Why Shams Charania breaks WNBA free agency news, like A’ja Wilson, despite being ESPN’s NBA insider originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Shams Charania is ESPN’s NBA insider.
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Except when there’s big WNBA news, it’s often Shams breaking it on his social media accounts — namely X (formerly Twitter).
To basketball fans, it’s one of those things that might not make a lot of sense.
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Why does Shams Charania break WNBA news?
This all comes down to relationships.
Look at how Charania shared the news of A’ja Wilson’s signing with the Las Vegas Aces on Wednesday:
He includes the agent’s name, and the agency, at the end of the post. That’s a little “thank you” from Charania to the source that gave him the information.
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It’s by no means a reporting necessity, and some old-school reporters definitely wouldn’t appreciate that. But it’s how these insiders have gotten to the point.
And then you consider Charania’s following — he has 3.6 million followers on X. An agency certainly doesn’t mind its client’s exciting news getting shared to that many people all at once — many having Charania’s X posts send notifications to their phones as soon as he shares them.
It can overshadow the quality work done by WNBA reporters, but it’s just the way this oft-odd insider game is played.
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