Shams Charania Sure Seems Like He’s Taking Subtle Shots At Adrian Wojnarowski After Dan Hurley Turned Down The Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers still do not have a basketball coach to replace Darvin Ham. For weeks, it looked like ESPN analyst JJ Redick was the overwhelming favorite to get the job, but over the last few days, UConn coach Dan Hurley emerged as the frontrunner, only to turn down a contract offer from the team.

Redick and Hurley’s candidacies were directly tied to reporting by Shams Charania of The Athletic and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, respectively. Charania frequently was the most prominent national reporter saying Redick was in pole position, while Wojnarowski reported the news of Hurley’s interest in the job. The two have a long relationship — a piece in New York magazine from last year likened it to a “cold war” — and on Tuesday, Charania seemed to relish the opportunity to get one over on his old mentor.

“Then they, last week, on Wednesday, turned their attention, I’m told, to Dan Hurley,” Charania said on FanDuel TV. “And, he was not the No. 1 candidate, the No. 1 guy to go pursue from the start, from the beginning.”

This goes against some of Wojnarowski’s reporting, as he said in his original piece that “Hurley has been at the forefront of the Lakers’ search from the beginning of the process, even while the organization has done its due diligence interviewing several other candidates.” It’s worth mentioning that both Charania and Wojnarowski are in agreement that Hurley was not the only person the Lakers interviewed, and a month ago, Wojnarowski did report that the team was interested in Redick as part of its “wide-ranging and lengthy search.”

But that wasn’t Charania’s only reference to Hurley’s candidacy that came off like he was swiping at Wojnarowski. Charania appeared on Pat McAfee’s show — which, of course, is broadcast on ESPN — and straight up seemed to express some skepticism about the whole Hurley situation.

“If the Lakers wanna go hire James Borrego, they’ve had a month to hire James Borrego,” Charania said. “They’ve had this week, after losing out on Dan Hurley, I guess, they’ve had this time to go get James Borrego.”

McAfee and his crew sure were interested in Charania sliding that “I guess” in there, and I’m going to assume they weren’t the only people who were.