One of the better known sports insiders is surprisingly calling it quits.
ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski said Wednesday that he is retiring from sports reporting, citing a desire to spend his time in more meaningful ways. It was announced soon after that he has accepted a position as general manager of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball program.
Wojnarowski, who joined ESPN from Yahoo! Sports in 2017, has been arguably the most prominent NBA reporter of the past decade — and arguably the most prominent insider across all of sports, rivaled by his ESPN colleague Adam Schefter. His apparent retirement comes at a time of significant flux in NBA media.
This coming season is the last of the current NBA media rights deals and there are two new broadcasters entering the picture starting in the 2025-26 season, NBC and Amazon. The two other major NBA insiders, Shams Charania of Stadium and Chris Haynes of TNT, have already exited their current roles to become free agents this season.
It was widely expected that Charania and Haynes would be battling for positions at one of the new NBA broadcasters, but Wojnarowski’s retirement opens up a vacancy at ESPN.
Wojnarowski was a significant hire for ESPN in 2017 and brought along several of his Yahoo! colleagues — crowding out some ESPN reporters like Marc Stein in the process — and had been a regular on the ESPN NBA Countdown pregame show. His departure is the first change to ESPN’s NBA lineup since the company restructured its executive teams this summer.
