Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski are the biggest, most well-informed, NBA insiders in the media today and have been for the last several years.
The latter used to be the top man when it came to breaking NBA stories and had a grip on the market for years as he owned the offseason. However, the younger Charania has emerged as a worthy competitor who now has a huge share to himself.
Woj is currently employed at ESPN while Charania is with The Athletic; so that they’re not best mates shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, it wouldn’t be all that strange if they at least maintained a friendship given that they used to work together.
According to the Washington Post, the relationship between the two men has been compared to that of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.
“Multiple NBA reporters and officials describe their relationship as something akin to Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, the tension between them spilling across their respective galaxies,” a report from the Post claims.
It also cites an editor at The Athletic who claims that tweets from Woj are banned within company Slack channels because “Shams doesn’t like to see them,” while ESPN reporters are under orders not to post stories from The Athletic or have anyone from the company as guests on their podcasts.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NBA stories via Google! Follow Us
“Neither reporter acknowledges the other publicly,” the report adds.
The insiders are far removed from the days when Shams idolized Woj and was viewed as a protege to the senior reporter at Yahoo! Sports.
Back then, Woj mentored the younger study. However, things changed when he left for ESPN in 2017 and Shams decided to stay. Now, you can find their tweets in your feed mere seconds apart, depending on who gets to the story first.
