Adrian Wojnarowski shocked the sports media world when he abruptly quit his job as ESPN’s top NBA insider earlier this year. Woj made a complete career change to join his beloved St. Bonaventure as the general manager of their men’s basketball program.
In the wake of Woj’s retirement, there was much reflection about the toll of being a high-level insider and whether or not the grind is genuinely worth it. Woj’s replacement at ESPN, Shams Charania, infamously admitted to spending 18 hours a day on his phone to compete as a news breaker. His fellow insider and ESPN colleague Adam Schefter went on ESPN and said that Adrian Wojnarowski retired from ESPN because he just wanted his life back.
“He wanted his life back. He didn’t want to have to work on holidays. He didn’t want to be away from more family gatherings. He didn’t want to have to…take a shower with your phone up against the shower door so you can see a text that’s coming in, or take your phone with you to… pic.twitter.com/mfSavmOKTi
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 18, 2024
This is the same Adam Schefter who just admitted to breaking a news story after having sex, so certainly, the life of an insider isn’t for everyone.
But the one person we haven’t heard much from about his stunning decision to hang up the smartphone is Adrian Wojnarowski himself.
That changed this week as Woj publicly revealed a prostate cancer diagnosis for the first time, encouraging others to have early prostate checks that give him a positive prognosis for recovery.
And in that reveal through an excellent profile from Chris Mannix at Sports Illustrated, this quote from Wojnarowski has caused everyone to have a second thought about the industry’s current state. It is a shockingly open reflection and revelation that Woj considered the life of being an insider was no longer worth it.
Cancer didn’t force him out, Woj insists. But it did bring some clarity. “I didn’t want to spend one more day of my life waiting on someone’s MRI or hitting an agent at 1 a.m. about an ankle sprain,” he says. In May, Woj traveled to Rogers, Ark., for a memorial for Chris Mortensen, the longtime NFL insider who died in March from throat cancer. Mortensen spent more than three decades at ESPN. When Woj arrived in Bristol in 2017, Mortensen was among the first to welcome him. Many ESPNers made the trip to Arkansas. What Woj was struck by was how many did not. “It made me remember that the job isn’t everything,” Woj says. “In the end it’s just going to be your family and close friends. And it’s also, like, nobody gives a s—. Nobody remembers [breaking stories] in the end. It’s just vapor.”
Just take a few moments and read that through again. Because although it’s only one paragraph, it says so much.
First, there is the true monotony of being an insider.
Although there are true “Woj Bombs,” and the Woj-Shams rivalry was fun to follow for everyone — how much of it truly matters? Does someone’s life really need to be upended with 1 a.m. news about an ankle sprain? Do we have such an insatiable, unquenchable thirst for news on a 24/7 basis that there needs to be a race to report things that are going to be announced minutes or hours later anyway?
After all, we’re not talking about in-depth reporting and uncovering stories that wouldn’t be written otherwise — although Woj did that plenty, especially in the earlier parts of his career. Much of being an insider is transactional in nature. It’s not even hidden from sight anymore. Yes, agents and teams might try to negotiate in the media, and we may get some interesting tidbits here and there, but most often, it’s a race to see who can get to their phone first. We’ve even seen this cycle come back to bite reporters, as Ian Rapoport learned recently when former Titans coach Mike Mularkey admitted to using him for a prank.
Then, there is the sadness of Adrian Wojnarowski opening up about the experience at Chris Mortensen’s funeral in Arkansas. Mortensen was a pioneer as a reporter at ESPN and before and was well-loved by his peers. It’s clear that the lack of a widespread presence in support got to Woj in a very deep way.
The “job isn’t everything” mantra is an important lesson for anyone in any walk of life to learn. It doesn’t matter if you’re being paid millions to break NBA news for ESPN or working a 9-to-5 somewhere. But Adrian Wojnarowski’s final words in this paragraph are the most striking.
“And it’s also, like, nobody gives a s—. Nobody remembers [breaking stories] in the end. It’s just vapor.”
It’s just vapor.
Did anyone actually keep score of how many scoops Woj broke versus Shams? Although “Woj Bomb” might have trended a lot on social media, does one actually come to the top of your mind as the definitive story that he broke? Are our lives fundamentally different if one reporter beat another by seven minutes about a contract or MRI result versus the days when it would appear in the newspaper the next morning? Maybe it’s fitting that the final “Woj Bomb” was the mundane news of a contract extension for Isaac Okoro of the Cleveland Cavaliers, not an earth-shaking announcement.
Nobody shaped or was shaped by modern sports media quite like Adrian Wojnarowski. And perhaps his own words paint the picture best that he leaves behind a complicated legacy. If the most successful insider of all time doesn’t see true value in the hours upon hours that he poured into getting scoops… then why should anyone else?
Yes, for a moment of clarity, we are talking about breaking sports news here. This is not J. Robert Oppenheimer being the destroyer of worlds. But if Woj is questioning the meaning of it all, then it should lead all of us to at least ponder what he is pondering.
Adrian Wojnarowski was paid millions of dollars by ESPN, amassed millions of followers, and had people leaning on the edge of their seats whenever the next notification would pop up.
And yet, in the end, it obviously left him feeling unfulfilled.
Will this admission cause anyone in the sports media to rethink the value of insiderdom? Do we really need it? Or has the constant drip of breaking news, no matter how big or how small, become an addiction that we just can’t quit?
Maybe Woj knows the answer to those questions, and that’s why he chose to walk away while at the top of his profession.
