When Chicago-area NBA fans see news that Shams Charania broke, they might not realize that he’s one of them.
He was born at Evanston Hospital. He and his family lived in Rogers Park, near Loyola’s campus. He grew up in Skokie and attended Old Orchard Junior High before switching to Mary Murphy School in Wilmette for eighth grade. That put him on a path to New Trier, where he began his rise to stardom.
“On Day 1 of freshman year, I was trying to play in the NBA,” Charania said. “But once you don’t make the team, it becomes about what’s next.”
Charania loved the NBA, and he loved to write. His sophomore English teacher, David Rhee, encouraged him to join the school newspaper. After he didn’t make the sophomore team, Charania took Rhee’s advice, becoming a sports editor and writer.
“That was the first moment for me where I started down this path,” he said.
“At the time, he was a rather shy student with a penchant for writing,” Rhee said. “It was easy to give him a nudge to get him to the next level by having him write what he cared about rather than what the teacher assigned. So I merely suggested he join the New Trier News. The rest is all his doing.”
Now, 30-year-old Charania, who still lives on the North Shore, is ESPN’s senior NBA insider. He took over for Adrian Wojnarowski, 55, who gave up being the network’s top NBA news breaker after seven years to become the general manager of the men’s basketball program at St. Bonaventure, his alma mater.
Wojnarowski had a profound effect on Charania, but Charania got the ball rolling himself. While working for the school paper, he began writing about the Bulls in 2010 for Chicago Now, a network of blogs under the Tribune’s purview available to anyone.
“Both areas were places where I could start having templates of work,” Charania said. “I didn’t have a writing voice; I really didn’t know the industry. So that allowed me to find my voice, get experience writing. I was probably writing 3,000-5,000 words a day sophomore, junior, senior year of high school.”
Chicago Now gave Charania the ability to send links to his stories to teachers and journalists from whom he sought advice. He also reached out to other websites in search of writing opportunities. One of them was RealGM.com, where executive editor Chris Reina was happy to oblige.
“We’re one of the first places for people who want a career in journalism where they can start getting credentials,” Reina said. “I had a chance to review his writing, and then speaking with him, I had the utmost confidence he would represent us professionally and do a great job.”
Charania began writing for Reina as a junior, then became a paid staff writer as a senior.
“I was posing like I was a beat writer, like I was about to do this deep-dive feature on a player,” Charania said. “I didn’t have access to this player, but it was like every day I was trying to figure out, if I am in this, how would I operate, how would I write. That’s kind of how my high school stint was.”
Reina wouldn’t take credit for Charania’s success, but he acknowledged offering a valuable piece of advice.
“I recommended he change his email address not to have his birth year,” Reina said. “It had 1994. I recommended he change that so when he was communicating with people, they wouldn’t know he’s 18, 19 years old. That’s the biggest thing I can take credit for.”
Charania continued at RealGM while attending Loyola, where he learned about broadcast journalism. He took a couple of classes at the school’s Water Tower Campus, receiving on-air training that came in handy. In 2018, one year after graduating, Charania was a sideline reporter for Turner Sports’ coverage of the Ramblers’ Final Four game against Michigan in San Antonio.
But covering the NBA didn’t always jive with school. He’d step out of class sometimes or, if necessary, not show up. He was either heading off to a game or meeting with a source. He wasn’t breaking the biggest stories in the league, covering G League signings, European deals and training-camp contracts. But they were big stories to him.
“I remember the first time I broke a 10-day contract,” Charania said of his scoop in 2013. “Shavlik Randolph going to the Boston Celtics. My hands were trembling. I was sweaty.”
To cover games, Charania had to drive to Milwaukee or Indianapolis because the Bulls wouldn’t give a high school or college student a credential. He didn’t blame them, but he made sure to take advantage of the opportunities the Bucks and Pacers generously provided, the most important being the chance to have face time with players.
The old Bradley Center in Milwaukee had a long walkway where Charania would camp out and wait for players heading to the team bus. He snagged some high-profile, one-on-one interviews that way. At the time, he wasn’t yet a dedicated news-breaker, so such access to players was what he provided to NBA content hounds.
That began to change. As Charania continued developing sources and becoming an insider, Wojnarowski noticed. In 2015, “Woj” was planning to launch The Vertical, a Yahoo website devoted to NBA coverage, and he identified Charania early to be a news-breaker for the platform.
“Adrian Wojnarowski was a mentor to him,” Reina said. “When [Charania] left RealGM to work with him, at that point, Adrian was the model for him how to build a career.”
Charania spent 2½ years working with Wojnarowski. Though he later competed with Wojnarowski for more than twice as long as The Athletic’s NBA insider, Charania is thankful for their relationship.
“I’m grateful to have been a part of that team at The Vertical and the opportunity that he gave me,” Charania said. “He paved the way. I’m forever grateful for the impact and the guidance that he had on me when we were together, how he helped bring me along as a young reporter.”
When Charania’s contracts with The Athletic, Stadium and FanDuel expired this summer, he became a free agent worthy of coverage from sports-media news-breakers. Having made his name nationally with Wojnarowski, it seemed appropriate that Charania would replace him at ESPN. It became official Oct. 7
“I felt at this point in my life ESPN was the perfect fit,” Charania said. “It was incredible timing this offseason because I had been in decision-making mode for quite some time. I am honored and grateful that there is a platform that is as relentless as I feel like I am.”
Charania’s incredible timing goes back farther than that. He burst on the scene at the start of the social-media age, and he grew in an era where insiders are coveted and transactions are currency. He began networking from the jump, and the respect and trust he built continues to pay off.
“He arrived at a perfect time with Twitter becoming popular,” Reina said. “Twitter was where people heard about news. The fact he was able to report these items and get awareness, one story led to the next story. Pretty soon, people knew that anything he reported was gold, you could trust it.”
“I view myself as someone that understands the audience very well,” Charania said. “I was the audience. I was obsessed over where is this player signing, where is this player getting traded to. I was always wondering those things when I was coming up in middle school, high school and college. Now fans crave that, and I definitely understand their passion.”
And his passion started here.