Blake Griffin and Taylor Rooks Roast Shams Charania for Spoiling Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP Reveal
Shams Charania broke the NBA MVP news on Sunday morning when he was not supposed to. The league had carefully built a primetime Amazon Prime Video reveal for 7:30 p.m. ET on Sunday night, the same evening as the Pistons-Cavaliers Game 7. Charania scooped it hours before the broadcast, tweeting that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had won his second consecutive MVP.
Blake Griffin and Taylor Rooks were not impressed.
The ESPN reporter caught a wave of backlash for what fellow media members called a clout-hungry move. Charania even used the phrase “Breaking” in his tweet, as if he had broken news rather than spoiled a planned reveal. Other NBA reporters lined up to swat at it.
Griffin called Charania a “nerd” for the spoiler, joining a chorus of media members who pointed out that there is a difference between breaking news and ruining a celebration. The MVP reveal had been built up for weeks. SGA’s family was reportedly going to be on the broadcast. The Thunder were going to use it as a launchpad for their Western Conference Finals run.
Taylor Rooks added that this is the kind of thing that makes the sports media look bad. Her point was simple. Nobody needed Charania to scoop this. The information was going to be public in eight hours. Breaking it early did not change what people knew. It only stole the moment from the league, the player, and the fans.
The NBA had held the MVP results for five weeks and packaged the announcement as a marquee event ahead of Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals in Oklahoma City. The Thunder, who are the defending NBA champions and the No. 1 seed in the West, would have soaked in that moment with their star at home.
Charania’s tweet ate it.
This is not the first time the ESPN insider has taken heat for this kind of thing. He has a long track record of breaking awards reveals early, including past MVP and Defensive Player of the Year announcements. Each time it happens, the same complaints come up. Each time, nothing changes.
The bigger issue here is what the role of the “insider” has become. There used to be a real value in being first. Now everything is on Twitter within seconds, and the value of breaking news has collapsed. What is left is the chase for clout, and that chase is increasingly coming at the expense of the players, the leagues, and the fans who pay attention.
SGA’s MVP win was historic in its own right. He became the 14th player in NBA history to win back-to-back MVPs. That number has heavyweight company. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Russell, Tim Duncan, Larry Bird. It is the kind of accomplishment that deserves a proper stage.
Instead, it got a tweet at sunrise.
Griffin and Rooks are right to call it out. The NBA media space has gotten too cozy with the idea that scoops are everything, even when they do active damage to the league’s own storytelling. Charania has the platform to do better. He probably will not.
Either way, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander still has the trophy. The Thunder will still have their moment. And the rest of us will still remember that the league’s biggest awards reveal got hijacked by a guy looking for retweets.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
