Quite fittingly, Adrian Wojnarowski, a.k.a. Woj, the NBA insider reporter whose very nickname is synonymous with draft and free agency scoopage, saved his final “Woj bomb” for the surprise news about his own transfer. On Wednesday, he announced that he will leave ESPN and retire from journalism to become the general manager of the men’s basketball program at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure—a transition so utterly implausible on its face that the rumor mill instantly cascaded with hypotheses about his impending cancellation or illness. For a few hours, at least, the tireless scoop machine and genre-defining NBA reporter became the subject of the same intrigue he usually afforded others by breaking news of their professional migrations.

The significance of Woj’s own move could be gauged via the reaction in sports and media circles: the feverish texts, the outpouring of praise, the emergency pods. Woj’s ascent to uber-NBA insider at Yahoo! Sports and then ESPN—both under Jimmy Pitaro—tracked with the rise of the niche profession itself, as well as the technology that made distributing such micro-developments possible. In many ways, Woj set the gold standard for breaking news in the Twitter era, the kind of reporter for whom people set push notifications. Comparable reporters in the world of sports include ESPN’s own Adam Schefter for the NFL, as well as Fabrizio Romano for global soccer transfers; and more broadly, Maggie Haberman in the heat of a presidential campaign season, or Barak Ravid amid the roiling Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Woj, sharp-elbowed and mega-competitive and fully cognizant of the adrenaline-soaked mini-industry that he created, was in his own exalted class.