Jeff Pearlman rips Pat McAfee betting on LeBron James destination after Shams Charania requested to appear on ‘PMS

Photos via ESPN. Edit by Liam McGuire, Comeback Media.

Pat McAfee is facing fresh criticism after acknowledging on his show that he used advance word from ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania to place a bet on LeBron James’ free agency destination before the decision became public, with author Jeff Pearlman using the moment to argue the network has fully abandoned any remaining claim to journalistic credibility.

According to the former Indianapolis Colts punter, Charania, who’d appeared on the show regularly throughout James’ free agency, told him ahead of time that he’d want him on that day’s program, a signal, without saying so outright, that James had made his decision and it hadn’t gone public yet.

“We were told by Shams, ‘You’re gonna want me on the show today,'” McAfee said, recounting the moment. “So it’s like, OK, decision’s being made. I just hammered top four. He was at +700.”

Pearlman responded to this snippet from McAfee’s Show in an extended TikTok rant, framing it as evidence that ESPN’s gambling business has eclipsed whatever journalistic function remains at the network.

“ESPN just laid off a bunch of people, real reporters, real journalists, people who take this seriously, and we’re listening to Shams, who’s their NBA insider, on the show with the guy talking about how he used information that he received on his show from people involved with his show to gamble on where LeBron James is going,” Pearlman said. “And this is just fine in modern media. And I know some of you people are like, ‘Can you just stop?’ It is so poisonous and so ruinous, gambling in sports, and it is crazy to me that ESPN keeps firing people, firing people, firing people, shedding salaries, shedding salaries, cutting this, cutting that, but the gambling thing they’re all in on.

“And any remaining pretense, and I really mean this, any remaining pretense that ESPN is anything more than a moneymaking entity is bullsh*t. They’re not a journalistic entity anymore. They have relations with all the places they cover. They run a sportsbook, so they’re a gambling outlet now. They have guys like Pat McAfee, not just talking about gambling, and not just talking about lines, but saying how he’s taking the information he’s receiving as an ESPN person and then gambling on it. And you have the NBA insider just nodding along and going, ‘Ha ha ha, he he he, oh yeah this is great, here’s the information I’m gonna give you.’ It is f*cking sick, seriously. It’s disgusting and disturbing.”

Pearlman’s comments come amid ESPN’s recent wave of layoffs, which the network has attributed largely to its integration of NFL assets acquired earlier this year. Those cuts have included Ryan Clark, who was informed of his layoff mid-broadcast during an episode of NFL Live, along with Karl Ravech, David Lloyd, Stephania Bell, Cam Newton, Bart Scott, Charles Davis, and Tom Pelissero. The cuts have also come within weeks of reports that ESPN and McAfee’s camp are discussing an extension worth $60 to $65 million annually, which would make McAfee the highest-paid personality in sports media history.

McAfee has pushed back on any suggestion that his own deal is connected to the layoffs, calling that framing “terrible” and arguing his critics don’t “fully understand budgets and where things are coming from.”

None of this happens in a vacuum for McAfee, who has spent years building his show’s identity partly around sports betting. He walked away from a reported $120 million deal with FanDuel in 2023 to bring his show to ESPN, later admitting that giving betting picks under FanDuel’s arrangement was “ the worst world to be in ” compared to the looser gambling banter ESPN allows him. He unveiled a new partnership with DraftKings as his show’s exclusive sportsbook partner in June, and used that new partnership almost immediately to launch a betting-adjacent game show called “Progrum Feud,” encouraging viewers to wager on which studio crew would win a Family Feud-style contest.

As for Pearlman, he’s previously argued that gambling money has quietly corroded sports media’s credibility, and he treated the McAfee-Charania exchange as the latest symptom of a sickness he’s diagnosed before. He leveled a nearly identical charge at Bill Simmons last year, in the middle of an unrelated feud with Pablo Torre, accusing Simmons of propping up The Ringer with what he called “blood money” and arguing the outlet wouldn’t survive without its gambling sponsorships.

The broader issue Pearlman raised wasn’t unique to McAfee’s anecdote, either. Pro Football Talk noted in its own coverage of James’ free agency that the “world of unregulated inside information can move markets,” pointing to a separate example from earlier in the process when a Miami Heat social media mishap leaked news of an introductory press conference that never actually happened, days after ESPN’s Adam Schefter had floated Miami as a landing spot for James on a Philadelphia radio show.

“It is so poisonous and so ruinous, gambling in sports,” Pearlman said. “I don’t know where the people who care are. What happened in society that we got so greedy where this is what it’s all about? I honestly don’t get it. It’s such a sickness.”

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