Yahoo’s Wojnarowski on cultivating sources, not caring about NBA Draft spoilers

Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski is one of the best beat reporters in sports media, breaking news constantly as he covers the NBA for Yahoo Sports and Fox Sports 1. In the wake of the NBA Draft last month, GQ ran a Q&A with Woj about how he does his job.

I liked Wojnarowski’s answer when GQ’s Clay Skipper asked him about tweeting out draft picks before they were announced by NBA commissioner Adam Silver, a practice that some fans don’t like. Spoilers!

The way I look at Twitter is this: I know people argue about, you should somehow defer to a television show. The draft is a ceremony. And the decision to draft the guy has already been made. So the news is already there. Would I wait for a team to announce they signed a free agent or announce they made a trade? No. My job is to break it. If I do that, what do they need me for? I don’t care about their television show. It’s a competitor. What do I care? I hope it complicates things. I don’t care. That’s their problem. Not mine.

He also offers a great tip to any reporter who hopes to get good information from sources at crucial times, such as, for an NBA reporter, draft night, the trading deadline or free-agent season:

This job, for me, it’s a 52-week-a-year job. It’s not about cramming. To me, it’s an ongoing conversation that you have to be willing to have for 52 weeks a year. You can’t just call people when you need something. And it’s a two-way street of sharing information. The work you do over the rest of the year sets you up to hopefully have success in these very intense periods.