Every phrase Adrian Wojnarowski used to creatively leak NBA Draft picks

One of the more hilarious dynamics of the 2018 NBA Draft was seeing ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski break the news of picks. There had been reports that the NBA and many of its media partners agreed not to leak any of the selections to keep up the suspense, but for whatever reason, that didn’t end up panning out.

However, Wojnarowski tried his best to not actually report the picks by using a hilarious number of phrases to tie teams to players. You can see what he was trying to do, and the result was an impressive flexing of the thesaurus.

In honor of those tweets, here’s a list of every phrase Wojnarowski has used on Twitter to “not” break the news of these picks.

“locked in on selecting…”

“focused on selecting…”

“zeroing in on…”

“prefers…”

“focused on…”

“targeting…”

“cleared the way to choose…”

“locked in on…”

“determined to select…”

“fixated on…”

“zeroed in on…”

“have no plans to pass on…”

“are on…”

“are focused on…”

“has a laser on…”

“are unlikely to resist…”

“are enamored with…”

“is tantalized by…”

“locked on…”

“will select…”(finally a more literal one!)

“choosing” (okay it appears he’s giving up)

He’s doubled up a couple times there with some tweaks in tense, but it’s still an impressive effort. Check out the complete 2018 NBA Draft results here.