One of the biggest moves of the NBA offseason didn’t involve any of the 30 teams in the league, but instead saw Adrian Wojnarowski, the league’s most notable news-breaker and insider, suddenly retire to become the general manager of St. Bonaventure’s basketball program.
It was a shocking development that led to some major shuffling in the NBA media landscape, with ESPN hiring Woj’s former protege turned rival, Shams Charania, to fill the news-breaking void. Many wondered exactly why Woj would walk away from the most lucrative job in the NBA media space, but it was pretty clear based on his statement that he was burnt out on a job that is unforgiving and unrelenting on its time demands.
On Thursday, in a feature from Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix, Woj revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer during last season — learning of it minutes before doing a live TV hit. The good news is they caught it early and are simply managing and monitoring it for now, but it certainly shifted his perspective on what’s important. While he says it wasn’t the driving force behind his retirement, it did make him think differently about how he wants to spend his time.
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.”
Throughout the piece you can tell Woj is fully at peace and happy with his decision. Mannix references the Knicks trading for Karl-Anthony Towns, which was the first major league move after Woj’s retirement, and says a source text Woj days before and asked if he wanted intel, to which Woj replied, “Congratulations. But I don’t give a sh*t.”
