McAfee claims he lobbied for Shams to get Woj's old job: "Whatever god, universe you believe in, there is a prince who was promised"

Shams Charania announced on Monday that he will be joining ESPN as a Senior NBA Insider, replacing the recently retired Adrian Wojnarowski. The 30-year-old has been connected with The Athletic since 2018. Before that, he was an NBA insider for Yahoo Sports and somewhat became Woj's protege when they worked together there from 2015 to 2017.

Shortly after Shams' announcement, ESPN talk show host Pat McAfee reacted to the news and claimed that he helped press some buttons to get Charania on board.

"I may or may not have sent that message to a couple people," McAfee said . "But you know, our show is licensed to ESPN. But it was like, 'Hey, we got this'… Whatever god, universe you believe in, there is a prince who was promised."

Shams, a regular guest on McAfee's show

McAfee batting for Shams was no surprise, as he knows him well. Charania has appeared many times on The Pat McAfee Show over the years. He was one of the show's main NBA resource persons from when it was still affiliated with FanDuel until last year.

While congratulating his buddy, McAfee also praised Jeff Passan and Adam Schefter, two names who were reportedly considered for the Woj job. However, McAfee insisted that there was no better man for the job than the one ESPN ended up hiring.

"All those things were happening, and we're friends with all these people. And it's like, I don't want to say, 'What are we doing, it's right here?' But I (took my) hands out, sent a couple (messages)," he added. "Good dude and has always shown up for us, too … absolutely insane work ethic."

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Part of Pat's power play?

That was the good part of the story. Now, here's the bad. After Woj's sudden resignation, former ESPN employees Amin Elhassan and Dan Le Batard claimed on the latter's show that Wojnarowski quit because McAfee was trying to force him out so he could get Shams the job.

"He (Pat McAfee) knocked out Woj while using Shams, which was interesting because Woj has Pitaro as a giant ally," said Le Batard. "But McAfee's got the relationship with Iger; that's the head of Disney," Batard said.

ESPN's chairman is James Pitaro, but this could be because Disney owns the majority of the company and calls the shots. When McAfee mentions texting people on ESPN, he may be referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger. But this is another story and most likely just a rumor. What matters now is that ESPN hired the most qualified person for the job.

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