ESPN hired Shams Charania as its next senior NBA insider on Monday, tapping the 30-year-old to succeed his mentor Adrian Wojnarowski, who announced his retirement from journalism last month.
“I am honored to join ESPN … I can’t wait to be part of an incredible group of colleagues at ESPN and serve the sports audience worldwide,” Charania said in a social media post.
According to the New York Post, which broke the news, Charania becomes the “youngest lead news-breaker in ESPN history.”
Charania joined Yahoo Sports early in his career, where he worked with Wojnarowski, a longtime sports columnist who by then had become the top news-breaker in the NBA. After Wojnarowski joined ESPN in 2017, he and Charania often went head-to-head for scoops.
Charania left Yahoo to work for The Athletic and Stadium, the former as a writer and the latter for broadcast appearances. He also created content for the sports gambling company FanDuel.
Pat McAfee, whose daily sports talk show appears on ESPN, had stumped for Charania as the obvious successor to Wojnarowski at the network.
Front Office Sports reported that ESPN considered moving Jeff Passan from Major League Baseball insider to the NBA and even thought about tasking Adam Schefter with being its lead insider in the NFL and NBA simultaneously.
Wojnarowski, 55, surprised the basketball world in September when he retired from ESPN and accepted a job as the general manager of men’s basketball at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure.
–Field Level Media