ESPN suspends Adrian Wojnarowski without pay for ‘F–k you’ email to Missouri senator

soxhop411

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Woj’s F-bomb has led to an unpaid suspension, The Post has learned.

ESPN has scrapped NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski’s trip to Orlando this week to report from the NBA bubble, according to sources, after he responded to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) with an email that read “F–k you.”

Hawley had initiated the exchange by sending a mass letter criticizing NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s relationship with China.

ESPN declined comment, though their actions will likely become obvious this week when the ultra-prominent Wojnarowski is not on the air. The end point of Wojnarowski’s suspension, if that has been defined, is not yet known.
Some NBA players and ESPN personnel have come to Wojnarowski’s defense. The Clippers’ Lou Williams tweeted “Aye #Freewoj man,” adding two crying laughing emojis. Williams’ teammate, Patrick Beverly followed the tweet with, “Till it’s backwards” and two prayer emojis.

ESPN’s Maria Taylor tweeted her support of Wojnarowski earlier, saying she would always stand with him.
https://nypost.com/2020/07/12/espn-suspends-woj-for-f-k-you-email-to-missouri-senator/View: https://mobile.twitter.com/eneskanter/status/1282158513171685377

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/bemore27/status/1282165715936706560

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/sdinwiddie_25/status/1282170297085497344

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/isaiahthomas/status/1282165420808519681

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/atolliver44/status/1282164774290284544

https://mobile.twitter.com/mranthonymorrow/status/1282156752893607937
Litterally NBA Player after NBA player is tweeting their support of Woj. He now probably has more players willing to be sources than he did less than a week ago.
#Freewoj is also trending as the #2 topic worldwide.

and honestly. ESPN needs WOJ more than Woj needs ESPN. he could start his only premium news site and would make more money than ESPN pays him.
 
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Papelbon's Poutine

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It’s fifth mashed in with a bunch of ufc tags and barely clinging to that. I don’t follow any nba players, you got anyone bigger than the guys you have cited? Not quite murderers row. Don’t get me wrong, I whole heartedly back Woj for his right to respond however he wants, but I’m not sure this exactly makes him a champion of the nba elite.
 

soxhop411

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It’s fifth mashed in with a bunch of ufc tags and barely clinging to that. I don’t follow any nba players, you got anyone bigger than the guys you have cited? Not quite murderers row. Don’t get me wrong, I whole heartedly back Woj for his right to respond however he wants, but I’m not sure this exactly makes him a champion of the nba elite.
Ah. Looks like it changed. It was around 2-3 about an hour ago.

re: players.The news broke like at 12:00 AM eastern. I assume we get more #freewoj tweets from players in the morning either when they see it, or to Maximize their reach when most of the country is awake.
 

scottyno

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Dec 7, 2008
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When you work for a major media network you don't get to tell a US Senator fuck you from a work email account, he's probably lucky he's as high profile as he is that they don't want to fire him. Especially when the Senator was at least partially right, even if he was saying it in bad faith.
 

Marceline

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When you work for a major media network you don't get to tell a US Senator fuck you from a work email account, he's probably lucky he's as high profile as he is that they don't want to fire him. Especially when the Senator was at least partially right, even if he was saying it in bad faith.
Sending it from his work email was a mistake and it's hard to argue with the suspension after that, even if I agree with the sentiment. If I sent something like that from my work email, I'd probably get fired.
 

tmracht

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Sending it from his work email was a mistake and it's hard to argue with the suspension after that, even if I agree with the sentiment. If I sent something like that from my work email, I'd probably get fired.
Yep if it was that was me from my work email I'm gone in a heartbeat and I'm not exactly easily replaceable at my company. But still #freewoj.
 

Patriot_Reign

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Good for Woj for standing up to that fascist fucker who's entirely acting in bad faith. Fuck ESPN (I mean, as always?) for cowtowing to this kind of shit from Hawley.
Right. China violates human rights on a massive scale, yet you won't hear a peep about it from the NBA or ESPN as China's a billion dollar partner.
They should rightfully be called out on their bullshit.
 

mauf

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Right. China violates human rights on a massive scale, yet you won't hear a peep about it from the NBA or ESPN as China's a billion dollar partner.
They should rightfully be called out on their bullshit.
If you don’t understand why the NBA is willing to offend some of their customers and sponsors by supporting BLM, but is more ambivalent about doing so over human rights in China, I don’t know what to tell you.

It’s almost like some white people (not necessarily you) think people of color shouldn’t have the same right that we do to care more passionately about issues that directly impact them.
 

cromulence

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Right. China violates human rights on a massive scale, yet you won't hear a peep about it from the NBA or ESPN as China's a billion dollar partner.
They should rightfully be called out on their bullshit.
I'd care more about this if I thought that a single NBA player actually wanted to have some kind of anti-China (or pro-Hong Kong) message on their jerseys and weren't allowed to by the NBA. Pretty sure that's not the case, though.
 

cornwalls@6

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You're a very experienced, very good, professional communicator WoJo, working for a major, high profile media company. Find a better way to express your completely legitimate and correct disagreements with this idiot senator, than "fuck you". Particularly on company letterhead. Hot take backfire. I've got a million issues with the 4 letter network, but I can't really criticize them for the suspension. Though by no means would this ever be a firing offense, IMO.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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Right. China violates human rights on a massive scale, yet you won't hear a peep about it from the NBA or ESPN as China's a billion dollar partner.
They should rightfully be called out on their bullshit.
I'll take Hawley serious when he starts lambasting Anheuser-Busch for selling Bud Light in China, or excoriating them for not putting pro-Hong Kong messages on their bottles. Until then, he's a hack who wants to score some cheap political points by going after a sport that prominently features African Americans and doesn't support his politics.
 

jsinger121

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I'll take Hawley serious when he starts lambasting Anheuser-Busch for selling Bud Light in China, or excoriating them for not putting pro-Hong Kong messages on their bottles. Until then, he's a hack who wants to score some cheap political points by going after a sport that prominently features African Americans and doesn't support his politics.
Your argument would hold a little more water if AB was an American company still which it isn’t. It’s owned by InBev which is based in Belgium so if InBev want to distribute Budlight to China I don’t think the AB North American offices have much say in it.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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Your argument would hold a little more water if AB was an American company still which it isn’t. It’s owned by InBev which is based in Belgium so if InBev want to distribute Budlight to China I don’t think the AB North American offices have much say in it.
They don't have a massive presence in Missouri still?
https://www.anheuser-busch.com/about/breweries-and-tours/st-louis-mo.html
But the specific company is irrelevant. Every business of a certain size does business with China, is reliant on China for supply chain, or is otherwise connected economically to China. Why is a US Senator targeting this business, the NBA, specifically?
 

CaptainLaddie

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where the darn libs live

johnmd20

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Josh Hawley is full of shit and all he does is write disingenuous bills about free speech online. None of which make any logical sense and he's generally in pursuit of headlines and never in pursuit of helping the world. Of course he'll play the victim when it's convenient. But Woj is the hero of this story. It sucks that ESPN felt the need to give up on Woj here. Hawley deserves worse than what Woj said.
 

Vinho Tinto

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I'd care more about this if I thought that a single NBA player actually wanted to have some kind of anti-China (or pro-Hong Kong) message on their jerseys and weren't allowed to by the NBA. Pretty sure that's not the case, though.
Last fall, when Darryl Morey criticized China’s handling of Hong Kong, he was quickly admonished by players like LeBron James and reportedly had put his job in jeopardy.

I don’t think this is a hot subject for players, but besides someone like Enes Kanter, who in the league saw this happen and would still be willing to publicly criticize the PRC?
 

InstaFace

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Last fall, when Darryl Morey criticized China’s handling of Hong Kong, he was quickly admonished by players like LeBron James and reportedly had put his job in jeopardy.

I don’t think this is a hot subject for players, but besides someone like Enes Kanter, who in the league saw this happen and would still be willing to publicly criticize the PRC?
There's no doubt that the NBA's willingness, even eagerness, to have its athletes speak out on social and political issues and be leaders for progressive causes, stops with (and perhaps only with) criticizing China's government. It's their third rail. Talk about anything domestic. Heck, talk about anything international, as long as it's not China / Hong Kong. They need China more than China needs them, and they make a surprising fraction of their money off Chinese TV rights - in fact the NBA is the #1 sports league in China by following / viewership, ahead of even the Premier League.

Hawley is, sadly, not wrong that the NBA are hypocrites on this particular issue (or at least, have limits to their tolerance / progressivism). He's just cherry-picking to be an asshole because he doesn't like them publicly supporting progressive ideas of any kind, particularly domestically, which makes him a hypocrite. I just wonder who he thinks he's getting incremental votes from by rabble-rousing on this.
 

soxhop411

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It’s fifth mashed in with a bunch of ufc tags and barely clinging to that. I don’t follow any nba players, you got anyone bigger than the guys you have cited? Not quite murderers row. Don’t get me wrong, I whole heartedly back Woj for his right to respond however he wants, but I’m not sure this exactly makes him a champion of the nba elite.
Well. Lebron who has had friction with Woj In the past just tweeted #freewoj
View: https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1282430987272691713
 

BigJimEd

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Josh Hawley is full of shit and all he does is write disingenuous bills about free speech online. None of which make any logical sense and he's generally in pursuit of headlines and never in pursuit of helping the world. Of course he'll play the victim when it's convenient. But Woj is the hero of this story. It sucks that ESPN felt the need to give up on Woj here. Hawley deserves worse than what Woj said.
No he's not the hero. There is no hero.
As you stated, Hawley is in search of headlines and Woj just got him more headlines.

Woj is supposed to be a professional and he comes back with FU. Suspension is fair.
 

johnmd20

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No he's not the hero. There is no hero.
As you stated, Hawley is in search of headlines and Woj just got him more headlines.

Woj is supposed to be a professional and he comes back with FU. Suspension is fair.
Yeah, you're right. Woj did give him the headlines. I just think Hawley is never doing anything(literally not a single thing) in good faith, it's all performative, so when someone tells him to fuck off, it's generally the right response. But in this instance, it gave Hawley what he wants. So fail.
 

Was (Not Wasdin)

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Doc Rivers fires back at Hawley

https://sports.yahoo.com/doc-rivers-challenges-sen-josh-140045508.html
“I mean, we have a senator that Tweets at Woj yesterday just because he was talking about what we were going to put on the back of our jersey,” Rivers said from the NBA Orlando restart on a conference call with reporters. “And they always try to turn it into the military or the police. There’s no league that does more for the military than the NBA.
“But how that about that Senator? I’ll make a challenge: We will do things for the troops as long as he acknowledges Black Lives Matter. I think that would be really cool for him to do."
/QUOTE]
 

scottyno

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funny how doc and the author patting him on the back ignore the china part, wonder why
 

kfoss99

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This whole incident made be think up a joke that is so simple, I can't imagine it hasn't been done:
Senator: All Lives Matter should be on NBA Jerseys.
Woj: F*ck Off!
Senator: That's impolite.
Woj: Oh, sorry. Please, f*ck off.
 

Ed Hillel

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funny how doc and the author patting him on the back ignore the china part, wonder why
Because it’s not the real reason Hawley is critical of the NBA. Plenty of big businesses that Hawley supports or support him deal with China in some capacity, some significantly so. He singled out this one for a reason.