The 2024-2025 NBA season had a lot of big moments, both on and off the court. The Lakers’ acquisition of Luka Doncic from the Mavericks sits near the top of the pile of incidents that defined the season. The blockbuster deal also sent Anthony Davis to Dallas. NBA Insider Shams Charania had broken the news.
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Charania has become the go-to guy for big stories in and around the league ever since Adrian Wojnarowski retired. It was a hectic time for Charania since the move came right before the NBA trade deadline for the season.
“It was a whirlwind that night. I slept like 30 minutes that night,” stated the 31-year-old insider during a recent interview on The Sports Reporters.
“That deal happened on a Saturday night. On Wednesday, I had gotten a tip from a few sources that essentially the Mavs and the Lakers were talking about a deal. There was a player they were discussing,” he added.
Shams detailed how a lot of names were mentioned in this deal, which made him question what was going on. It wasn’t until the very last minute that he learned the big move involved The Don.
Shams on breaking the Luka trade:
“I slept like 30 minutes that night. It took me 7 minutes to get all the details, confirm it, write up the tweet. The one thing that eats at me is having a typo in a tweet. I hating editing tweets. There was (no editor) that was up” pic.twitter.com/z2vX3d5qK0
— Oh No He Didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) August 7, 2025
“Obviously, everyone buried the lead. By the time I got down to it, it took seven minutes. By the time I got the tip on it, it was 11:05 Central. 11:12 Central, I tweeted it. It took me seven minutes to get all the details,” he stated.
This has been the biggest story of Shams’ career so far. But looking back on it, he still feels a bit anxious. Not due to the speed at which he got the story out there, but because of how vital it is for such a breaking story to not have any typos.
“The one thing that eats at me is having a typo in a tweet. I hate editing tweets. I hate it with a passion. It eats at me, even the slightest typo. You can’t have any typo, you can’t get anything wrong,” said Charania.
Fortunately, he got it 100% right in the Doncic tweet, both in terms of the language and the content. He mentioned seconds later that there’s no editor up that late to look over a breaking news tweet, and in the past, even admitted that his hands were shaking.
The nervousness is understandable. The league and its fans now look at him as THE guy for accurate news. Sure, some people still thought the tweet was fake, but in the end, they learned the truth.
And it’s not like Shams is a stranger to X. He’s been on the social media juggernaut since 2010. Why that year? “You know why I did 2010? Because of LeBron James,” revealed Shams in the same interview.
If you have forgotten, that was the same year that The King was figuring out his ‘Decision,’ the one that ultimately landed him in Miami to kickstart his championship legacy. A lot of people signed up for it because of that moment and the billions of other tidbits that have since dominated the web.
That said, the social media space is also filled with more negativity and misinformation than ever before. Fortunately, at least in basketball, it’s nice to know that there is someone reliable like Charania doing the work.
