The student has finally become the master! Shams Charania, once a high school boy who covered the Chicago Bulls on ChicagoNow is now the hoops community’s most sought-after news breaker. With one of the best retiring from the business, who also happens to be his ‘mentor’, the time has come for Shams to take over the NBA news-breaking world. His rapid rise to the top of the sports journalism pyramid is defined by hard work, constant networking, and unrelenting passion for the game.

So don’t you want to know more about ESPN’s new acquisition? While we’re well-versed with his reporter-self, who is Shams, the person?

Shams Charania was born in Chicago, to Pakistani immigrant parents. He is one of the few sports journalists of Pakistani descent who has earned widespread recognition across the industry. Growing up in the Windy City, he was sure to have been lured into the world of basketball. Charania was passionate about the game from an early age and played for his middle school team. But it looked like just playing was not the way he would gain access to the Bulls’ practice sessions. 

Shams attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. It is the place where he discovered his flair for writing. He would do better in writing assignments than in math! “You’re an impressive writer,” his English teacher said. “I think you should try to give it a shot.”

New Trier News, his school paper, provided him his first opportunity to delve into the world of sports. But Shams Charania wasn’t satisfied. “It was an experience for me because when you’re a junior and senior in high school you’ve got parties going on, this activity, that activity,” Shams recollected. However, the young man’s priorities were already set.

He wanted to write about his obsession- the NBA. A high school kid with no experience started his professional journey with a Bulls blog on ChicagoNow, a local website. In school too, he recollects being engrossed in his phone refreshing Hoopshype and RealGM to get the latest updates. So, he began sending his work to these publications, hoping to strike some chords with them. 

Starting in his high-school days, Shams never let ‘age’ stop him follow his dream

While Shams might not have been the only teenager with this idea, there was something different about him. He had something that others didn’t. His inner drive and motivation were a notch above everyone else’s. “Probably from the first month or two, I got the sense that Shams was different. That he had a maturity and a way with people, a work ethic, and a clarity of how he wanted his career to look like,” Chris Reina, who was at RealGM, praised Shams. While he was getting praised by established players in the industry, his parents, like all South Asian parents, wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer, or any other respected professional! 

Shams Charania finished High School in 2012 and decided it was best for him to go to college in the Windy City, to not lose his valuable connections that he had made. He picked up Communications as his major at Loyola University in Chicago.

Little did he know the decision of staying in Chicago would lead him to his biggest interview. He got to interview Dwyane Wade, as a freshman in college, which is something people can only dream of!

Another major step that made Shams Charania the man he is today, was joining Twitter in 2010. It was the right step at the right time. Twitter blew up soon after. Shams was tweeting scoops from RealGM. He was breaking stories, giving out information which people desired they’d had access to first. But Shams was still hungry. He wanted to cover games.

While the Bulls thought an 18-year-old couldn’t be given the credentials, it was the Bucks who gave him the access to the bigger stage. The first game he ever covered was the playoff game in 2013 between the Heat and the Bucks. He followed Brandon Jennings to the parking lot to get his first story, after missing him in the locker room. “Whatever story I wanted to work on, I needed to go get it,” Charania said.

Shams was balancing college along with his passion. The news that truly announced him to the world, not just the industry giants, was the shocking trade of Bulls star Luol Deng. Imagine a 19-year-old delivering possibly the biggest scoop of the 2013-14 NBA season!

Now the aspiring beat reporter had the eyes of every major publication on him. Ultimately, Shams Charania decided to join Yahoo Sports, where Adrian Wojnawroski was the main man. Shams looked up to Woj, and he considered him the best in business. The latter even called his protégé, “the best young basketball reporter on the planet”. 

From being a Woj-team member to going head to head- Shams Charania’s illustrious career and salary as an NBA news breaker

At Yahoo, Shams had the opportunity to learn from the best and made his appearance in front of the camera for the first time. Yahoo started a separate division, called The Vertical, headed by Adrian Wojnarowski. They positioned themselves as a smaller, faster, nimbler alternative to ESPN.

Joining Yahoo brought him massive reach on Twitter. “Without Twitter, who knows where it would be? Twitter being there, being an option for me to utilize, that was a game changer.” Charania said, highlighting Twitter as an important stepping stone for him.

He finally graduated from college and now he could dedicate all his time to pursuing the thing he loved the most. But things at Yahoo were not the same. The company was being sold to Verizon, a deal finalized in the summer of 2017. Amidst this wave of uncertainty, his mentor Woj struck a deal with ESPN. Thus starting the battle for ‘the best NBA news breaker’.

The industry heavyweights who could not land Shams when he decided to join Yahoo hoped to steer him their way. Paul Fitchenbaum, who had his eyes on Charania from his time at Sports Illustrated, met him and convinced him to join The Athletic.

The Athletic planned to only be a written media house, leaving Shams to desire more camera time. The stars aligned, again, and Sinclair Television Group was setting up a new sports network, called Stadium. Guess who was on top of their recruitment list?

Shams Charania. By then, he had an excellent network with NBA insiders and that is the reason why both companies valued him so much. “That’s really the thing that attracted us to Shams, that he is in touch with the decision-makers around the league, and that translates into more enlightened stories for our readers,” said Fitchenbaum.

Charania joined Brett McMurphy and Jeff Goodman as one of the prominent faces of Stadium’s on-air, news-breaking team, which the network integrated with its live sports broadcasts and studio programs. Now, the stars have aligned perfectly again.

With Adrian Wojnarowski retiring from journalism, taking over as the GM of the basketball program at his alma mater St. Bonaventure, the NBA insider spot at ESPN is vacant. Who better than Woj’s protegee to replace him?

Shams Charania has already signed with ESPN to be their top NBA insider! Per Front Office Sports, he earned an estimated $3-4 million per year between his time at The Athletic and Stadium.

Where reports suggest that Woj took home $7 million during his time at ESPN. Although the exact figure isn’t known, Shams is expected to make something in between those figures at ESPN. He continues his way up in the industry. At 30, he is the biggest NBA news breaker and we’re here to witness his run. Let’s see what the future holds for him.