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It was an eventful year for the namesake of our award. Shams Charania’s mentor-turned-rival Adrian Wojnarowski left ESPN in September to work in college basketball. Just three weeks later, Charania left The Athletic and took Woj’s place as “Senior NBA Insider.” Perhaps this had always been his destiny, since he was a teenage news prodigy: to pronounce his beautiful phrases on linear television, to appear in a small photograph inserted in news graphics. In November, Charania received an award for basketball writing in addition to ours: first place in the Professional Basketball Writers Association’s 2024 Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest, for his co-authored work with The Athletic’s Jon Krawczynski. If any of the other awardees are reading this post, please contact us: We’re curious what it’s like to know that you’ve won an award for good writing and then, within the same sentence, to know that Shams Charania has won it too.
It is transcendental to present the Shamsy in this strange year of “artificial intelligence”. Critics sometimes compare Scoopster’s prose style to the output of an oversized language model; I find this funny, but out of place. While often factually erroneous and semantically empty, the sentences of an LLM generally look like sentences that real humans could produce. Maybe lazy or thoughtless humans trying to cheat on their homework, but really. After all, these models are trained on a huge corpus of human writing. But the Shamsy Award winners’ compositions are compelling precisely because they deviate from predetermined human rhythms. Man has not yet devised an intelligence that could report an injury to Jarred Vanderbilt in such a disorienting way. For now, the human mind is stupider than its technological successors. That’s what makes these nominees some of the most innovative writers working today, and it’s why we’re grateful to be able to examine these submissions.
Thanks as always to the readers who sent us bad quotes throughout the year. Defector’s judging panel discussed a variety of submissions during a pair of mid- and late-year nominee broadcasts, and narrowed them down to the finalists below:
ESPN’s Shams Charaniadetailing a new type of experience:
Lakers forward Jarred Vanderbilt recently experienced fluid in his left knee during his rehabilitation from offseason procedures on both feet and is targeting early January for his return, the Lakers told ESPN on Tuesday.
MSNBC’s Kyle Griffinon Donald Trump’s behavior at the end of his election corruption trial:
cnnon Donald Trump’s behavior at the end of his hush money trial:
Ben Standig and Dianna Russini of The Athleticon the commanders’ search for a head coach:
When pundits and Internet rumor mills flooded the area for weeks with claims that [Ben] Johnson, 37, was the heavy favorite, if not a “lock-in” hire in Washington (a downside to Harris conducting a largely leak-free search): There was minimal rejection. The blithely ignorant voices were either unaware or chose not to care that the assumptions of consummation came from an echo chamber of gossip rather than factual information.
Another major opinion centered on reports that Johnson’s camp brought with it heavy compensation demands for the second-year coordinator who masterminded Detroit’s elite offense. League sources putting their chips in this bucket cite the agent, Richmond Flowers, hoping to override the head coach’s apprehension of Johnson with a Padrino offer he couldn’t refuse.
He is considered a coach who prefers to lock himself in his office, come up with game plans and play with mad scientist vibes rather than running a locker room.
ESPN’s Michael Voepelwith a representative sample of the year’s brilliant Caitlin Clark commentary:
The spotlight on her is enormous, but the actual performances examined through the prism of reality have been the overall positive mix that almost any top rookie has at the beginning of a professional sports career.
Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentinoon a tantalizing NHL prospect (h/t @failsonmcdonald):
Part of his identity as an underage player has been forgotten and replaced by noticing his super-skilled hands and creativity. His continued growth hasn’t affected his ability to handle the puck with pace.
Atletico’s Anthony SlaterWatching the path of divorce splinter and sprout:
It’s been a layered five-year road to this divorce, which was split last season, erupted earlier and ended in the last two weeks, where, between conversations [Klay] Thompson had done so, league sources said, it was a request from Stephen Curry not to exert his important organizational influence and to raise the temperature with management to secure Thompson’s return.
Shams Charania (then) from The Athletictelling us what Rudy Gobert had:
Andrew Marchand of The Athleticabout a strange start to a metaphorical basketball game:
That’s why Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s 2022 diss track is underpinning the sudden jump between Zaslav’s TNT Sports and NBC for the latest NBA TV rights deal still in play. Two years ago, Zaslav dunked in NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s league.
josina andersonenlightening us on the awareness discussions and then advancing her report on the hot coordinator:
Scoop Jackson Chicago Sun-Timesin an article that uses a Dan Orlovsky quote as an epigraph and only gets more intoxicating from there:
The trade market for Justin Fields dried up faster than the coaching jobs for Bill Belichick. Making everything general manager Ryan Poles and the Bears originally had in mind to carry over and get fair market share in return was as impossible as Jimmy Kimmel getting through the Oscars without mentioning Donald Trump.
[…]
In a week in which the Poles acquired three Pro Bowl players in three necessary positions[…]the disappearing act of the league’s need and interest in Fields had to be an “Oh, —-, what just happened?” awakening.
[…]
But this became an is-it-is saga staring down the backdrop of an ever-changing landscape that was waiting to find its way into the halls of Halas in any conversation about Fields’ immediate future outside of Chicago.
Shams Charania (then) Stadiumgiving us news of a kind we have never seen:
Logan Murdock from The Ringerwith a unique hanging style:
League sources believe Andrew Wiggins, who struggled to find a consistent role last season, will be aggressively involved in trade negotiations.
CNN’s Camila DeChalus and Betsy Kleinwriting about Biden’s favorite strategy:
That incident sparked a breach of trust, a source familiar with the dynamic said, which continued as the president’s top protectors worked to prevent a second dog.
Shams Charania (then) from The Athleticexplaining an NBA fight in his usual style:
Both Stewart and Eubanks were fighting chest to chest before a blow to Eubanks’ face connected on Wednesday, sources said. The two were separated and there is a police presence involved in the situation in Phoenix tonight.
According to those sources, both Stewart and Eubanks were fighting chest to chest before a punch was connected to Eubanks’ lip area. [has since been edited out of the story]
josina andersonwith a now-deleted riddle about Haason Reddick’s status:
Our colleague Luis Paez-Pumar made an accurate observation while we were reviewing the submissions: Josina Anderson is “the Messi of the Shamsys, where you really have to convince yourself that she shouldn’t win every year.” Anderson, the 2023 Shamsy winner, continued to experiment this year, somehow putting loquacious NFL coverage into conversation with language poets. There is much to celebrate: his ability to place a comma where no other writer would think of placing one; his infallible way of almost writing a lucid clause and then throwing in some totally inert leftovers at the last second; its exotic capitalization; and the Andersonian model of time. No one whose job it is to communicate information clearly chooses to communicate this way.
But our panel ended a long session of deliberation with another writer’s words still echoing in the caverns of our freshly emptied skulls. An old master had found a new style. In the past, Shams Charania has surprised us with overloaded, unwieldy sentences, but this year he stood out for the hyper-efficient, compressed weirdness of his sentences: “had his first child,” “experienced fluid,” “general truth “. authenticity.” And he produced another two-word phrase so heartbreakingly moving that Defector’s leadership has considered changing the site’s tagline to “Unique News.” As a mid-career haiku novelist, Charania has proven he can work wonderfully in miniature. Woj could have opted for a different career opportunity in basketball, but ESPN has kept his legacy alive by hiring a generational talent in the field of language contortion.
Congratulations to Shams Charania at Shamsy 2024; He is the first writer to win the award twice. Nominations for Shamsy 2025 can be sent to tips@defector.com as they arise.
