Shams Leads with Reporting & NBA Expertise
By James Moreau | 19 May, 2025

If it's happening in the NBA, Shams Charania likely reported it first. Shams became ESPN’s lead man in 2024 for all league news and transactions.

Shams Charania, 31, has solidified his position as the NBA’s premier insider, breaking league news for ESPN since last year. 

At this year’s trade deadline, he broke the biggest news of the 2024-25 season, the Lakers-Mavericks Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade, also viewed as one of the most surprising trades in NBA history – to the point that many believed his phone had been hacked upon reporting.

His work ethic during this was well-publicized, noting the 21 hours of screen time he spent in one day, while comparing his exhaustion to Jimmy Butler’s during the 2020 Finals.

Being ESPN’s Senior NBA Insider has increased not only his screen time, but his time-on-screen, regularly making appearances on SportsCenter, Get Up, and other NBA-specific shows of the network.

Charania’s frequent publishing of breaking news has garnered him nearly 3 million followers on X and 1.2 million on Instagram.

His recognizable persona within the broader basketball culture is reflected in his appearances in the popular NBA 2K25 video game. 

Charania’s salary is estimated to be between $3-4 million per year, in line with his compensation at previous employer, The Athletic and Stadium, where he worked for the six years prior to joining ESPN. 

Though, reportedly significantly lower than his predecessor, Adrian “Woj” Wojnarowski’s $7.3 million per year. 

Woj provided mentorship to Charania and hired him to work as a reporter at Yahoo in 2015, while he was still in college at Loyola Chicago, later graduating with 2017 BA concentrating in journalism.

During that time, he broke transactional news of high-profile players including Dwight Howard, DeMar DeRozan, and Jamal Crawford.

His editorial roots go even further back, writing 4,000 words per day covering the Bulls for a Chicago Tribune-owned site, ChicagoNow, before graduating high school.

Charania, the son of Pakistani immigrants, grew up in the northern Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Illinois.