Shams Charania pulls rank on WNBA CBA news after others spent more than a week staking out negotiations

If you follow any of the top national WNBA insiders on social media, you probably saw the photos they posted of themselves outside the Langham hotel in midtown Manhattan.

For more than a week, ESPN’s Alexa Philippou, Front Office Sports’ Annie Costabile, The Associated Press’ Doug Feinberg, and The IX’s Jackie Powell staked out the negotiations between the league and the players’ union over a new collective bargaining agreement. The group was there into the early hours of the morning nearly every day, waiting for their chance to speak to key figures on both sides.

Overnight into Wednesday morning, as the league and the WNBPA struck a deal that will see the salary cap more than quadruple starting this season, Costabile first broke the news of a verbal agreement.

But it was ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania who posted key details of the new CBA just before 10 a.m. ET. As the news broke, Charania was live on Get Up to discuss the story.

The ESPN.com story about the new CBA, written by Philippou, cites Charania as having these details.

And while Philippou did appear on SportsCenter early in the morning on ESPN, she shared quotes from league leadership and details about the compressed timeline leading up to Opening Night on May 8. She did not report those salary figures, noting that WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike had declined to share them until the agreement was ratified.

Quickly online, fans and media members rallied to the Langham group’s defense.

This is not the first big WNBA news Charania has broken. In the past, Charania has reported on the league’s expansion proceedings or player free agency moves. Some will remember Charania breaking NFL Draft news back in 2020.

However, the situation is far more blatant here. Charania did not report on the WNBA CBA talks at any stage. Even at his own network, Philippou and even TV reporter Holly Rowe covered the negotiations more deeply than Charania.

With this type of scoop, the news is usually fed to a particular reporter intentionally. In this case, it appears that the WNBA (and NBA) funneled the information through Charania to get it into the biggest possible microphone. We can tell this because on Get Up, Charania cited “industry” (as well as WNBA) sources while breaking the news. The WNBA is owned in large part by the NBA, and Charania’s comments appear to have come from even higher up than anyone at the Langham in midtown, where the other reporters sat all night.

None of the WNBA, its players, or the NBA owes it to the four reporters staked out at the Langham to give them this scoop. But within ESPN, Philippou and others are designated for the beat on which Charania just pulled rank. In this case, those designations didn’t matter.

Look no further than the support Chris Mortensen gave Adam Schefter in their early days working together at the Worldwide Leader or the mentorship Adrian Wojnarowski gave Charania himself back at Yahoo to see how reporters can lift up their teammates. Particularly given that Charania was crossing over into a different league here, it is no surprise that WNBA fans and media who are used to following the Langham group for news would have strong feelings about Charania leap-frogging them for one of the biggest scoops in the history of the league.