At 2:30pm Eastern time on August 8th, Chams Charania posted a breaking news story about KD’s ultimatum.
So naturally, the entire sports media exploded, and they all wanted to get their takes out.
That is everyone except ESPN. The largest sports news outlet in the world. The ones that are always first in this neverending race to share info.
They didn’t talk about it, nor mentioned it on their social media platforms for almost 6 hours.
Finally at 8:23, a story comes out on ESPN.com with a suspiciously boring title.
Joe Tsai voices support for the front office and coaches in the wake of Kevin Durant's trade demands. No ultimatum, no mention of Durant forcing the owner to pick between him and Sean Marks and Steve Nash, none of that. As if they don’t even want you to see this info.
Now, why would they do that?
The answer to this question will also expose just how much power Adrian Wojnarowski has at ESPN, and some of his dark secrets of the way he operates.
Buckle up for this Woj Bomb. What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
To understand how Adrian single handedly stopped the entire ESPN network from talking about breaking news for like half a day, I need to show you just how much power he has had for a long time.
Woj earned the respect of the NBA world through his sharp columns, providing a different angle on things. But what made him a superstar is how he cultivated connections and relationships with agents and front office members.
He would call and text them not just for inside scoops, but to genuinely ask how they’re doing, family talks, all of that. This made a lot of people into his sources.
Even early on, Wojnarowski noticed the San Antonio franchise as one that produces a ton of talent that move on to become coaches or front office members of teams around the league.
So he focused on developing relationships with people around this organization.
Just take a look at the Spurs mafia stemming from Pop. These are all high profile people scattered at about a third of the teams in the league. Hey there’s Sean Marks. We’ll get back to him later.
This connection with the Spurs franchise along with the relationships that Woj has with people signed to the same agency as him, which is the CAA, means that he has access to virtually any team in the league.
The ones who consistently give him valuable info, get a favorable treatment in his columns and tweets. The ones who ghost him however get blasted by Adrian. Just ask Lebron James.
The King and his agent Rich Paul, already had their guy in the media who they worked with and pushed their narrative through.
A reporter who went to the same school as Lebron and followed him all throughout his Cleveland and Miami days. That reporter is Brian Windhorst.
So every attempt from Woj to get to James and his camp got rejected.
Adrian would then go on a revenge tour writing a ton of pieces throughout the years criticizing Lebron for failing to deliver in the clutch, his ego and attitude during the 2004 Olympics, being soft, and even an All Star Game performance.
In 2007 James literally dragged this team all the way to the finals. To this day one of his greatest accomplishments. Despite clearly being overmatch, and despite Lebron’s heroics during the entire season, Woj wrote this during the finals:
“We are witnesses, all right. We are witnesses to the truth that James is trailing Dwyane Wade as the sport's best young superstar, a gap that he didn't close in these finals.”
Then, between 2008 and 2010 Woj wrote 10 columns about Lebron’s free agency mentioning different possibilities and teams, based on no real information.
Just look at this: In 08 he wrote that the Detroit Pistons were the favorites to get James at the end of his contract which was 2 years later. This was the most ridiculous statement, although he consistently had sloppy and uninformed takes about this. Just a week before the king chose Miami, Adrian wrote that “the Chicago Bulls are still the team to beat, with Cleveland a close second and New Jersey the looming wild card”.
This is without a doubt the most incorrect reporting on a consistent basis in his career.
But let’s get back to that Detroit Pistons text to show you what happens when people do feed him some info.
This entire piece is using James to add even more flashiness on the praises that Woj is sending towards Joe Dumars the GM at the time.
Despite the fact that the Allen Iverson trade was a disaster, and Detroit transformed from a conference finals team to reaching the bottom of the east - mainly due to a series of horrible decisions by Dumars, Woj would never write a single word criticizing him.
Instead, he chose words like: Slowly, surely, Dumars is regenerating the Pistons again.
When this went live, Detroit finished 39-43 and the season after they went 27-55. Then 30-52, 25-41, 29-53. You get the point.
23 сен 2024
