While the NBA offseason has slowed to a crawl when it comes to major news breaking, many NBA fans still have notifications set for the league’s two biggest newsbreakers — Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania — just in case there is a sudden trade involving Lauri Markkanen, Brandon Ingram, Zach LaVine, or any of the other stars still on the block.
Given their immense platforms, we don’t often see Shams or Woj post much in the way of non-NBA news, but there are exceptions. Woj will retweet big sports news from ESPN’s other reporters and occasionally will fire off some tweets about his beloved Bonnies. Shams, meanwhile, will sometimes just tweet out news from other sports (he’s dipped a toe into the NFL Draft on a few occasions) and politics. A few years ago, many NBA fans learned that Donald Trump had contract COVID-19 because of a Shams tweet, and on Sunday a similar phenomenon happened when Shams tweeted out that Joe Biden was dropping his re-election campaign.
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the US Presidential race.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 21, 2024
Shams, of course, did not actually break this news, but he did get his tweet off damn near simultaneously to the president’s own tweet.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
As such, an awful lot of people learned the news because of Shams, not the president’s own tweet, leading to “Shams” trending on Twitter as folks were in disbelief that they learned ground-shaking political news via an NBA insider.
Shams dropping a politics bomb was not on 2024 bingo card https://t.co/iAzUDJQ6Tz
— Alexis Morgan (@alexismorgan) July 21, 2024
I learned Joe Biden is dropping out of the presidential race from a Shams Charania push alert lmao
— Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) July 21, 2024
It probably shouldn’t at this point, but learning this sort of thing via Shams feels dislocating, like the kind of detail that would otherwise show up in a work stress dream.
— Dan Devine (@YourManDevine) July 21, 2024
Just broke this news to my family and they asked if it was real and I said “Yes it came from Shams” https://t.co/4lk0WRcWdc
— 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒆 (@Three_Cone) July 21, 2024
no way i learned this from a shams notification https://t.co/DNfRXZZKfv
— largest rodent (@capybaroness) July 21, 2024
there’s no absolute way i found out the news by shams this is soooooo https://t.co/P81triI4Mf
— ❦ (@supachxrry) July 21, 2024
Literally found out Joe Biden dropped cuz I have shams notis on lmfao
— Free PalestIvan (@ivmc95) July 21, 2024
WHY AM I GETTING THIS NEWS FROM SHAMS https://t.co/IucY4giCdr
— Carol Danvers’ White Tank Top⚢ (@Astronaut_Archi) July 21, 2024
I did not expect to hear this from Shams first https://t.co/ZlTcYj6CRK
— TalkinBlers Podcast (@BlersTalking) July 21, 2024
I found out Biden dropping out cuz of shams brah
— Arbaz Afzal ارباز افضل (@BazBallisLife4) July 21, 2024
i rlly found out from shams https://t.co/rFPXQAOVYF
— Eli (@ybeliburner) July 21, 2024
Getting this from a Shams notification is wild https://t.co/q3PRIH7CJ5
— District of Buckets (@BucketsDistrict) July 21, 2024
This is single-handedly the funniest consecutive tweets in Twitter history from Shams. pic.twitter.com/mIJNBNzEmN
— love love (@PaulCzarnecki18) July 21, 2024