBA fans on the site had memes ready to go the moment one of them dunked on the other. It was a sport within the sport.
While Wojnarowski didn’t have necessarily the same bite at ESPN, he still added to his legend, seemingly bucking ESPN on the NBA Draft in 2018 by tipping with word plays on Twitter about teams being “locked in,” “tantalized” and “unlikely to resist,” revealing the picks before the network that paid him televised the selections.
In 2020, he also famously sent Missouri Senator Josh Hawley a private email saying, “F— you” after Hawley sent a letter to NBA commissioner Adam Silver criticizing its relationship with China. That Woj bomb earned him a two-week suspension without pay.
Over time, Wojnarowski became more part of the league’s machinery. He was still as relentless around the clock, looking for perfection from his teammates, his sources and anyone he came in contact with. He played to win and usually did. Then he decided he had enough.
On Wednesday, Wojnarowski announced that, at 55, with millions in the bank, he was fine walking away from around $20 million more because a new frontier in the college game was offered to him. The man who has been texting and talking with executives for nearly two decades will now be the men’s basketball general manager at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure.
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— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 18, 2024
While the circumstances are different, Wojnarowski is displaying the same perfect timing and trust of his gut again, as he did in 2007 when he left the Record. He could stay and collect his money, but his passion to dominate would require him to sleep only three hours a night. His hunger for the job had dissipated, but not his desire to reign supreme. He doesn’t do half-measures.
On Wednesday, he put out a statement on X that harkened back to those award-winning general sports columnist days at the Record.
Wojnarowski wrote, “Time isn’t in endless supply and I want to spend mine in ways that are more personally meaningful.”
A teenage NBA fan who grew up on his breaking tweets may not realize that the man could write. But he or she surely will never forget his name.
His decision in 2007 to become an NBA insider turned out to be legendary. The only proof you needed was the impact of his final Woj bomb, as he announced on his own terms he was walking away a legend.
(Top photo of Adrian Wojnarowski in 2022: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
