These days, most NBA transactions funnel through a tiny group of national reporters.
Shams Charania, Chris Haynes, Jake Fischer, and Marc Stein are a few names that make up the core. Adrian Wojnarowski used to be in the mix until he pivoted away from transactional reporting and into his new role as general manager of St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball program, once he discovered it was all vapor.
Even then, he commanded a level of trust that during the 2024 election cycle, Kamala Harris’s campaign reportedly considered using Woj to soft-launch Tim Walz as her running mate.
Shams, now ESPN’s lead NBA insider, has inherited that mantle. It’s a closed loop, as a handful of people break virtually all the national news. Local beat writers might still provide important context or background, but when it comes to trades, signings, or extensions, the scoop rarely originates on the ground anymore.
Brian Windhorst tried to make sense of that dynamic during a first look at his interview on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast.
“There’s a couple of reasons. One, because Shams is basically the person of record — and Woj before him,” Windhorst said. “So, when Woj is in the same boat, so just assume when I say Shams, I also am talking about Woj, because they’re [interchangeable]. Their track record is spectacular. So when they say something, it is taken as record. They’re essentially the Clearinghouse of information. And also, it’s incredibly reliable that everybody in the world that need to know will know.
“And in the case of contracts, it behooves the agents and the team sometimes to get it on the record, because it’s not finalized. And Shams and Adrian again — assume that I’m saying both – but Shams works extraordinarily hard. And so, when a transaction happens, he may be the first call, but he didn’t fall backwards into being the first call. He worked to get himself there. So, I can say in the year that I’ve worked with him, in fact, it’s been less than year — it’s been like nine months — I’ve called him or texted him with news tips dozens of times, and maybe twice he didn’t already know, or was somewhat was aware.”
This was also common with Woj, too.
“There was really only a few times in the years we worked together, which was something like eight or nine years, whatever it is, where I came to him with a news tip that he did not know about,” Windhorst continued. “So, here, they’re constantly working. The end product may seem like it’s an exchange of information. But, to get to that end product, there’s been an incredible series of layers built on top of that.”
That’s the reality. It might look like news just falls into their laps, but it doesn’t. It’s a product of nonstop work: texting, calling, staying close to agents, executives, and players. We’ve all seen Shams’ screen time during pivotal moments in the NBA season and offseason.
The reason you don’t see local beat reporters breaking transaction news anymore isn’t because they aren’t good at their jobs. It’s because the national guys are living in that lane full-time. And they’re the very infrastructure through which NBA information travels.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.