Shams Charania


Shams Charania is an American sports reporter for The Athletic covering the NBA.

Early life

Charania is from Chicago, Illinois and attended New Trier High School. He graduated from Loyola University Chicago.

Career

He began his sportswriting career at age 17 covering the Chicago Bulls for ChicagoNow, a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune. In 2012, Charania began writing for RealGM, and established himself by reporting small transactions around the league.
After several years of breaking increasingly significant scoops, Charania caught the attention of Adrian Wojnarowski, then working for Yahoo Sports, who described Charania as "the best young reporter in business." After joining Yahoo, Charania began to break significant deals in the NBA. He was the first to break a number of high-profile signings in the summer of 2016, including Dwight Howard's move to the Atlanta Hawks, DeMar DeRozan's re-signing with the Toronto Raptors, Luol Deng's signing with the Los Angeles Lakers, and Jamal Crawford's signing with the Los Angeles Clippers. This set off a friendly rivalry between Wojnarowski and Charania. In 2017, Charania broke signings by Stephen Curry, Blake Griffin, Jeff Teague, and Paul Millsap.

Leaving Yahoo, joining the Athletic and Stadium

On August 14, 2018, Shams announced via his Twitter account he would be leaving Yahoo! Sports for The Athletic and Stadium at the end of the month.