Many dream of being an NBA insider at ESPN, but Chris Broussard turned that opportunity down in 2016 when he left the worldwide leader to join Fox Sports. Broussard was being groomed as a newsbreaker for the network after nailing LeBron James’ free agency in 2010, but recently opened up about how he took a sharp turn with his career once he realized the insider game would take over his life.
In an interview on the House of Strauss podcast released Monday, Broussard explained the toll that breaking news had on his life and why he said no to the opportunity to be the next Adrian Wojnarowski.
“I just didn’t want that lifestyle. I got two daughters, I’m married, and I really wanted to of course work, and work hard, but have family time as well. I remember after that summer of 2010, after The Decision and all that, I went on vacation with my family … I always had been in touch with guys around the league, but now a lot of people were calling me and giving me information, or wanting to give me information,” Broussard said.
“And I was like, ‘I’m on vacation. I’m not trying to break a story necessarily right now.’ And it’s hard to say that because these are sources because you don’t want to tell them don’t call. You kind of need to break the news as they’re giving it to you. But I was just like, I’m not trying to do this. My life is about more than just being a sportswriter, and my family comes before my career.”
Broussard saw the massive opportunity before him when James hit free agency in 2010 and it became clear he could leave the Cleveland Cavaliers. So he worked nonstop that summer during the NBA offseason to stay on top of the biggest story he had ever covered.
“That was the story of the decade or even the century at that point … and since then, almost every summer has had big-time free agents that everybody follows. But at that point, it wasn’t a first, but the magnitude of it had not been seen before. So my thinking was, man, this is really a chance to separate myself,” Broussard explained.
“And so I was working around the clock for those three weeks or so, and it even got to the point where ESPN, because I was getting good information, was having me on almost all day. There was many days when I would go in to be on Mike & Mike in the morning in the 6 o’clock a.m. hour, and I would be at the studio in Bristol until like midnight.”
The more news he broke, the more valuable Broussard became to ESPN. But he didn’t want the role he suddenly had.
“That really did help my career a lot. Now the interesting thing is once I did well covering that story … ESPN started looking at me like, ‘this guy’s gonna be our Adam Schefter of the NBA,'” Broussard told host Ethan Strauss. “And I never wanted to be that. I worked around the clock for those three weeks, but I didn’t want to work around the clock for 350 days a year. Real talk. So they kind of viewed me in that role, I never said anything like, ‘hey I don’t want to do that.’ So I just kind of let it flow, and then they started looking at me to break all these stories … but I wasn’t working like a Woj or a Shams … and subsequently I wasn’t breaking news like they were.”
Broussard recalled missing a chance to break a big coaching hire after sleeping through a text from an agent when the hire was finalized. Around this point in the early 2010s, Broussard also saw how social media was creating an even greater demand for instant coverage than his bosses at ESPN had with James’ move to Miami.
“It really shifted with Twitter, and I give Woj and Schefter a lot of credit for how they capitalized on it,” Broussard explained. “I used to feel like when you broke a story, you had to have the substance of it. The why, the what happened, why was this decision made, and so on and so forth. And then with Twitter, it just became the transaction, this is the transaction that’s happening.”
Broussard said he shunned the relationships and constant communication that an insider must maintain to be a go-to contact on news. It did not feel authentic to him.
“You have to develop relationships and trust with people that could become sources. But again, I always felt like also I do need to remain objective. And I can’t just do somebody’s bidding to get certain stories,” Broussard added. “That can hurt you in this type of business, or atmosphere, the way it is now. So I’m glad to be out of it, believe me.”
Today, Broussard hosts First Things First alongside Kevin Wildes and Nick Wright. He moved up fairly quickly as a catch-all commentator at Fox Sports, starting as a guest and radio host before getting the full-time gig on FTF in 2021.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.