Shams, Please, Go On Some Dates Man

Keen observers of sports media might wager, confidently, that the funniest thing in this New York Post profile of Shams Charania by Ryan Glasspiegel would be the concept "A New York Post profile of Shams Charania by Ryan Glasspiegel." Admittedly, that is very funny! A meeting of two of the most powerful minds on earth, two absolute lords of language, in conversation!

How would they even hear each other, over the sounds of screeching tires and shattering glass? At this time a mangling of syntax formations is viewed as of high feasibility to ramp forward with those in spheres of knowing the situation, due to confusions in the region of how to talk, with writing also to potentially be an area of effect. The interview, let me tell you, delivers.

Here is Glasspiegel attempting to say that Shams is a nice guy:

Here is Shams on the subject of family:

And here is Glasspiegel, on that:

Projects himself interpersonally. Pursuing a mate at this time. Immediately family means a lot. Shams, Glasspiegel writes, is "untethered from familial responsibilities."

How does this happen? I picture one of those pocket voice-changer things you can buy at the Halloween store, only it changes normal sentiments into shattered sports-reporter gobbledygook. Glasspiegel holds it up in front of his face and mumbles, "Is this what you thought your life would be like, say, 10 years ago?" and a metallic Darth Vader voice booms out, Talk about such expectations as once were held regarding the potentiality as to whether such moment as this would exist as presently as at present.

In total, though, the feature turns out to be a work of startling pathos. That is to say, it is a huge bummer. Here is Shams, looking back on the sacrifices he made during his undergrad years for the sake of his career (emphasis added):

"Then you have a conversation with someone [important]," he says, "and you get reminded real fast that there's a reason why you're doing it." Listen. I think it is probably pretty self-evident that I, a sports blogger for a decade, am somebody who cares about sports and takes it probably a bit more seriously than the average person. But this man is talking about having spurned fun and freedom in his precious youth for a vocation that amounts to tweeting out that an NBA trade is about to happen, 30 seconds before the details of that trade get published on the NBA's official website. Denying himself adventure and discovery, lest he fail to give the world a 27-second head start on processing the news that Arnoldas Kulboka will go on a G-League assignment. Passing up lifelong friendships to get a three-year head-start on uncritically paraphrasing CAA agent statements into incomprehensible blogs on the Athletic. Yeah, there are times I wish I had someone to share my life with. But then I Facetime with Sam Presti while he’s on a treadmill and I remember what I’m here for.

His biggest scoop, he says, was news of Rudy Gobert's positive COVID-19 test in 2020, shortly before the league shut down for more than four months. That news was going to be public, that very night, under 100 percent of circumstances, even if Shams Charania had never been born. For this he spends, by his own estimate, 17 to 20 hours a day staring at his phone screen.

This is incredibly bleak and dark and terrible! I feel bad. Sorrow and pity are being felt prevailingly around the Shams Charania situation, as pondering advances in regards to a person having only a single human life, and concerns as to the using well of it.