Imagine having the entire professional basketball world at your fingertips. That dream is now a reality ... sort of.
Longtime NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski is selling nine iPhones in an auction, with all proceeds going to the St. Bonaventure men's basketball program, where Wojnarowski is now the general manager.
His iPhones, as well as numerous credentials to events such as the NBA Draft and NBA Finals, will be part of an auction run through Daps Bounty. The company, which launched Monday, has two main features.
The first is a demand-driven feature where fans and collectors can essentially make offers to athletes for either experiences or collectibles. Examples of these could stretch from making offers on game-worn jerseys to asking for a shoutout on Instagram.
“(It’s) a demand driven marketplace,” founder Jake Klores said, “which you can think of as reverse eBay.”
The second feature is personal auctions with notable figures, such as Wojnarowski selling his iPhones.
For Wojnarowski, it makes perfect sense, though this certainly wasn’t the plan years ago.
When it comes to tracking phone usage, Wojnarowski has quite the screen-time report, as he was the NBA’s preeminent news breaker for nearly two decades at ESPN and Yahoo Sports.
Between texts, calls, emails and social media, Wojnarowski went through his phones faster than the average person. But when it came time for a new phone, he was “negligent” about sending his old phone back in for a rebate.
Thus, a stack of old phones piled up in his home office. It wasn’t until he dropped his final Woj bomb in September, announcing his retirement from ESPN, when the idea of selling his phones materialized at the suggestion of his agents.
“I can't tell you, it was by great design that I held on to them,” Wojnarowski said. “Because if I was really smart about it, I would have kept my Blackberries around.”
One of the other reasons why Wojnarowski went through phones so quickly is that unlike many other news breakers in the industry, he didn’t use a second phone. He had a backup, as a precautionary measure, but seldom needed it.
“Adam (Schefter) was really adept at using two phones,” Wojnarowski said of ESPN's NFL reporter. “I was not adept at it. It always felt confusing to me.”
What wasn’t confusing was Wojnarowski's decision to retire from news-breaking.
After more than 30 years in journalism, Wojnarowski decided to move on in 2024, making his official announcement in September. Despite loving his career and the people he worked with, he hasn’t looked back for a second.
“I think I'm more present with people, whether it's my family, friends, the people I'm working with now,” Wojnarowski said.
“I can shut my phone off for this conversation and turn it back on. There's not going to be anything that I can't, you know, call somebody back on or deal with in an hour or two hours, where, in the previous job, your world could change a lot in one or two minutes. And there was a certain anxiety that you kind of felt like there was this anvil over you. You went to bed with it. You woke up with it.”
And in a way, those iPhones are a representation of that. And perhaps, not so ironically, their sale will go toward helping his new career, as the GM of his alma mater’s basketball program, which has kept his competitive fire going while also providing the structure to tackle the day on his own terms.
When the rest of the world was dealing with the repercussions of the seismic trade that sent Luka Dončić from the Mavericks to the Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis, it couldn’t have been less on Wojnarowski’s radar.
NBA general managers joked about what they would pay for Woj's phones if they still held all his old texts ???? pic.twitter.com/yzZzlZtaOd
— cllct (@cllctMedia) February 24, 2025
“I was going to bed and got a couple text messages from a couple people in the NBA. I looked. I saw it. I shut my phone off, and I went to sleep,” Wojnarowski said with a chuckle. “We had a big recruiting visit coming that I was planning ... and that was my focus.
“There'll be other big trades and free-agent signings and hirings and firings, and I'll be focused on my job.”
His new job is certainly an unwavering one. The world of college sports has been flipped on its head in recent years with the introduction of name, image and likeness and the transfer portal.
And trying to build an NCAA Tournament-caliber team with a student population of around 2,000 is no small feat. But Wojnarowski relishes the challenge and adores the institution he gets to do it with.
“I love it. I love the one thing that I didn't lose when I switched was my competitive nature,” Wojnarowski said. “You were tenacious at stories. Now, you're trying to be tenacious in recruiting and then also retaining the players you have, and then raising and putting in some sustainable mechanisms for NIL, which is vital. And so I've poured myself into that.”
The money made from selling his phones will go directly toward the Bonnies’ program, in an amount that will undoubtedly make a difference. However, Wojnarowski joked, there was certainly an opportunity to make a giant splash.
All nine phones will be wiped ahead of the sale, removing all previous calls, text messages and contacts.
One NBA GM told Wojnarowski jokingly all 30 teams in the league would get into a bidding war if all the information was still stored.
“St. Bonaventure could probably play in the Atlantic Division of the NBA,” Wojnarowski said. The Bonnies are currently in seventh place in the Atlantic 10 with a 19-9 overall record.
But information will, of course, be provided breaking down the notable details from each phone.
One example includes Woj’s iPhone XR, which was used to break the news of LeBron James signing with the Lakers and Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving moving to the Brooklyn Nets.
Buyers will also have the option of having the phones autographed with personalized inscriptions.
There will also be experiences auctioned off, such as a Facetime or a dinner with Wojnarowski.
Though, of note, bidders cannot purchase the phones as a bundle, as each phone will be sold individually.
“We think it's a super cool opportunity to sell each individual phone,” Klores said, “as it represents specific moments that, you know, touched most of the basketball fans across the world.”
Woj bombs often ignited Twitter storms globally.
Now, Wojnarowski’s timeline is almost entirely composed of St. Bonaventure basketball, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Bonaventure’s a special place for me,” Wojnarowski said. “I love being around our players and their families and trying to help them.”
Matt Liberman is a reporter and video producer for cllct.