Shams Charania to replace Adrian Wojnarowski at ESPN

This story has been updated with new information.

ESPN is replacing former NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski with his chief rival and former protégé.

Shams Charania announced Monday he is joining ESPN as its senior NBA insider, going from Wojnarowski’s main competition for news around the league to his successor at the network.

‘I am honored to join ESPN as the company’s Senior NBA Insider,’ Charania wrote on social media. ‘I can’t wait to be part of an incredible group of colleagues at ESPN and serve the audience worldwide.’

Wojnarowski announced his retirement from ESPN last month. He is now working as the general manager of men’s basketball at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure. Charania, who most recently worked for The Athletic and FanDuel TV, was immediately considered a leading candidate to take over Wojnarowski’s role.

The 30-year-old had become a well-known NBA presence over the past decade, initially breaking news as a teenager before working under Wojnarowski at Yahoo! Sports. He then emerged as a rival with his own brand once Wojnarowski was hired by ESPN in 2017. Their battle for scoops became a storyline much like the games and players they were reporting on, although both have mostly declined comment when asked about the other.

Charania was already a frequent guest on ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’ and McAfee publicly campaigned for him to be Wojnarowski’s replacement after Wojnarowski’s retirement became official.

Who is Shams Charania?

Charania grew up in the Chicago area and, according to a profile by Complex Magazine written in 2016, his reporting career began in high school when ChicagoNOW, a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune, allowed him to write daily game recaps. He parlayed that into a job at the website, RealGM, while he was a college student at Loyola-Chicago.

Charania was so young that the Chicago Bulls would not give him a credential to games immediately, so he would drive to Bucks games in Milwaukee to connect with NBA players and personnel. He began to gain traction nationally in 2014 when he broke the news of Luol Deng being traded from the Bulls to the Cleveland Cavaliers for RealGM.

Charania was then hired by Yahoo! Sports – while still taking college classes – after Wojnarowski took notice of him. The Washington Post reported in recent years that Charania was presented with an opportunity to join Wojnarowski at ESPN when he left Yahoo! in 2017, but elected to stay. His scoops have become part of the fabric of the league’s machinations in recent years, so much so that ‘Shams’ is referred to around the NBA by a one-word nickname just like ‘Woj.’

“He will be the news breaker in the NBA—whether it’s tomorrow or next year or five years from now,’ Wojnarowski told Complex in 2016.