If you’ve clicked on this, I can assume a few things about you. You, dear reader, know who Shams Charania is and what he does. You’re familiar with the NBA landscape in general. And, like me, you are acutely aware that we live in a post-truth era. More than ever, reality is in the eye of the beholder, and anyone can convince themselves of anything.
Politics is rife with this new truth. Don’t like an election result? Call it fake news. Media has become largely the same: this movie, this book, this article (not that anyone is reading anymore) means what I want it to mean. Scroll Facebook for five minutes, and you’ll find delusions you couldn’t have dreamt of.
Sports are perhaps the last cultural institution that is largely unaffected by this new reality. There are writers and fans who live in their own manufactured realities, sure; some even refuse to accept the result of a game because the powers that be are rigging things in favor of this team or that player. But the results are indisputable. Steph Curry did make that shot. Patrick Mahomes did complete that pass. Shohei Ohtani did hit that home run. These facts give sports a grounding in reality that few other parts of our lives offer.
Unfortunately, the profit-driven forces pushing this detachment from reality are getting into sports. And there’s perhaps no better example than Shams Charania, ESPN’s basketball “insider”.
The Background
A brief overview of Charania, for those uninitiated. The 32-year-old reporter was once the understudy of Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN’s original insider. Woj’s Twitter bombs were the stuff of legend—out of nowhere, you’d get a notification concerning the wildest trade rumor, signing, or anything else he felt the people needed to know.
At one time, when Woj was at ESPN and Shams at The Athletic, there was a tête-à-tête between the two. Both got some scoops first, but they were always within minutes of one another, and iron seemingly sharpened iron. Since Woj retired and Charania stepped into his shoes at ESPN, Shams is the only real game in town. The vast majority of scoops come from him first, with others scrambling for the rest. In effect, Shams has become a monopoly over NBA information, and in a very short time.
Charania gets his information like any insider. He knows people inside front offices, and he knows agents. And like any insider, Charania is a useful tool: teams and agents both have scenarios where leaking something to a public mouthpiece is in their best interests. In return for his services as the mouthpiece, Charania gets the scoops that keep his checks coming, and everybody eats.
Unfortunately for us NBA consumers, the balance is out of whack. And this offseason was the tipping point.
The Paradigm Shift
Before, it was understood that sources remained anonymous. While we could infer that an agent or a team was behind the information disseminated in Charania’s tweets, it wasn’t put in writing every single time. Now, things have drastically shifted for the agents. In nearly every announcement of a signing this offseason, Charania included the names of the agents and the agency they represent, often citing them directly as his sources.
On the surface, no big deal. We all know he’s doing favors for the agents by announcing these deals, so why not just credit them directly? The danger begins mildly, but it’s noticeable. First, let’s look at a tweet where the agents are not cited directly.
What can you glean from this tweet? Charles Bassey is a center, and he will be signing a one-year deal with the Golden State Warriors to replace an outgoing center, Quinten Post. We don’t get any information on how much money Bassey is making, or what kind of player he is. Straight and to the point, no frills. Now look what happens when the agents are directly cited.
The core information: Alpha Diallo is signing a one-year deal with the Denver Nuggets. But in addition to the agent citation, we get some extra fluff from Shams: he was a college standout, a Euro star, and the EuroLeague Defender of the Year. We get an exact dollar figure on his deal. You’re starting to see the full scope of the transaction between agent and mouthpiece forming.
It makes you wonder: why did Charles Bassey not get the same treatment? His agent, Adie von Gontard, is not mentioned at all, nor is the agency Young Money APAA Sports. Even more interestingly, von Gontard used to get that treatment, and with this same exact client.
So, what changed here? Why did Charania decline to add the extra fluff in this most recent announcement? Perhaps it’s simple apathy on his part. Another explanation could be a change in the nature of the relationship between Charania and von Gontard. It’s hard for us to know. Regardless, the result is the same: the opinion of fans when it comes to Charles Bassey is largely unchanged, but some may choose to look more favorably on Alpha Diallo, all because of some flowery phrasing by Charania that his agents surely appreciated.
And this is where the slope gets very, very slippery.
Innocuous Becomes Insidious
Agent power is on the rise, and nobody exemplifies that better than Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports Group. Paul’s status as LeBron James’ agent propelled him to the forefront of the agent class, and he unquestionably owns the highest level of name and face recognition amongst agents in any North American sport, not just the NBA. And Charania is no stranger to being a mouthpiece for Paul and Klutch Sports. Just look at his tweet breaking the news of LeBron signing with the 76ers.
No other titles to add for Rich, Shams? Plugging an agent’s podcast in a news dump is incredible.
But something new happened this offseason. Gary Trent Jr., one of Paul’s clients, signed a four-year $64 million commitment with the Milwaukee Bucks in the wake of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s departure. Charania himself broke the news, as usual.
You’ll note here that, unlike previous agent-driven tweets, Charania makes no mention of Trent Jr.’s accolades or stats, just the money. That’s notable given the eyebrows this deal raised. But to get into the suspicions, we first have to understand Gary Trent Jr.’s career.
Trent Jr. (who I’ll refer to as GTJ, for the sake of brevity) was originally a second-round pick by the Portland Trail Blazers. A solid rotation player out of the gate due to his shooting and perimeter defense, GTJ contributed to multiple Blazers playoff teams before being traded in his third year. The Toronto Raptors, who were struggling at the time and looking to sell, identified GTJ as a young trade target they could re-sign and build on.
By and large, they were right. GTJ re-signed with the Raptors in the 2021 offseason for three years and $51.8 million. Though the Raptors going from a 27-45 lottery team in 2020/21 to a 48-34 playoff team in 2021/22 isn’t entirely due to GTJ, his 18.3 PPG sure didn’t hurt, nor did his +3.0 on-off rating. He remained effective the season after that, shouldering more starter-level minutes for head coach Nick Nurse, but a disappointing season blew up the team.
Nurse was fired, Fred VanVleet Jr. walked in free agency, and the team was a dumpster fire the next season. OG Anunoby departed at the deadline in 2023/24. Despite that talent vacuum, GTJ’s minutes declined for a second straight season under new head coach Darko Rajakovic. Suffice to say, GTJ and Rich Paul began to look elsewhere, and a Milwaukee Bucks team looking for talent fit the bill.
GTJ signed a one-year, minimum deal with the Bucks; a steep decline in pay that raised no eyebrows at the time. Milwaukee had Giannis Antetokounmpo and GTJ’s former teammate in Portland, Damian Lillard. They had made the playoffs for eight straight seasons, including a championship in 2021. If GTJ wanted to get minutes and win, this was the spot for both, so a salary trade-off made sense. And he was solid on that deal, averaging 11.1 PPG while shooting 41.6% from three while being competent defensively; any team would kill for that productivity on a minimum contract.
Though the Bucks didn’t get where they wanted to go that season and were dogged by Giannis trade rumors, they were willing to bring GTJ back. And who other than Shams Charania would break the news?
The sharpshooter is back! It was a decent pay bump for GTJ, getting a hair over $1 million more per year while getting a player option on top of things. That player option gives him security if he gets injured or has a bad season. And unfortunately for GTJ and the Bucks, the latter did happen; GTJ’s scoring and defense took a dive, and Milwaukee had a -12.3 net rating when he was on the floor, nine points worse than when he was off it. By all metrics, it was a bad year. With Antetokounmpo departing for Miami and GTJ declining, it seemed likely he would pick up that player option to get guaranteed cash, or decline it to move to greener pastures.
Instead, GTJ gets a whopping $64 million deal coming off the worst season of his career. It’s more money than he’s earned in his entire career to date. Naturally, this set off some alarms among NBA media members, myself included.
Under the rules of the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, you cannot take a free agent contract with a “wink and nod” agreement that the team will sign you to a larger contract at a later date. That rule was invoked in the Joe Smith scandal in 2000, which has some parallels here.
To sum it up: Smith, the first overall pick in the 1995 draft, took a pair of small one-year deals with the Minnesota Timberwolves in a handshake deal with owner Glen Taylor and GM Kevin McHale to get a larger contract at a later date. The league found out and came down on the team hard.
If the league found out the same thing happened, both the player and the team could face heavy punishment. And it was our favorite insider, Shams Charania, who broke the news that the league is indeed looking into this contract.
And it’s Charania’s role in this scandal that gives me pause. Let’s look at the timeline here.
July 11th: The Deal Breaks
Charania breaks the initial news of the signing on the afternoon of July 11th. After breaking down the initial terms of the deal as we saw above, Charania quote-tweets his own post to provide additional context about the deal.
What stuck out to me is that Charania pointed out that other teams were interested in him. I looked at all 64 instances this offseason where Charania broke news about an unrestricted free agent signing a new deal. On 11 occasions, Charania mentioned interest from outside teams; GTJ was the only one where sign-and-trade interest was mentioned. It’s interesting, to say the least.
July 14th: A Strange Media Hit
A couple of days after the deal breaks, Charania makes an appearance on Iman Shumpert’s podcast, Shump Street. They discuss many items going around the league that week with Shams: Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo fighting, the Kawhi Leonard trade being nixed, LeBron James and James Harden’s free agency, and of course, the earth-shattering signing of Gary Trent Jr.
Shumpert initially broaches the topic as a segue from the Kawhi Leonard deal, before James/Harden free agency updates. Charania mentions “eyebrows were raised” about the deal, making sure to point out it was negotiated by Rich Paul. But then, Charania immediately says that “at least one other team” was “poking around a potential sign-and-trade around the same type of number”. It’s an interesting tidbit to drop immediately after noting that the deal caused a bit of a stir.
Now, I don’t mean to go full conspiracy-brain here, but Iman Shumpert is no stranger to Rich Paul. Shump was a member of the Cavs between 2014/15 and 2017/18—all four seasons where LeBron James made his return to The Land. That team was unquestionably run by Klutch: James made the return on his terms, and players like JR Smith and Tristan Thompson, who were also represented by Paul, got favorable deals with the team. Shumpert is friends with James to this day, recently attending the reunion of the 2015/16 Cavaliers championship team, along with Smith and Thompson.
If I were Rich Paul and I was looking to get a media hit out that paints the GTJ deal as above-board, Shumpert would be on the short list of people to call. Very kind of Shump to bring up that deal in the midst of discussing LeBron, Harden, Kawhi, and a high-profile fight between two All-Stars.
July 16th: The League Gets Involved
Two days after his appearance on Shumpert’s podcast, Charania breaks the news that the league is looking into the deal.
As I said before, we had 64 separate unrestricted free agents sign new deals, along with a slew of trades and restricted free agent deals. Out of all those contracts, only one is actively being investigated by the league, as far as we know. Yes, the Kawhi Leonard trade is on hold, but that has to do with his allegations of cap circumvention, not the trade to the Raptors itself. It’s fishy, to say the least.
Conspiracy? Or Coincidence?
Now, I’m not making an accusation here; I simply want to paint a timeline of conceivable wrongdoing. The GTJ deal can be explained by a myriad of reasons. Bucks GM Jon Horst isn’t exactly covering himself in glory recently, and could have been taken to the cleaners by Paul, an agent with tons of leverage who always gets his guys great deals. It’s also possible that the Bucks, who have had GTJ in the building for two years, truly believe that the 27-year-old’s best basketball is ahead of him. With the Bucks going headlong into a rebuild, overpaying GTJ doesn’t really matter.
But there remains a distinct possibility that something is wrong here. If the deal was indeed a “wink and nod” agreement and the league finds out, all parties involved stand to suffer grave consequences. Horst and the Bucks open themselves up to draft pick forfeitures, fines, and suspensions. GTJ himself could have a life-altering deal voided. Paul’s risky approach could backfire on his business and would put him under increased scrutiny from the league.
And if something is wrong, Charania played a role, either directly or indirectly. His reporting of sign-and-trade interest almost surely came from Paul, but it’s entirely possible that was a tidbit he added himself. Team sources always remain anonymous, and if you don’t list your source, there is nobody who can refute it. I could say a team source told me LeBron James is going to be an Indiana Pacer, and if I were a credible insider, you’d be inclined to believe me.
The point of this development in Charania’s evolution as a so-called journalist is not whether something fishy happened, or whether he played a role. It’s how easily he could have played that role. If a powerful agent like Paul told him he needs this story pushed, what would stop him from saying no?
Public perception is everything when you’re looking to push your own truth, and Charania’s four million Twitter followers buy him a lot of truth-telling power. Agents and teams alike can use him as a tool to push whatever narrative they want, provided that he gets the scoop first. A mistrust of the leading NBA insider tears the fabric of reality for fans; if you can’t trust the lead news breaker, the door to living outside reality is open.