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Dolan bragged that his PR department kept dossiers on journalists; other reporting showed that their conversations were monitored by Dolan’s minions. Adrian Wojnarowski, then the dean of the NBA press corps, was tailed inside the Garden, says one source with direct knowledge of the matter. (Wojnarowski declined to comment.) Another prominent basketball reporter shared with WIRED their concerns about connecting their phone to MSG's Wi-Fi network; maybe the Garden's staff could access the data inside.
Anderson did. Not personally, but he knew who Adrian Wojnarowski was. Everyone in sports media knew who Wojnarowski was by then. He was the Yahoo Sports NBA reporter whose Twitter feed had become the most valuable real estate in sports media, a man who could end a news cycle and start a new one in the space of a single tweet. Ben Smith was fixated on him. He spent the next month, Anderson recalled on a recent episode of The Ringer’s The Press Box, trying to get Anderson to broker contact and find a way to bring Woj into the BuzzFeed universe. The proposal, as Anderson understood it, was that Woj wouldn’t even have to write. He could just tweet. They were trying to figure out a way to harness the Twitter platform so he could keep breaking news the way he’d been, and have it drive traffic to BuzzFeed News.
Woj talked to them. He never came in for a meeting. Nothing materialized. But Anderson remembered what the episode revealed about his boss, and about the moment. “I was like, this is the only time that Ben Smith has been really interested in any sport story, any aspect of sports coverage,” he recalled. “He only cares about breaking the news.”
In his previous job, Wojnarowski dealt with NBA stars, owners and super agents. The controversy at St. Bonaventure landed him in a public relations battle with a local news outlet called the Olean Star and a poster on X known as “Colonel Nicholson,” a self-identified St. Bonaventure alum who’s been posting leaks from the athletic department. None of this is quite what Wojnarowski had in mind when he walked away from a $7.3 million salary at ESPN to make $75,000 a year as the GM at his alma mater. It seemed like an act of benevolence, a big-name sports reporter giving his time and money to help the Bonnies stay afloat in the new era of player compensation.
That’s not so surprising: In a place like Olean, it’s hard to snoop around unnoticed. Wojnarowski, aware The Athletic had spoken to some of his critics, wanted to set the record straight. People are entitled to their own opinions, he said many times, but they’re not entitled to their own facts. “It just comes with the territory,” Wojnarowski said during the interview in his office. “I’m OK with it. I really am. I had a public job before at ESPN. Sometimes in that position, things become …” His voice trailed off. “If you don’t like it, then go sit on a beach chair somewhere and no one will bother you,” he continued. “I might do that here at some point.”
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Division I coaches saw Grahovac’s junior college film and started calling Webster about his 23-year-old freshman big man. Here was Wojnarowski, a GM who easily could have coasted on his famous last name, recruiting Grahovac with the relentless drive of a reporter chasing a big scoop. “Woj worked his ass off and just kind of outworked everyone else who was trying to recruit Joe,” Webster said. Grahovac signed with the Bonnies on a six-figure NIL deal funded in part through outside endorsements. Wojnarowski was able to parlay Grahovac’s unique story into marketing opportunities and media exposure, including a story in Slam magazine and a video posted by the YouTube channel BallerTV in which Wojnarowski called Grahovac “as important a recruit as we’ve had in years.”
Schmidt initially welcomed Wojnarowski, as did most people at St. Bonaventure. The relationship between the two men, once collaborative, grew “frayed” in the final months of Schmidt’s tenure, athletic director Bob Beretta said. “You know, I think there was a misalignment there,” Beretta added. “As an athletic director, I’m responsible for all of it. In retrospect, maybe I could have done more to make sure there was better alignment.”
Schmidt earned $1.6 million this season, about the same as St. Bonaventure’s entire roster. Wojnarowski and others at the school believed that ratio needed to change, with less money going to the head coach and more going to players. With Schmidt, 63, approaching the final year of his contract, Beretta said he met with the coach in February and laid out options to restructure the program’s financial model. “We talked about several scenarios, and I encouraged him to come back with other options if he wanted to consider,” Beretta said. “He notified us two weeks later that he had chosen to retire.”
The Bartlett regulars include local business owners, season ticket holders, guys you might find on a boat in nearby Cuba Lake. In a county that voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by a 2-to-1 margin in 2024, the Bartlett crowd is politically mixed but leans to the center-right. Some of the club’s regulars said Wojnarowski gave them the cold shoulder, perhaps because of differing political views. That perception stems in part from a 2020 incident, when Wojnarowski apologized and served a two-week suspension at ESPN for sending Republican Sen. Josh Hawley a two-word email that read, “F— you.” “All the locals get the sense that he doesn’t want to be associated with them if he doesn’t have the same political bent as them,” said Firkel, one of the Bartlett regulars. “Fair or not, that is a general feeling through the community, that maybe you look down on people for being a bunch of MAGA Republicans.”
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Over the many years of the HoopsHype Rumors page, thousands of reporters have seen their work featured on it. If you're a frequent reader, you know some of them appear on the site on a quasi-daily basis, with Shams Charania being the most obvious example these days. While the ESPN reporter is the dominant force in the NBA scoop business right now, he still trails former mentor Adrian Wojnarowski by a fair amount in all-time HoopsHype Rumors mentions, as you can see in this new tool.
On “The Program with Woj,” host Adrian Wojnarowski interviewed Somalia Men’s National Basketball Team coach Dalmar Ali to learn more about his experience as the new leader of the Somalian National Team. Ali credited former Raptors exec Masai Ujiri for inspiring him to use a career in basketball for the greater good. “Ujiri is the reason why I really found that this orange ball that we hold every day can really change someone’s life,” Ali said. “... I look at him as one of us because not only as a Torontonian, but he’s from the continent of Africa. ... To see him be passionate about this thing and try to show that people that no matter where you’re from in the world, you can be successful ... I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to use this orange ball and I’m going to change people’s lives with it.’”
The St. Bonaventure men's basketball program will host its first pro day on Saturday, Oct. 11, at the National Basketball Players Association training facility in midtown Manhattan. The historic event will be the first-ever pro day hosted by a team from a mid-major conference, as well as the first collegiate pro day at an off-campus site. "The first Bonnies Pro Day is a tremendous opportunity for NBA and G League front office executives to scout our players in a competitive practice and workout environment," St. Bonaventure general manager Adrian Wojnarowski said. "Professional evaluation is a long process and our unparalleled relationships with the league's decision-makers allows St. Bonaventure's players to be front-and-center in the eyes and minds of organizations in a way few, if any, mid-major collegiate programs are able. To have the Pro Day in midtown Manhattan at a world-class facility like the National Basketball Players Association makes it an even more ideal setting for the NBA and the Bonnies come together."
The St. Bonaventure men's basketball program will host its first pro day on Saturday, Oct. 11, at the National Basketball Players Association training facility in midtown Manhattan. The historic event will be the first-ever pro day hosted by a team from a mid-major conference, as well as the first collegiate pro day at an off-campus site. "The first Bonnies Pro Day is a tremendous opportunity for NBA and G League front office executives to scout our players in a competitive practice and workout environment," St. Bonaventure general manager Adrian Wojnarowski said.