Klapisch: Nobody beats The Woj
Former Record columnist has the biggest NBA scoops on the web.
The tape is rolling in The Vertical’s podcast room, which means Adrian Wojnarowski is firing on all professional cylinders. He is one part reporter, one part NBA savant, and whatever’s left over is swept into his limitless chops as an interviewer. On a rainy afternoon in January, NBA Hall of Famer Joe Dumars sits across from Wojnarowski and opens up about his career in the ‘80s, how and why the game has changed and why it’s so much fun to watch today.
It’s no small task to get an old-timer to admit the kids are bigger and better in 2017. But Wojnarowski works his magic on Dumars, who speaks candidly about how the NBA has “opened up” the floor and allowed for more creative playmaking. The studio clocks say the interview has lasted more than an hour, but Dumars rolls through one anecdote after another, almost as if in a trance.
“We could do this all day,” he says, only half-kidding.
The Vertical is where the NBA’s best and brightest tells their stories; it’s a twice-a-week podcast that rests atop The Vertical’s website. It’s technically part of the Yahoo monolith, but this is entirely Wojnarowski’s baby – the go-to portal for anyone who follows the NBA.
It’s not enough to say Wojnarowski covers the industry. He’s a media giant whose Q-rating towers over the likes of Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo. According to The Big Lead, a trendy, must-read blog, Wojnarowski ranked No. 4 among the nation’s top 30 sports media celebrities, ahead of Dan Patrick, Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth, Bill Simmons and Peter King. Even Joe Buck and Charles Barkley are no match.
But good luck trying to convince Wojnarowski he’s a star. Despite 1.5 million followers on Twitter, he still thinks of himself as a news-gathering grunt, happy to be living with his family in Glen Rock. Most of Wojnarowski’s neighbors remember him from The Record, where he won numerous awards as a general sports columnist from 1996-2006.
Woj – as he’s known to colleagues and readers – admits to a nostalgic pull from the good old days of newsprint.
“I do miss knowing your audience; now it’s global,” he says. “There was something about the experience of seeing the paper on your front step in the morning, or going to the newsstand and seeing The Record there with The Ledger. And I remember when I first started in this business, seeing your byline, seeing your name in print. You never forget that.”
As much as he loved the paper, though, Wojnarowski had a vision of a digital future. He was approached by Yahoo to serve as an NBA columnist, an idea that appealed to him on several levels. First, basketball was always Woj’s greatest strength. More so than any other sport, he wrote authoritatively about the NBA during his years at The Record. Second, Woj compared the long-term trend lines of newspapers against the internet and realized it was a no-brainer.
“I always thought the business was headed towards specialization and not general columnists,” he says. “I grew up reading Mike Lupica, Mitch Albom and Bob Ryan. They were the stars but with the internet, being a generalist wasn’t as much of an advantage. (Yahoo) gave me the resources to get on planes and meet people, get in front of people.”
Wojnarowski hit the ground running with a sharp five-year plan. Instead of focusing on the league’s older executives, most of whom had yet to comprehend Yahoo’s reach, he planted seeds with assistant coaches and second-tier officials – the younger guys who knew where sports media was headed.
The result? Those 20 and 30-somethings have ascended to positions of power within the league. Woj has been close to them every step of the way. The dividend has been stunning. During its live-stream of the NBA draft last June, The Vertical drew 3.7 million total video views, reached more than 2.8 million unique viewers across all devices, and averaged 34 minutes of watch time per user.
Executives were tipping off Wojnarowski with their draft selections even before they were officially announced at the podium by league president Adam Silver. It’s a reporter’s dream to have that many sources.
The Vertical’s competitors could only shake their heads in awe.
“(Wojnarowski) was first on everything, infuriating the networks in the process,” says Steve Popper, The Record’s NBA columnist. “While some outlets are paring down, cutting staff, he hired writers and front office people to become not just the place to go to get news first but to get great stories about people in the league."
That’s the currency Woj values most – information. In a rapidly-changing media environment, where newspapers are gasping like fish on a hot dock, he says the appetite for news remains timeless.
“I learned in the New York market that you can’t just have an opinion, you have to have something else that others don’t,” Wojnarowski says. “It takes years to build that up in all the areas, but reporting is still the spine of everything we do (at The Vertical). That and being right. You can get 200-300 stories in a row, but if you get one wrong that’s the one they’ll talk about.”
Woj’s friends in the print industry say he hasn’t changed a bit. Beneath the fame, the prestige and, yes, the wealth, lies a fact-gathering maniac who never stops making phone calls or sending texts.
“Adrian left the comfort of a daily column, rolled up his sleeves and re-invented himself as the most dogged, most accurate and most meticulous reporter in the industry,” said New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro, a Hillsdale resident. “For years I've heard him offer advice to kids who only have stars in their eyes about columns and commentary and he would always tell them: never forget, you're a reporter first and foremost. And he lives that credo.”
Back at the Record, Wojnarowski’s legacy endures. He was succeeded by Ian O’Connor, who left for ESPN in 2010. The prestigious general column is now the domain of Tara Sullivan, an award-winner herself, who continues to look to Woj for inspiration.
“It is no lie to say there are many, many times when I’m doing my job that I think of Adrian and, to a similar extent Ian, and realize the standard I have to live up to,” Sullivan says. “I know I better be ready to bat cleanup in that lineup.”
It’s the kind of praise you hear on press row throughput the NBA, although Wojnarowski’s ethos applies to any sport, any medium. The Vertical is growing in part because the NBA is so popular. It’s a star and personality-driven sport whose fans are young and tech-savvy. But Woj is right; his empire rests upon a foundation of facts and breaking news and the willingness to obsessively hunt for it.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled over on Route 4 or 208 to tweet out a story,” Wojnarowski says. “Whenever I drive around (Bergen), I can point to the spots I’ve stopped so I could get something out there on Twitter.”
Woj pauses long enough to remember one Christmas Eve, attending Mass with his wife Amy and children, Ben and Annie. The family was about to walk through the doors of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Ridgewood when they realized someone was missing.
It was Woj.
He’d stopped to tweet out another exclusive: first dibs on the trade that sent Greivis Vazquez to New Orleans for Quincy Poindexter. It was a big deal in the NBA community, although not necessarily to Amy Wojnarowski.
“She was standing on the steps of the church, hands on her hips, like ‘Really? On Christmas?’” Woj says. There was no need to answer, of course, just a knowing smile between the two that said: “Yes. Really.”
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