Shams Charania has joined ESPN to be the network’s next primary NBA insider, replacing ecently retired Adrian Wojnarowski, he announced Monday.
This came roughly an hour after Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports first reported that ESPN was in “preliminary contract negotiations” to add Charania, formerly with The Athletic , Stadium and Fanduel , to join the network.
While there was small buzz around former Yahoo Sports insider Jake Fischer potentially joining the network as its primary insider, it was difficult to see anyone beat out Charania, one of the most well-known NBA insiders of all-time.
He was in the last year of his current contract with all three networks, though it was reported by the New York Post in July that his contract with those entities was expected to expire in a month or two; it’s been nearly three months since that report was published.
When breaking news broke, it oftentimes sparked a conversation within the NBA community online about who was first to an insider scoop between Woj and Charania. Now, he’s at the top of the mountain. There are other insiders with notoriety, such as Fischer and HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto, but none are on the same tier as Charania.
There’s an argument to be made whether or not ESPN should have left the position open considering it keeps firing hard-working, wise individuals due to financial constraints . While it would be difficult to oftentimes execute (given the FA moratorium, etc.), it would be very fascinating to see what it would be like for teams (via release) to consistently announce big free agency moves or trades without them being leaked first. Maybe that’s happening in a parallel universe, but alas.
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