ESPN's Shams Charania
SI Media With Jimmy Traina
Sports Illustrated
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 605 of “SI Media With Jimmy Traina” features a conversation with ESPN NBA Insider, Shams Charania.
Charania talks about getting his career started at such a young age, getting hired by Adrian Wojnerowski at 21 and how he feels about the day-to-day grind of being an insider and breaking the Anthony Davis-Luka Doncic trade Charania also weighs in on the recent narratives about how insiders do their job.
In addition, Charania weighs in on Doc Rivers taking a shot at him, his reporting on the Bucks and what’s going on with Giannis. Charania also shares insight on the NBA’s plan to fix tanking, LeBron James’ future and the league’s gambling scandals.
Following Charania, Sal Licata, from SNY TV and “The Sal Licata Show,” joins Jimmy for their weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week’s topics include Dianna Russini’s resignation from The Athletic,the putrid starts by the Mets and Yankees, Netflix’s upcoming Hulk Hogan documentary, Jimmy causing a problem for his dad and the “DTF St. Louis” season finale.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everyone to S-I Media with Jimmy Traynor. |
| 0:05.7 | Thank you so much for listening. |
| 0:08.2 | Always love when we get a first timer on the pod, and that is the case this week. |
| 0:11.8 | We've got ESPN's and Sean's Toronto on the show. |
| 0:15.7 | First time, long overdue, as Sean talked about at the beginning, |
| 0:19.9 | I'm trying to get them for a while. |
| 0:21.1 | We finally make it happen with the NBA playoffs here. |
| 0:23.6 | And it's a great conversation with Shams and about the life of an insider. |
| 0:28.6 | And we get into stuff going on with the box, Janus, tanking, LeBron. |
| 0:32.6 | So really good stuff there with Shams. |
| 0:35.6 | And then of course, after that, the train of thought |
| 0:37.7 | segment with my buddy Salakata, where we get into a variety of topics that I think you guys |
| 0:43.9 | will enjoy. Before we get to it, we put out a bonus episode this week for my WWE people, Cody |
| 0:49.6 | Rhodes. Nice enough to come into New York City and do the interview in person. |
| 0:54.5 | And it was a great conversation with Cody. |
| 0:57.2 | So that came out earlier this week. |
| 0:59.2 | So if you missed it, it's on YouTube. |
| 1:00.8 | It's on Apple. |
| 1:01.4 | It's on Spotify. |
| 1:02.6 | And last week, we had Adam Shine on from Sirius X-M in The New York Post, Andrew |
| 1:08.0 | Marchion a couple of weeks ago, Jason Benetti from NBC. And we did a podcast with the S&Y Mets booth of Gary Kohn, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. So if you missed any of those, check them out in the archives and make sure you subscribe to SI Media with Jimmy Traynor. All right. Let's get to it. |
| 1:25.2 | Shams Trania from ESPN, followed by Trainer Thoughts and Salakata. |
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