SCOOP DREAMS

SHAMS CHARANIA HAS SPENT A DECADE TEXTING AND TWEETING HIS WAY TO THE TOP OF THE NBA REPORTING WORLD. HIS NEW COLLEAGUES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES WONDER IF HE'S A THREAT TO THEIR JOURNALISM

- REEVES WIEDEMAN

SHAMS CHARANIA arrived at a restaurant in downtown Chicago last month just as his colleagues and sources around the National Basketball Association told me he would: running a bit late, phone in hand, AirPods plugged into both ears. "It's very hard to have lunch with Shams," a former NBA executive had warned me. The issue is holding his attention. Charania works for The Athletic, the sports website that is now business-critical to the future of the New York Times and where his title is senior NBA insider. The job involves staying in near-constant contact with hundreds of agents, executives, players, and hangers-on throughout the NBA in order to be in position to break basketball news big and small to his 2.1 million followers on X (the former Twitter)-more than any other reporter at the Times. When we met, Charania had taken a Lyft from his home in the Chicago suburbs because driving would have prevented him from texting and the train wasn't an appropriate place to take a call from, say, the general manager of an NBA team whose name popped up on Charania's iPhone shortly after he sat down. At one point, Charania set down a piece of toast to type out a text with his right pinkie to avoid smearing the screen with the strawberry jam on his thumb. "I didn't even realize I was doing that," he said when I pointed it out. "I'll do anything to get the text off. I've used my nose before."