Shams Charania Biography
Shams Charania is a media personality serving as senior lead NBA Insider and writer for The Athletic and NBA analyst for Stadium. He previously served as the national NBA Insider for Yahoo Sports.
Shams Charania Age
Charania was born on April 1, 1994 in Chicago, USA.
Shams Charania Height
He stands at a height of 5 feet 9 inches tall.
Shams Charania Indian
Shams is of Indian origin.
Shams Charania Education
He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill graduating in 2012. He later enrolled at Loyola University in Chicago where he majored in communications graduating in May 2017.
Shams Charania Family
His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan in the early 1980s. His mother worked as a nurse at Skokie Hospital in the Chicago suburbs. He is the oldest of three kids.
Shams Charania Wife
Shams marital status is unknown.
Shams Charania RealGM
Charania began his career in writing about sport while in high school. He wrote for his high school paper, New Trier News, in his junior year. he began as an editor for the paper’s sports section. He also wanted to write about his obsession, the NBA so he started a Bulls blog on ChicagoNow, a local site owned by the Chicago Tribune, where he’d write every day and recap every game for free to try to build up a body of work.
As his junior years progressed, he began his stuff to sites like RealGM, HoopsWorld and HoopsHype. While in his 11th and 12th grade, he began to develop sources and submit stories to Reina at RealGM.
Chris Reina, RealGM’s longtime executive editor and chief marketing officer told Forbes that he felt Shams was different and had a maturity and a way with people;
“Probably from the first month or two, I got the sense that Shams was different. That he had a maturity and a way with people, a work ethic and a clarity of how he wanted his career to look like. He always had that preternatural ability in that area.”
While he was getting ready to start school at Loyola University, he got to interview Dwyane Wade which made him realize that he needed to cover games live and in person, rather than just talking to athletes and agents on the phone.
In August 2010 he joined Twitter which he says he feels like he epitomized the desire for information that people have.
“I feel like I came up at the right time. In a lot of ways I feel like I epitomize this desire for information that people have, that fans have now. I was one of them. I was in that type of position eight years ago.”
Twitter helped him grow his brand. On March 1, 2013 he broke forward Shavlik Randolph leaving China to sign a 10-day contract with the Boston Celtics. That was followed up by him breaking Malcolm Thomas’ 10-day deal with Chicago on March 19.
At the age of 19, he broke one of the biggest news stories of the 2013-2014 NBA season when he reported on Chicago Bulls star Luol Deng trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Andrew Bynum. That month he even wrote a freelance article for ESPN about MVP candidates Joakim Noah and Dwight Howard.
Shams Charania Yahoo Sports
In September 2015, at the age of 21, while beginning his junior year at Loyola, he was hired by Yahoo Sports as part of the NBA coverage team. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports broke the news of Charania’s hiring, calling him the “best young basketball reporter on the planet.”
RealGM, where he had worked for three years as a full time employee also congratulated him calling him a ‘great reporter and an even better person.’
Congrats to @ShamsCharania on his move to join @WojYahooNBA and @YahooSportsNBA. They’re getting a great reporter and an even better person.
— RealGM (@RealGM) September 3, 2015
He joined what ended up being Yahoo’s basketball platform The Vertical, led by Woj, Shams, Chris Mannix, Michael Lee, Bobby Marks and the folks at DraftExpress. That venture officially launched at the end of January 2016. His contract ended in 2018.
Shams Charania The Athletic
After his contract with The Yahoo Sports ended he began talks with Fichtenbaum, who’d left Sports Illustrated for The Athletic in 2016.
Fichtenbaum said that, “The central part of our trying to get him on board was to sit down with him and really try to understand where he was trying to go with his career and making sure that all of our interests aligned and checked all the boxes.”
There emerged a problem with The Athletic wanting to solely focus on the written word for the foreseeable future, leaving Charania without a home to work on his skills in front of a camera as a television analyst and interviewer, the next big skills he wanted to master.
The Athletic has numerous agreements with other outlets that allow writers to split their time with other outlets.
Fichtenbaum said, “It was not an unusual thing for us to do. It allows us to get a little more awareness out there if people are on other platforms and they’re identified as from The Athletic.”
Shams Charania Stadium
Stadium CEO Jason Coyle had first heard about Charania a year before, noticing that he was being credited with breaking story after story. “I said ‘my gosh, who is this guy? and I looked into him and he was so young and Chicago based.”
Coyle said they met over the course of a few months and he could tell he wanted to work with him.
“I could just tell that I wanted to work with him. I loved the sincerity, obviously his absolutely innate ability to get scoops, his humility. The guy wanted to work, wanted to get better. I loved the whole package. It really lined up for what we wanted to do.”
In August 2018 Shams announced on Twitter that he had joined The Athletic and Stadium as the lead senior NBA insider, writer and analyst.
I am excited to announce I am joining The Athletic (@theathletic) and Stadium (@watchstadium) as the lead senior NBA Insider/Writer and Analyst later this month… https://t.co/gHYh8Ihzb7
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) August 14, 2018
Did Shams Charania Play Basketball
Shams played basketball in middle school but was cut off from his team. He said that at 5 foot 9 he realized he would not have a growth spurt but he tries to play pickup ball when he can.
Shams Charania Salary
His actual salary is unknown.
Shams Charania Net worth
His net worth is under review.
Shams Charania Instagram
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Shams Charania Twitter