Today Adrian Wojnarowski sent his final Woj bomb to announce his retirement from ESPN, as well as covering the league. He’s moving on to become the new general manager of St. Bonaventure basketball. He’s been a massive part of the league and every NBA blog, and this one is no different. In honor of Woj, here are the biggest Woj bombs in Utah Jazz history.
The Rudy Gobert trade
Maybe it’s recency bias, but the Rudy Gobert trade was a colossal Woj bomb that rocked the Utah Jazz fan base. I was in the drive-thru at In-N-Out when this came out and I struggled to finish my order. The 5-10 minutes waiting to see what the haul was felt like days but when it finally dropped it was pure elation at the treasure trove of picks.
The Donovan Mitchell trade
After an entire summer of rumors between the Utah Jazz and the New York Knicks, we got this massive bomb that Mitchell was traded to… the Cleveland Cavaliers. Having seen posturing all summer long, this came as almost a relief knowing we wouldn’t deal with that drama any more. Sometimes Woj bombs can be healing!
The Deron Williams Trade
First, look at this amount of likes compared to the likes in the previous tweets. That alone is incredible. This might be the earliest of Woj bombs for Jazz fans and it was earth-shattering. But as big as this was, the one that preceded it was even bigger, even though the reach wasn’t quite the same.
The Jerry Sloan Retirement
Jerry Sloan’s surprise retirement Woj bomb was the biggest of bombs because of two things: the surprise of it and the emotional impact.
Jerry Sloan is as iconic to Jazz fans as any other figure in team history and this tweet changed the franchise forever. To this day the Jazz are working to fix the hurt that was caused on all fronts from this crazy era. It not only hurt but it was shocking to see the tough, hard-nosed Sloan throw in the towel. To have grown up watching Sloan and the golden era of Jazz basketball and then see it end like this was heartbreaking.
The Sloan retirement was the thing that led to the Williams trade which had a league-altering effect that we see even now. For the first time, a team didn’t let a player leave them hanging in free agency but took matters into their own hands by trading a player before that happened. In a way, these Woj bombs correlate with the one with Donovan Mitchell.
All that said, it’s the end of an incredible era with Woj. You had to have him on notifications to know when the big news would drop. He ruined draft night because we knew who was being drafted before the announcers on TV did. He created an entire ecosystem on Twitter that will never quite be the same. Now he leaves it to multiple predecessors that are all mimicking what he did. The true sign of a goat.etball soc
