BREAKING: ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski To Sleep, Finally

Adrian Wojnarowski’s tweets were the only ones I ever received directly to my phone. I cut that off right around when his relationship with agents would upend the NBA Draft broadcast in a way that made Woj himself start using verbs like “tantalized” with regard to Robert Williams III, or “zeroing in on” Kevin Huerter, but for a few years, I would open my phone and, usually, nod my head in agreement with “sources say” reports from the same man a few hours earlier.

As the chief news-breaking person of the NBA since his days at Yahoo! Sports, Woj barnstormed Twitter basically from its inception, giving the real heads credence and giving credence to the fringe candidates, letting them know and postulate about trades and draft picks hours before anyone would get back to a computer and realize that Carmelo Anthony didn’t play for the Nuggets anymore.

For better and for worse, Woj served a purpose; his ex-Yahoo protégé Shams Charania will pick up where Adrian leaves off, the latter announcing his biggest #WojBomb and moving to a basketball ops-type position with the men’s team at St. Bonaventure, his beloved alma mater.

Wojnarowski pioneered a form of news-breaking at the dawn of the social media age that, on the one hand, helped regionally-restricted fans be able to maintain an understanding of the NBA on a national level that the SportsCenter Top Ten wouldn’t bother affording them, particularly in the offseason.

On the other, his brand of access journalism, one depending on agent- and front office-dependent relationships, ended up influencing a generation of insidious and worse reporters who don’t care about facts as much as they care about being the first notification with a blandly interesting source.

His statement upon retirement suggests that he’d had enough of the #grindset. To himself, Woj was just a guy who did his job, and as the league got bigger, and as sports media became more demanding in the shadow of shutdown outlets and decreasing beat reporters, he had to have felt the strain of maintaining. Maybe he feels the crawl of gambling money all over the sport: “DraftKings has announced a partnership with the A.I. Rip Torn Extended Universe” might get tired after a while.

It will end up being Charania’s plot in life for a while to do what Woj did better than anybody had ever before him, something Wojnarowski himself is leaving on his own terms. “Time isn’t in endless supply,” he wrote, “and I want to spend mine in ways that are more meaningful.” One assumes he means a good night’s sleep for the first time in nearly forty years.

We had our ups and downs, Woj and I and the rest of the basketball-watching universe, but he did change a game ready and willing for the specific change he brought. It’s probably not for the best, but it will work for the foreseeable future, as everybody involved protects their brands. For now, let’s revisit my personal favorite #WojBomb, one following his announcement of the firing of David Fizdale as head coach of the New York Knicks. Here it is, my moment of Zen: