The social media age of the NBA has made it so that reporters, analysts, and other media members play a bigger role in the landscape of the league than ever before. And no media member has emerged as a celebrity in that space the way that ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski has.
Wojnarowski — endearingly known simply as “Woj” — has been synonymous with NBA coverage ever since Twitter became the medium of choice for sports news. His “Woj Bombs” — breaking news dropped from seemingly nowhere, at any hour of the day — became as well known as many of the league’s prominent players. To be a devoted NBA fan in this era is to have Twitter notifications on for Woj at all times of the year, even if you don’t actively use the app.
No one has matched his level of success or fame in the NBA newsbreaking landscape. The closest is his one-time pupil, The Athletic’s Shams Charania. These days, Wojnarowski and Charania break a similar amount of news, though Charania often lacks the objectivity, journalistic integrity, and affable fatherly charm of Wojnarowski (though in full transparency, those first two categories have been in question for Woj, as well)…