The 30-year-old was the face of The Athletic as he battled against Wojnarowski in the business of breaking NBA stories. While many stories ended up being simultaneously reported by the two, in some scenarios, one edged the other in no particular order. In the 2023 NFL Draft, his work forced seasoned insiders to catch up. That reputation has only continued to build as the days went by.
Adrian Wojnarowski pulled the plug on his near-4-decade run as a reporter. That means Shams Charania will lead the charge to bring NBA news to all the fans. On one hand, the others taking over from Wojnarowski at ESPN do not have the popularity as him. On the other hand, Charania’s already wide connections will help him leapfrog everyone else.
To top it all, his contract with The Athletic is about to be up in a year. Suggesting that he could find himself amid a bidding storm. Even if ESPN has others, bringing in Charania will give them a near monopoly in the news reporting field. That will be a massive boost with the likes of NBC and Amazon Prime coming into the NBA.
Fans react to Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski’s rivalry coming to an end
Although the situation is going to benefit Shams Charania the most, NBA fans are going to miss the so-called rivalry. Those days will no longer come when both he and Adrian Wojnarowski will be battling late at night trying to be the first to report a breaking story. Fans will miss the times when one was saying something only for the other to report something completely different. Wojnarowski took the decision to end his time reporting NBA news to focus on his life.
But for fans, this upcoming NBA season onwards, they will most probably be receiving notifications from just one source. Saddened by it, fans took to social media to discuss this bombshell news. Check out some of those comments below:
shams without woj will be like trump without biden, just completely rudderless, a lost soul unmoored from the foil who gave this whole thing meaning
— ock sportello (@ocksportello) September 18, 2024
I will never forget the Woj vs Shams wars, we won’t see this again.
— Niko (@nikotaughtyou) September 18, 2024
Woj decided to drop the one piece of news Shams couldn’t scoop him on.
— myles brown (@mdotbrown) September 18, 2024
Fans will miss Adrian Wojnarowski‘s personal opinions which he wove around the facts in his hand. But over the course of the next year, basketball fans will hear only one name popping on their screens most of the time.
