A non-basketball-related move just shook the NBA world.
Earlier on Wednesday, lifelong insider Adrian Wojnarowski announced his retirement from the news industry.
Needless to say, thousands of fans and journalists rushed to social media to thank him and praise him for all his years of service.
Now, that leaves Shams Charania as the undisputed king of NBA breaking news.
As such, the timing of Woj’s retirement couldn’t have been any better for him.
According to the New York Post (via Front Office Sports & NBA Central), Charania’s contract with The Athletic will expire this year, which will open the door for a massive bidding war for his services.
It’s not so usual to hear people talking about an insider’s free agency as if they were talking about an actual athlete, but given Charania’s pull and contacts within every single organization in the NBA, he’s no ordinary insider.
Trained and brought to prominence by Adrian Wojnarowski himself, Charania eventually spread his wings and, like in movies and books, he became his pupil’s biggest rival.
Woj and Shams went back and forth with breaking news and rushed to be the first to get a tweet out during free agency or the NBA Draft, but he won’t have to compete for that any longer.
It would make sense for ESPN to try and replace Woj with Shams, but The Athletic likely won’t let him go without a fight, and this will be an interesting and very lucrative bidding war, for sure.