Shams Charania on Wemby’s Greatness, Learning from Woj, and the New NBA Blueprint
The top NBA reporter sits down with Rich Kleiman to talk everything NBA and why he thinks he has the best job in the world.
When you think about the biggest NBA trade stories of the past decade, more often than not, a tweet from Shams Charaniais a part of the memory. Either you were scrolling through Twitter (now X) and came across one of his posts, or one of your friends frantically shared one of them in a group chat, followed by a bunch of emojis, a GIF, and wild exclamation marks. That's because, since he was hired by Adrian Wojnarowski— the former No. 1 go-to name in sports media — to work at Yahoo! Sportsin 2015, Charania has worked to become one of the most trusted voices in sports journalism.
Kyrie Irving 's blockbuster trade from the Cleveland Cavs to the Boston Celtics ; Dwight Howard 's unexpected move to the Atlanta Hawks ; DeMar DeRozan deciding to stay with the Toronto Raptors , and many more stories were first broken by Shams. After making a name for himself at Yahoo!, Charania decided to take his gifts to The Athletic, where he spread his wings even more and wound up breaking more than NBA news. In April of 2023, Charania, who up until that point had focused on professional basketball, scooped the entire NFL press corps when he tweeted out who would be the first pick in that year's draft .
But how did a basketball-crazed kid from Chicago turn into one of the biggest names in NBA media? To answer that question, Shams joined Rich Kleimanfor the season one finale of Network , where the two talked about how he dreamed about becoming a professional basketball player before he got cut from the team his sophomore year of high school, how he got his start in media, and just what goes into gaining the trust of the most powerful people in the NBA.
"I've been really trying to find a path in this for the last 15 years, and people might think it happened overnight," says Charania. "But it really happened early on when I was tracking down G League signings, European deals, 10-day contracts. I remember the first time I broke a 10-day contract or a minimum signing. My hands were just shaking as if I broke Luka being traded to the Lakers ."
He also goes into what it was like to have to compete against the guy who gave him his break and was considered by many to be "The Man" in NBA reporter circles — Woj. "You work together for two-plus years, and it's like that constant communication, and then you end up being on two ends of this, you know, platform," says Charania. "You end up at two different places. There's that natural competitiveness, and I think from that point there's obviously going to be different dynamics at play."
Be sure to catch this exclusive conversation between Shams and Kleiman across Boardroom and Yahoo Sports platforms.
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