Don’t expect any Woj Bombs to go off during the NBA Draft next week.
In what has become a draft staple, NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski has annually tipped teams’ picks before they’ve been announced at the event.
But those looking to get the inside scoop before the picks are announced from the podium at Barclays Center this year will be disappointed.
Wojnarowski told Ryen Russillo of The Ringer on Thursday that he would not be doing that this time around, and that there was no longer much value in tweeting the picks ahead of the ESPN broadcast.
The famed NBA insider, who first made his mark with Yahoo Sports before joining ESPN in 2017, admitted that getting the tweets out took away from what he was able to contribute on the broadcast.
“Going from Yahoo to ESPN and sort of see what the responsibility is on the broadcast, and feeling like I need to be more fully engaged in the show,” Wojnarowski said. “I’m not doing the picks this year. Now that doesn’t mean…yeah the top of the draft if all of a sudden something weird is happening at (picks) two or three, yes.
“But the pick-by-pick, I don’t think it has value anymore for me or for ESPN.”
Insiders sharing picks ahead of time has become a part of sports coverage beyond just the NBA, but Wojnarowski said he felt his time would be better served to focus elsewhere.
“I created the Twitter account the day of the draft, I think it’s 2009,” he said. “I think it’s just I had all this information that I was getting in real time and I’m like by the time you put it up on the site it’s a vapor. I said hey, Twitter, this is a place for it.
“But I think now for me it’s important to stay on top of the trades and the movement, and be able to do a little more storytelling of what’s going on on the board in real-time at the draft.
“Instead of having my head buried trying to get New Orleans pick at 14 that obviously is going to be out momentarily on the show.”
The NBA Draft begins next Thursday at 8 p.m. in Brooklyn.