ESPN's Shams Charania Details Wild Story Behind Reporting Luka Doncic Trade

Ryan Phillips | Mar 13, 2025

ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania. / ESPN

Shams Charania has finally opened up about his reporting on the Luka Doncic trade, and the story behind it is almost as crazy as the deal itself.

During an appearance on The Young Man And The Three podcast, the ESPN NBA insider recounted how he found out about the trade. He had heard days before the trade deadline that the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers were working on a deal for a player who ultimately wound up not being part of the larger trade.

The night everything went down, he heard the two sides were again discussing a deal and assumed it was what he had previously heard. Then information slowly began trickling out. He first heard Jalen Hood-Schifino was being dealt to the Utah Jazz because it was a three-team trade, then that Markieff Morris and Maxi Kleber were heading to LA. But still didn't know what the meat of the trade was.

"I'm picking all these pieces apart and I'm like, 'What's the trade? Like what is going on here,'" Charania said. "And by the time I got to the fourth and fifth person I got all the details of the trade. Made one more call and like, I didn't even say on that call, I basically was like, 'Is this f---ing real?' And the person is like, 'Yeah. Yeah, it's real.'"

Charania further explained that his hands were actually shaking as he got ready to post the trade on social media due to needing to have every detail of it correct before publishing it. It all happened so fast he didn't even have time to create a graphic to accompany the tweet. Remarkably, he said, "From the time I heard about it to the time I put it out, probably five to seven minutes went by."

NBA history changed that quickly.

What happened next is hilarious.

"After that, my phone was a mess," Charania said. "I had up to like 300 text messages." He added that he answered five phone calls but no texts because it was so crazy.

Charania claims everyone had the same message for him, "Did you get hacked?"

“My hands were shaking” — @ShamsCharania goes in detail on how the Luka-AD trade came about with @KOT4Q, Cam Johnson & @talter. 🚨 NEW YM3 TOMORROW 🚨 pic.twitter.com/riKR26HhXI

— TheYoungManAndTheThree (@OldManAndThree) March 13, 2025

It truly was a fantastic look behind the scenes of the biggest bits of breaking news in NBA history.

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