There has long been a belief among some in NBA media circles that when ESPN hired Adrian Wojnarowski, the vaunted insider brought a hit list with him that he had the Worldwide Leader carry out before his arrival.
From longtime ESPNer Marc Stein to Golden State Warriors beat reporter Ethan Strauss to ESPN NBA editor Henry Abbott, there are some clear signs that their dismissal from the network amid a wider round of layoffs in 2017 came at the behest of the man known as Woj.
Back then, Deadspin reporter Kevin Draper even penned an extensive report connecting all the dots. Draper even cited an industry source saying that Wojnarowski “humiliated” Stein and reported that ESPN talent represented by Wojnarowski’s CAA were growing frustrated with the agency over how it treated Stein, also a CAA client.
As the years have gone on, many of these same laid-off former ESPN NBA staffers have made no secret of their disdain for Wojnarowski. Once, former Sports Nation regular Amin El-Hassan accused Wojnarowski of “putting a foot on” the careers of Black reporters by taking credit for their work. Abbott accused Wojnarowski of “kissing the a**” of the powerful and “begging for scraps” to do his job.
In an appearance on the Marchand Sports Media podcast this week, Wojnarowski insisted he spent no more than “7 or 8 seconds” discussing current ESPN talent when he was hired to lead the NBA reporting team in 2017. However, Wojnarowski conspicuously refused to state Stein’s name in his response.
“I remember with ESPN and my conversations before I came, maybe about 7 or 8 seconds about the current staff,” Wojnarowski said. “(Former ESPN EVP John Kosner) asked me what my relationship was with who you mentioned was the NBA insider at ESPN at the time. I said I don’t have a relationship with him; we’ve been competitors, but I’m sure we would get along great working together. And he said, ‘OK.’ That was it. That was the only conversation we ever had, and they made decisions.”
Wojnarowski argues the ESPN NBA layoffs were simply about redundancies. ESPN brought in nearly his entire team from Yahoo when it hired him. Recall that 2017 also saw the most significant round of cuts, as ESPN has lost cable subscribers over the past decade. Beyond Stein and other NBA writers, the company also moved on from icons like John Clayton and Ed Werder.
Any argument that he was waving a wand that decided the futures of ESPN’s existing NBA staff is “not based in fact,” Wojnarowski said.
“I knew what the truth was, people at ESPN knew what the truth was,” he added. “There’s going to be people trying to piece together and reach and make it something that it was not. But I can’t control that.”
However, Wojnarowski also mentioned that ESPN “had not been very successful” breaking NBA news in years before his arrival. That, plus his reference to Stein as “the NBA insider at ESPN at the time,” would seem to indicate that even if Adrian Wojnarowski did not force Stein’s dismissal, he clearly harbors lingering resentments toward his longtime rival.