Prominent NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski is retiring from ESPN, he announced Wednesday, to take a job in the athletic department at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University.
Wojnarowski, 55, reached a level of fame few reporters ever know thanks to his “Woj Bombs,” or breaking news announcements on X. He has become as recognizable to NBA fans as many of the players he has covered, generating millions of social media followers with his ability to break news of the league’s biggest trades and signings.
“The craft transformed my life, but I’ve decided to retire from ESPN and the news industry,” Wojnarowski wrote on X. “I understand the commitment required in my role, and it’s an investment that I’m no longer driven to make.”
Wojnarowski helped shape the landscape of sports media in the digital age. With the explosion of Twitter nearly two decades ago, every NBA reporter could suddenly compete for every piece of news — and Wojnarowski excelled at delivering those nuggets to fans. He turned those scoops into an enormous influence on league business. His reports helped set the league’s agenda, and owners asked his advice on hires. Wojnarowski often was described by people across the NBA as one of the most powerful people in the league because of his access to information and his ability to horse-trade with it.
He signed a contract with ESPN in 2022 that paid him around $7.5 million per year for five years. Wojnarowski has more than three years left on that deal, meaning he is walking away from more than $20 million.
While Wojnarowski’s influence is unquestioned, he could be a polarizing figure. Admirers marveled at his work ethic, his relationship-building and his seeming monopoly on breaking news. “He’s the most curious person I’ve ever met,” his college classmate and New York Post sports columnist Mike Vaccaro once told The Washington Post. “If you put him on the White House beat, he’d be the best White House reporter ever.”
Critics — including other reporters — accused him of favoring and protecting his best sources in exchange for information. One former NBA general manager once had a former employee’s emails searched to see if he had been leaking to Wojnarowski — and found that he was.
Wojnarowski began his career at newspapers, including the Hartford Courant and the Bergen Record in New Jersey. He was an award-winning columnist and wrote a well-received book about a high school basketball team before covering the NBA for Yahoo Sports. He regularly beat ESPN to scoops in those years to the point that ESPN hired him in 2017.
In recent years, his news-breaking rivalry with his former protégé, Shams Charania, who works for the Athletic, was fodder of fascination around the NBA and on the internet.
With Wojnarowski now out of the game, NBA reporters immediately began whispering about how the league’s information ecosystem could change: Would more information suddenly flow to other reporters? Would anyone fill the Wojnarowski vacuum? Charania, several noted, is set for free agency and could be a replacement for his former rival.
At ESPN, Wojnarowski’s retirement was surprising to both reporters and executives — many of whom learned of it Wednesday. That he was willing to walk away from so much money, though, is an acknowledgment of the grueling lifestyle of a news-breaker and the world he built — the hours glued to his phone and the never-ending news cycle. Wojnarowski will leave that behind to become general manager of the men’s basketball team at St. Bonaventure, a mid-major school in the Atlantic 10 Conference.
Since the NCAA’s name, image and likeness (NIL) rules changed in 2021 to allow payments to athletes, Wojnarowski has been a prominent donor to the school’s collective, and his new role will involve roster construction through the transfer portal as well as fundraising and budgeting related to NIL.
General managers are becoming more common in major college sports. The Duke men’s basketball team, an early adopter of the position, hired Rachel Baker from Nike in 2022. The Syracuse men’s basketball team hired Alex Kline, a former NBA scout with the New Orleans Pelicans and the New York Knicks.
Jesse Dougherty contributed to this report.
