“Shams: basketable Nets trade Durant to the sun for players like bridges and picks. 」
Just as everyone’s attention was on James’s record and weishao’s trade, NBA fame Shams Charania detonated the entire trading market with a deep water bomb. In recent years, Shams has always proved to the fans that he is the best basketball reporter in the new generation with the fastest breaking news one after another every week or before the trade deadline.
Who could have thought that he was the operator of a small hospital in Chicago a few years ago.
If you often watch NBA news, you will not be unfamiliar with the names “Woj” and “shams.
In the field of NBA, this pair of master-apprentice news is not only the fastest, but also the accuracy is almost official propaganda. Therefore, the two have always been breaking the news steadily and fiercely, occupying half of the NBA media circle together.
Until he left Yahoo to join ESPN, the opposition of the working unit began to put the comparison between the two on the table-“Who is the best NBA news reporter? 」 It has gradually become one of the hot topics among basketball fans.
Source: The Daily Beast
For example, in the heavy news that Durant switched to the sun today, although Woj gained more traffic, it was pressed behind by his former disciples in speed.
For Woj and fans, Shams, 29 years old, has become the No. 1 choice among more and more people.
One hour after the news was revealed, the media traffic of the two people was compared.
Rare talent and diligence,
The success of Shams is no accident.
In the early 80’s, Shams’s parents immigrated from Pakistan to the United States to engage in the medical industry. Because of their excellence, they also required Shams with strict standards.
Like the vast majority of immigrant parents, Shams’s parents’ life planning is nothing more than a top career under the traditional concepts of doctors, lawyers and engineers, however, Shams in the student period failed to inherit their parents’ talent in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but had a great interest in basketball, an “improper” hobby. After joining the junior high school team, it was even more out of control and determined to become a professional athlete.
But what gives parents comfort is that Shams is only a partial subject, not a poor student. When he was in senior high school, he showed great talent in writing. The English teacher commented that he had a writing style beyond his age and was already a mature author.
But good writing can’t help the realization of basketball dream. He was laid off by the school team in his second year of high school due to his mediocre football skills and his height of 174cm. This is undoubtedly a big blow for Shams, who loved basketball since childhood.
After a short loss, Shams decided to take part in sports in the way he was good at-he joined the sports column of the school newspaper on the recommendation of the english teacher. However, he was not satisfied with the limited audience group and highly repeated content production. As a “Chicago native”, he began to play the Bull team’s idea.
Report written by Shams in high school commander’s newspaper
In 2011, Shams began to publish articles on the bull blog website “ChicagoNow”. He even recommended himself to Jimmy Greenfield, the founder of the website, hoping to become the column blogger of the website. When the latter met Shams, who was only 17 years old, his first question was “Did your parents agree? 」
Although he had no confidence in the little boy who was still slightly green in front of him, Greenfield was shocked when he read the high-quality content he wrote, thus providing him with a position as a website writer. Therefore, Shams officially started his sports news career with at least one update every day.
The combination of sports and writing completely inspired his enthusiasm.
School grades, school newspaper editors, blog columns, at the age when they were supposed to secretly borrow drinking and crazy parties, Shams was immersed in writing every day. Although they were out of place among students of the same age, they didn’t care at all. “Every time you write every sentence and read every report, you can lay a more solid foundation for fulfilling the future. 」
In the era when Twitter had not yet become the mainstream, he was obsessed with sports news every day, watching basketball news websites such as RealGM and HoopsHype all the time, refreshing the pages over and over again, if you want to get to know the latest transaction or news first, then hurry up and start the next masterpiece.
In a physics class in senior three, the teacher was doing interesting physics experiments on the stage, and the whole class was watching, but it didn’t attract Shams at all-his attention was all on a news released by famous basketball reporter Mark Stern. When he first clicked on this page, suddenly I found that the news had been viewed thousands of times.
Although he has done his best to actively pay attention to these news, he still can’t become the first group to obtain these information.
This accidental opportunity also made him realize that it was far from enough to rely solely on news websites to obtain information. To be an excellent sports journalist, besides the ability to produce high-quality articles, he needs his own resources and channels.
His channel is Mark Stern, and who is Stern’s channel?
Mark Stern
He began to consult the official websites of major clubs and telephone directory, and collected all the “internal personnel” he could find: team, manager, coach, journalist, call one by one to sell yourself, and try to establish a relationship with them. However, the reality is that most people are unwilling to waste more than one phone call time on a high school student.
Although Shams has made a lot of efforts for his love, his parents still don’t think he can have any development on this road. In their eyes, doctor, Yu is still a better home for his son.
Therefore, under the arrangement of his mother, Shams went to the hospital for internship. During this period, although facing medical records and documents every day, his mind has been floating on various NBA news releases and he has never stopped writing. Every time you finish an article, it will be sent to the mailbox of major sports news editors as quickly as possible.
Hard work pays off. Finally, Chris Rena, editor of RealGM, a sports news website, extended an olive branch to him after reading Shams.
He saw the unique shining point of this boy aged 1 to 7 years old, “he has a maturity beyond his age, and he invests 100% in his work. 」 After Rena established a good relationship, he began to contribute to RealGM.
Shams’s first report for RealGM
After receiving Rena’s response, Shams did not stop pursuing and tried to contact NBA insiders more frequently. Finally, after getting in touch with the agents of the bulls players Mike James and John Lucas III at that time, qu became the first reporter to reveal these two short ten-day contracts.
You know, he is still a high school student at this time.
Location, people, and time 」
The rise of Shams
After graduating from high school in 2013, Shams is going to enter Loyola University for further study in communication. The day before he entered school, he got an opportunity to interview Wade at a charity party-which was also his first major interview as a basketball reporter.
Face-to-face communication completely opened his thinking and reacquainted with the journalist industry. Recalling the original feelings, Shams said bluntly, “I feel that I can write ten articles based on this interview. 」
Shams (right) interview Wade
After persuading mother to quit the hospital job, Shams began to run to the offices of major teams to find the position of authorized journalist. For Shams, who was born in Illinois and was a bull fan since childhood, the first stop must be Chicago Bull.
Every day, countless spotlights are directed at the team where the “God of basketball” has come. As a saturated and mature media team, it is not necessary to recruit a college student intern journalist, shams failed to obtain the qualification certificate-he chose Milwaukee, a small ball city with low media exposure.
It was also there that Shams met Dan smickke, the head of Stag public relations department, one of the most important “noble people” in his life.
At that time, the Stag didn’t have the back-to-back MVP blessing. It was one of the teams with the least traffic in the league. Shams saw the opportunity and applied for the position of authorized reporter of the team, and it was his Bole, Dan smickick, who gave him this position.
In an interview with Forbes, Shams said, “Dan is the first person who opened the door to my career. 」 The experience in Bucks has given Shams many opportunities to interview players and established real business relations with many players and management.
With more and more exclusive resources and channels, after continuously exporting “leftover material” news such as 10-day short contracts and training camp contracts, on january 14, 2014, shams broke the news of Bull star player lore Deng and Knight player Andrew Bynum exchanging bosses on the social media accounts of thousands of fans.
A 19-year-old sophomore intern journalist broke one of the biggest NBA news in the 2013-2014 season. Shams shot a loud shot in his career as a journalist.
Woj, who was already at the top of the industry at that time, also noticed this “backwave” at this time 」.
After its rapid popularity, Shams received invitations from Yahoo Sports, Sport Ilustrated and other sports companies. For Shams, no amount of salary is comparable to the opportunity to work under the famous “God of War.
On September 12, 2015, Woj made one of the most unique reports in his career: Reporter Shams joined Yahoo Sports.
Woj and Shams report together
After joining Yahoo, through close contact with Woj and unremitting efforts, Shams, who works while going to school, has become one of the best NBA journalists in the industry. Shortly after Shams graduated from Loyola University, Woj moved from Yahoo Sports to ESPN, and the top journalists in the two industries stood in two teams.
Shams ushered in its own “day 」.
He began to do his best in Yahoo Sports alone. In the 2017 NBA off season, “master” Woj still maintained the level of T0, completing 25 pieces of news; And “Apprentice” Shams also completed 14 pieces, he successfully carried the banner of Yahoo Sports, and the Battle of Woj bomb vs Shams’s needle point Maimang was officially launched.
More than Woj to become the first person?
Shams’s ambition does not stop here.
Due to The internal turmoil of Yahoo Sports, on August 14, 2018, Shams officially joined The sports media The Athletic and Stadium, and then completed The renewal in 2020.
In this year’s NBA first round draft, Shams completed 19 times of breaking news, far exceeding Woj’s 11 times. Netizens said one after another that Shams would “hit” master Woj on the stage, become the first place to remember.
Shams chose to sign The Athletic and Stadium media organizations in The new era instead of traditional media such as ESPN and TNT, which also shows that The young and promising man is not satisfied with The identity of a reporter who broke The news, have a far-reaching vision for your future.
The Athletic is a sports news website facing subscribers. Since its establishment in early 2016, it has been liked by more and more young people by relying on in-depth sports articles and valuable news reports; stadium is a cross-platform TV program supplier.
He was originally interviewed by Wen Zhang, but because of various factors, he became a top reporter in the industry. In the last two years, we can also see that Shams has begun to transform with the help of these two platforms, making many high-quality interviews and comment analysis.
On Stadium, he also created an exclusive interview program for Shams on his own tubing channel. He also sat face to face with several Gao Shun rookie of this year, including HomeGreen, deeply understand the process and mentality of their entry into NBA.
A Pakistani child born in Chicago has achieved great achievements from the beginning of writing school newspapers to college, at the age of 29, the story of Shams at the top of the pyramid with the industry legend “God of God of God” is enough to inspire more young people with dreams and continuously tap their potential, make your own future.
As the editor-in-chief of Sport Ilustrated said, “there is no limit for future Shams in this industry. Now he has just begun to shine brilliantly. 」