Spears Leaving Globe for Yahoo! Sports

According to the Yahoo! Sports NBA twitter feed (@YahooSportsNBA), anyway.

This was posted at about 7:00 pm tonight:

YahooSportsNBA Free agency news doesn’t get any bigger than this for Yahoo! Sports:  The Boston Globe’s Marc Spears has joined our NBA staff.

And was followed by this a little while later:

YahooSportsNBA Just to clear up any confusion: Marc Spears is leaving the Globe and will be a full-time force at Yahoo! Sports.

Spears also posted the following note on his Twitter account (@SpearsNBA):

SpearsNBA thx 4 everythin globe! yahoo thx 4 welcoming me soon

With the Globe in the uncertain state that it is in, it makes sense for Spears to grab this opportunity with one of the rising sports staffs in the business.

Spears joined the Globe in 2007, just in time for the Celtics championship run in the 2007-08 season. His departure after two seasons on the NBA beat leaves a big hole in the Globe’s Celtics’ coverage. Frank Dell’Apa is currently the only writer assigned to the Celtics and the NBA. Shira Springer, who worked the Celtics beat for several years prior to Spears arrival is still on the staff, but has been rarely heard from since then.

Will the paper go outside their ranks and look for a “name” replacement for Spears? Will a “name” take the risk of  leaving a good job to come work for the Globe? With the Celtics looking to reload for another run at a championship this season, the situation bears watching.