It’s been almost a year since ESPN’s Shams Charania dropped a bombshell on the NBA world by reporting the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade. However, it still keeps making headlines every other day. Most recently, the earth-shattering trade made the news after rumors emerged of ESPN’s Shams Charania texting LeBron James’ eldest son and Los Angeles Lakers guard Bronny James the details of the trade before they went public. So, is this rumor true?

Well, some believed it to be true until today. That’s because the ESPN Insider himself addressed these rumors before they caught fire. Shams Charania recently made an appearance on Pat McAfee’s podcast, where this news came up. So, as expected, McAfee and his co-host Darius Butler wanted to know if there was any truth behind the smoke. To which Charania replied to pull up the tweet that started this all. The tweet from a hoops page called ‘Legion Hoops’ stated that it was Bronny James who sent Shams’ tweet in the team’s group chat.

“Bronny James Jr. was reportedly the one who sent Shams’ Luka-AD trade tweet in the Lakers team group chat.” The post stated. While this indicated that it was the young guard who informed his teammate about the trade, it was misinterpreted by a few. Several people believed that it was Charania who personally texted James. However, that wasn’t the case; the ESPN analyst himself put an end to all these rumors. “I don’t think I had time to text anyone,” he told Pat McAfee.

“I had time to, like, pick up five phone calls that night, you being one of them, Pat. My hands were shaking, I was sweating bullets, I was like I don’t want a typo.” He further explained. Charania cleared the air around the speculation of him texting players before a move got official or was made public. Nonetheless, while Shams Charania did not privately text Bronny James, his tweet did cause a massive stir within the Lakers group chat as multiple players had multiple reactions to the groundbreaking news.

Shams Charania’s now-infamous tweet garnered different reactions from Lakers’ stars

While Shams Charania has shut down the rumors of him texting Bronny James, it was at last his tweet through which the Los Angeles Lakers came to know about the trade. According to a newly released book from sportswriter Yaron Weitzman, it was the young guard who shared the now-infamous tweet by the ESPN Insider on the team’s group chat in February. As expected, the message sent by Bronny garnered all sorts of reactions from the entire Purple & Gold roster.

Among them, of course, the most notable one was seemingly from the man who got traded– Anthony Davis. “Did these n—– just trade me?” Davis wrote as per Weitzman. He then apparently wished his teammates luck and left the group chat. However, this wasn’t all, soon other players gave their initial thoughts on the trade. While AD seemed furious about the move, as we probably should have been, LeBron James reacted in a way most of us did after seeing the tweet. “WTF,” he wrote.

Three letters were all it took for the Akron Hammer to express his feelings about his close friend being traded out of the blue. It’s safe to say that Yaron Weitzman’s account is somewhat similar to what Lakers shooting guard Austin Reaves revealed earlier. The star previously stated that he thought AD was pranking the team with the news. Now, we cannot say with certainty that it was the forward who was the first to text in the group.

Nonetheless, it seems that one tweet was actually how everyone within the team got to know about the trade, unlike what some people initially suspected. Several fans firmly believed that LeBron James was involved with the Lakers’ front office and knew about the trade. However, by the looks of it, even King James was kept in the dark, just like everyone else. Now, whether that is actually the case or not? There’s no way of knowing, as everyone yet again awaits more details to emerge about this iconic trade.