Just as Page, who had always loved hoops as much as music (even if he’d never worked in the sport), started to get anxious about what magazine he might launch next, a friend of his from the music business, Alan Grunblatt, suggested he start, effectively, “a hip-hop basketball magazine.” 

Sports media would never be the same.

Professional athletes have been “cool” for almost as long as sports have existed as a vocation. Page’s first favorite players were guys he saw in person growing up in Trenton, NJ—local legend Tal Brody, and New York City’s Lew Alcindor, whose Power Memorial team had visited Page’s hometown to take on Trenton Catholic. As Page’s hoops exposure grew with sports media’s gradual growth, he fell in love with players like Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and Julius “Dr. J” Erving. Then there was Isiah Thomas. And by the early 90s, of course, there was Michael Jordan. But the way these superheroes were covered by the press stayed pretty static. Newspapers focused on games and stats. TV focused on broadcasting games. Street & Smith’s magazine took the time to care about spotlighting young players and Sport and Sports Illustrated raised the level of writing in the field, and Page devoured all of them. There wasn’t much flavor, though.

As Page writes in the intro to the recently released book, 30 Years of SLAM: The Definition of Basketball Culture, “The idea crystallized as a basketball-only magazine from a hip-hop point of view. I could see it in my head clear as day; the design would look like those Nike/Mars Blackmon/Michael Jordan print ads, the photography would be as good as VIBE, and the writing would be irreverent like Rolling Stone.”

There were some hiccups over the early years—Michael Jordan retired just as Issue 1 was being planned, Reggie Miller didn’t appreciate some of the jokes made at his expense, some long-time NBA execs and old-school reporters did not enjoy SLAM’s tone—but more or less, Page’s vision played out beautifully. SLAM’s covers showed the players like the “rock stars” they were. SLAM introduced fashion shoots to sports magazines and has covered the look of basketball players in some manner ever since (most famously in the 2020s with its must-follow Instagram account, @leaguefits). SLAM introduced a KICKS section about sneakers that for many years was the first place players and fans would turn when they opened an issue. The KICKS section begat a KICKS Magazine that has come out annually since 1998 and in many ways set the tone for the now-countless numbers of sneaker mags, blogs, and social media accounts (including @slamkicks, natch) that have popped up since.

The mag’s almost non-stop ascension as a business lasted from launch in 1994 to early 2004, when the 10th anniversary issue dropped at a whopping, lucrative and Vogue-like 260(!!) pages, stuffed with ads from every sneaker brand and hip-hop label you could think of and it was the best-selling sports magazine on American newsstands.

Then the internet took over. SLAM—and in particular, Harris Publications, the old-school family publisher that operated it—was pretty slow to figure out how to monetize online. Issues shrank in terms of revenue and page count. There were some terribly hard times from a business perspective, but the staff—Page always had a gift for hiring and empowering talented folks who were on the rise in the profession, the best of whom had a gift for hiring and empowering an even newer generation of on-the-rise future stars—never stopped caring about the sport, the lifestyle, or the “#slamfam” that stayed loyal through it all. 

While SLAM had been slow to convert to the world wide web, it was lightning-quick as social media became the new place to reach fans, surpassing one million followers on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook very quickly on each of those platforms without ever spending a dime to “buy” or “boost” its reach. SLAM was, and is, an organic media outlet fueled by the love of the game.

In the most-recent stage of SLAM’s life, from about 2017, when SLAM was acquired by JDS Sports and Page became an actual part owner of the magazine he’d started, to today, you’ll occasionally “hear” Page say—either literally, in his classic South Jersey accent, or virtually, via an Instagram post or comment—“this shit ain’t easy.” 

It wasn’t. And isn’t. But with Page’s dedication to the game and the brand, and the many great folks who learned from him matching that devotion, SLAM has made it to 30 years and transformed the sport every step of the way.

Reprinted from the Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement 2024 Yearbook courtesy of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Ben Osborne is a longtime sports writer and editor who served as SLAM’s Editor-in-Chief from 2007-2016.

The post How Dennis Page Founded SLAM and Transformed Sports Media appeared first on SLAM.

Non-New Yorkers might think the Big Apple seems like one compact unit where everyone is familiar with the boroughs and neighborhoods, but that is definitely not true. Especially for a teenager who lived in The Bronx’s Mitchel projects in the 1980s.

“I never came to Brooklyn,” chuckles Long Island University’s men’s basketball coach Rod Strickland, a New York City Point God who spent 17 years in the League and more than a decade on high-level college staffs before getting this, his first head coaching job, in the summer of 2022. “I came here a couple of times to play, but I was so young I barely remember… I played in The Bronx, obviously, and we played in Harlem.

“So when I first got the job here, it was a whole different environment. I just had to get adjusted to that, which was fine. At the end of the day, it does look like The Bronx and Harlem. I just hadn’t been here. Now it feels like home.”

And isn’t that lovely for the LIU Sharks? If you’re doing a double take on what one of your favorite point guards ever is doing at a school you may not have even heard of…let’s take a step back.

LIU, formerly known as the Blackbirds, were a national power going back to the 1930s, when legendary coach and author Clair Bee led them to undefeated seasons in 1936 and ’39 and NIT championships in ’39 and ’41. The program crumbled in the 1950s after a point-shaving scandal and did not resurface in DI until ’68. The only reasons fans under 50 might be familiar with the program are the dope ’97 and ’98 teams that featured New York City ballers Mike Campbell, Charles Jones and Richie Parker or the ’10-13 teams that made three straight NCAA Tournaments.

Since that time, the university’s Brooklyn and suburban Brookville locations officially merged and the school has officially been known solely as Long Island University. What’s more, the sports teams are now the Sharks.

Rod Strickland, who in 1998 led the NBA in assists (he ranks 13th all-time in career assists) and was subsequently named second-team All-NBA, has been coaching the LIU Sharks for two years and we’re just getting around to covering them? Well, that’s OK with him, because it took about 24 months for him to get fully comfortable. “I had to get the experience and feel things out,” says Strickland (whose teams went a combined 10-48 in his first two seasons) from the comfort of his office in LIU’s Steinberg Wellness Center. “As of today, I feel like I have a great understanding of the environment. Now it’s a clean slate. These are my recruits. Whole new staff. It feels good.”

OG NYC hoop heads should consider this team a must-watch on the strength not only of Rod but his newly hired assistant Derrick Phelps, who starred at Christ the King in Queens before a stellar four-year career at UNC. But we get it; that demo is aging. Why should a modern hoop fan tune in to see the Sharks? Because they’re gonna be good!

The newcomers LIU fans are most excited about include freshman Roc Lee, a highly touted shooting guard from Atlanta considered a contender for NEC ROY, and Malachi Davis, a senior transfer wing from the Toronto area by way of Power 4 program Arizona State who has NEC POY potential. We find Davis overlooking the Sharks’ court from an office across the hall from Coach Strickland. “The important thing is building the LIU brand,” Davis says. “We’re trying to change the culture. We’re trying to change the environment. And bring the community together and do something real special this year.”

Sophomore forward Jason Steele, a Queens native who played his high school ball at Our Saviour Lutheran in The Bronx, is one of a select group of returnees for the Sharks. “The realistic goal for us is to win,” Steele says firmly. “We have people who want to compete. I would refer to them as straight dogs. Everyone here wants to work and everyone wants to win.”

The de facto team leader is another returner with a very familiar last name: senior point guard Terell Strickland. Terell had a great high school career in the Tampa-St. Pete area (Dad used to coach at South Florida) before playing in 50 games for James Madison University between ’20-23. Rod got the job too close to the ’22-23 season for Terell to get up here, but there was no doubt he’d arrive for the ’23-24 season. Terell had a solid junior campaign at the point, averaging 7.2 ppg and 3.6 apg, and everyone expects an even better performance this year.

“There was no debate about me coming to play for him,” Terell says. “I really enjoyed my time at James Madison, but this was just too special of an opportunity to pass up. Not only is he my dad, but he’s an NBA player who’s played the game at a high level. The chance to learn from him was something I couldn’t pass up.”

As Rod says, “I was quoted as a player as saying I never wanted to coach because I wouldn’t want to coach five of me. But when I was done playing, I needed a job. I called my guy at Memphis—William Wesley—and he got me with Cal [John Calipari]. Cal was so forward-thinking; he knew I was a point guard, and he got Derrick Rose, Tyreke [Evans], J-Wall.”

Strickland followed Cal from Memphis to Kentucky and then did stints at South Florida and with the NBA G League. “I wasn’t ready to be a head coach at first. But after being in it—at a high level at Memphis and Kentucky, playing for national championships—I don’t know exactly when, but it just got to a point where it was like, the next step. I played. Then I was an assistant coach. Then the next thing was to be a head coach.”

It’s an all-around, feel-good New York story that just needs some success on the floor to reach the happy ending everyone in the building seems to think is inevitable.

When asked about his father, who is obviously the key to the whole LIU hoops rebuild, Terell says, “I’m really happy for him. Very proud of him. It really is an amazing opportunity for him, especially for him to be back in New York to do it, surrounded by his family and a big group of supporters.”

Action photos via Getty Images and David Patalano.

The post Shark Sighting: How the Legendary Rod Strickland is Leading Long Island University Back to Prominence appeared first on SLAM.

Whether you’re a longtime basketball junkie who already knows everything there is to know about Hoop Dreams, the cinematic masterpiece about Arthur Agee, William Gates and their families, or a young buck just learning about the film for the first time, you have to understand how utterly improbable it was that the single best movie of any year was a basketball doc. Quadruply so back in ’94, when there was no such thing as 30 for 30 and you were lucky if you found a documentary on any subject anywhere other than PBS. In fact, filmmakers Steve James and Frederick Marx originally set out to make a 30-minute piece they hoped would make it to PBS and on the back end, well, there’d be no such thing as 30 for 30 if Hoop Dreams didn’t show the world how powerful a documentary rooted in sports could be.

It was no short-lived phenomenon, either. Hoop Dreams has appeared in numerous lists of the greatest documentaries of all time and tends to be passed down from one generation to another in basketball families like a treasured heirloom. “I think the biggest impact is knowing folks in my generation are watching with their kids. I just saw a clip of Carmelo Anthony saying Hoop Dreams is a film his son needs to watch,” says Gates, who during the film commutes 90 minutes from the Cabrini-Green Homes in Chicago out to the private St. Joseph High School in Westchester and eventually overcomes a knee injury to earn a scholarship to Marquette. “At the core of it, the film is as relevant today as it was then because the issues still remain…You’ve still got kids who have the dream of making the League, and there’s two elements of the story. There’s injuries, there’s grades, there’s lack of opportunities. These issues still exist. Just change the faces.”

Says James, who directed Hoop Dreams as his first major project and subsequently worked on numerous successful films with Chicago-based Kartemquin Films, “I’m shocked and surprised how many people still talk about it. It’s not every day, but I do get approached about Hoop Dreams a lot. It helps that it’s out there and available—people can still watch this film.”

While James and Marx had the idea for Hoop Dreams and started the work on it, Peter Gilbert came on shortly thereafter and served as the Director of Photography and a producer. Gilbert has also gone on to produce many movies and remains prolific to this day—but nothing has hit quite like Hoop Dreams did.

“It’s an interesting thing. I’ve made 30 or 40 other films, including one about the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Innocence Project films about people who were wrongly convicted, all different kinds of stuff, as well as narrative stuff,” Gilbert says. “But Hoop Dreams is the thing that people define me by. [It’s] not a bad film to be defined by.”

Where Gates, James and Gilbert have all branched out since Hoop Dreams came out three decades ago (the former as a pastor and motivational speaker who moved to San Antonio and the latter with all their subsequent movie projects), Agee is, effectively, “Mr. Hoop Dreams.” He’s got his Classic HD Basketball Clothing Co. and is working on Hoop Dreams 2. He also teams up with Gates on Agee and Gates The Podcast: What’s your Hoop Dream? Asked over text if Hoop Dreams feels like a daily part of his life all these years later, Agee doesn’t hesitate. “It’s never ending, it’s always there no matter where I’m at,” he types back quickly. “It’s just a real cool thing to live every day.” Dreams are real, indeed. 

SLAM has and would celebrate a film such as Hoop Dreams no matter how old we or the film might be, but there’s special resonance that the movie is turning 30 this year just as we are. In February, we brought the guys together at the first annual SLAM Film Festival to celebrate the 30th anniversary, which kicked off a year-long celebration of the film.

Now, Alamo Drafthouse will be re-releasing the film in theaters this week as part of their 1994 look back series, Project Backboard is refurbishing the court at Garfield Park on Chicago’s West Side as part of JDS Sports’ Play With Purpose initiative, with a court unveiling this weekend, and SLAM will be dropping a capsule collection this Friday. You can join the stars and filmmakers of Hoop Dreams for an exclusive 30th anniversary panel at the prestigious Chicago Humanities Festival on November 9th. For more details and tickets, visit chicagohumanities.org.

Photos via Kartemquin Films.

The post Hoop Dreams: The Iconic Basketball Documentary Remains as Powerful as Ever 30 Years Later appeared first on SLAM.

One of the most successful streetball teams in New York City—year after year after year—is the Sean Bell All-Stars, coached by Jamaica, Queens, native Raheem “Rah” Wiggins. A decorated new short film, Bring Your Name, reminds viewers of the story behind the team’s name.

Sean Bell was a former high school baseball star from Queens celebrating his impending marriage in November, 2006, when he was shot by plain-clothes police officers. He died that night at age 23. Wiggins was a childhood friend of Bell’s who had been inspired to become a basketball coach by New York-area legends Jimmy Salmon and Tiny Morton. Wiggins was already entering streetball tournaments under the team name DDN (Dat’s Dem N—s), but he renamed the squad in honor of his fallen friend. And the team—not a high school AAU squad but a collection of adults, often with pro experience like Lance Stephenson or Tyshawn Taylor—has been a powerhouse ever since.

“We’re the best team in the city,” Wiggins says in the film, which takes you up close and personal to a game at Brooklyn’s Gersh Park. “People ask when I’m gonna walk away? As long as when I lose, people make a big deal out of it, I gotta come back.” He adds later, of the significance of the team’s name: “That’s my job, to keep [Sean’s] name to the public ear.”

Bring Your Name is directed by Raafi Rivero, the filmmaker and artist behind the ongoing Unarmed project, which exists “in memoriam of Black victims of police violence.” Rivero also worked on an upcoming docuseries around the 2024 NBA postseason that will air on ESPN.

Bring Your Name will make its world premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia in August. From there, Rivero hopes to screen it at playground basketball venues in New York City as well as at other film festivals. And what does Rivero want viewers to take away from the film? “I hope they are inspired,” he says, “by the everyday heroism of people like Rah Wiggins.”

Portraits by Jon Lopez.

The post New Short Film Bring Your Name Details How the Sean Bell All-Stars Are Honoring the Memory of the Late New York Hooper appeared first on SLAM.

June 26, 2024. NBA Draft Night. We’re in NYC, where else? AJ Storr is on a Zoom from… Athens, Greece!?! We’ll explain all that in a second. More importantly, he knows the meaning of tonight as a prelude to his future.

“Literally one year from tonight, is it crazy to think you will be up on the stage…” we say before Storr interjects excitedly, “…in a suit and tie!”

Ten points for honesty with this one. Storr, now a rising junior for the world-famous Kansas Jayhawks and a projected 2025 NBA Draft pick, is not dancing around a topic many college players with eligibility remaining play hot potato with. “Yes,” Storr confirms, “I’m planning to be in the draft next year.”

Now that we have that very logical business decision covered, let’s backtrack and share one of the most unique and thoroughly modern basketball journeys of any high-profile player in the world.

We’ll start with the world business. Storr is in Greece at the moment because the Bahamian national team, of which he recently made the roster (pending some lingering paperwork), is playing a couple of exhibition games before an Olympic qualifying tournament in Spain that will determine if the small island nation with the increasingly outsized basketball talent advances to Paris.

The 6-7 Storr, a smooth-shooting, scoring guard tied to The Bahamas because his father was born there, is excited to be in Greece. Partly for the experience of what he calls his “world tour,” but even more so for the chance to play with folks who have gotten where he wants to go. Bahamas basketball has quietly built an explosive roster featuring current NBA players Deandre Ayton, Eric Gordon, Buddy Hield, Kai Jones and Isaiah Mobley, as well as other talented college and pro players. The squad is coached by longtime Golden State Warriors assistant Chris DeMarco.

“It is a really great experience to be out there with all these pros,” Storr says, a day after scoring 15 points (on 7-9 shooting) in a 93-80 loss to Montenegro. “I played a couple of games with them last summer and then we had training camp in Houston earlier this month, and now I’m playing real games with them. It’s great to be around all this talent.”

Whenever The Bahamas’ run ends, the world is on notice that it’s a program to watch out for in the future, and then Storr will have more time to spend in his latest “home”—Lawrence, KS. And what a home it is. Perhaps the most storied program in all of college basketball—“I hadn’t known that James Naismith founded the program here. That’s who founded basketball!” Storr exclaims—and a program with typically high expectations for the ’24-25 season. As ESPN’s Jeff Borzello put it in his recent “Way-Too-Early Top 25,” the Jayhawks are No. 1 after Bill Self responded to a disappointing ’23-24 “with the most loaded roster in the country. He went into the portal and landed AJ Storr (Wisconsin), Zeke Mayo (South Dakota State) and Rylan Griffen (Alabama); then, All-American big man Hunter Dickinson opted to return for another year.”

It says here that Storr, with a shooting touch that the Jayhawks sorely missed last season, may be the biggest piece of the puzzle. As for all the places he’s been before Kansas, that unfolds like a bit of a puzzle in its own way.

This young man is in the sweet spot for a proper SLAM profile because he’s “big” enough—thanks to playing one year in New York City and another year going viral as the athletic leading scorer for B1G power Wisconsin—to be heard of but without his full story being known because he was not a super high-profile recruit. We’ll tell you the story now so you’ll be in the know when he blows up even more at Kansas and then flies into the NBA in 12 months.

Storr grew up in Rockford, IL, a city of nearly 150,000 about 90 minutes west of Chicago. It’s most relevant in modern hoops as the home of current Houston Rocket Fred VanVleet. AJ came up alongside one older sister, Ambranette, who scored more than 2,900 points in her high school career before playing in college, and five younger brothers, raised primarily by his mother, Annette Brandy—a former Chicago high school star who played in college as well—and his stepfather.

AJ attended Rockford Lutheran as a high school freshman, showing promise as a hooper who was still just 6-1. After that, a ride started that has yet to end. The family moved to the South Chicago suburb of Kankakee when his mom, a teacher, got a better job offer, and AJ spent his sophomore and most of his junior year at Kankakee High. Then Covid hit. As Brandy explains, it was time to make some decisions. “The whole state of Illinois shut down. He had some offers—Chicago State, IUPUI—but he still hadn’t gotten major looks. We knew he was a Power Five kid, he just hadn’t been seen,” she says. “His dad lived in Vegas, and AJ was hesitant about it, but I convinced him to go. Build a relationship with your dad and put yourself out there with basketball.”

It worked. Storr started playing for Vegas Elite and Bishop Gorman High School and his exposure—and ranking—skyrocketed. He was set to play his senior season for Bishop Gorman and then…Clark County, NV (which includes Las Vegas) announced there would be no winter sports due to Covid. “After Vegas shut down, he transferred to AZ Compass and they made it all the way to the GEICO Nationals,” his mom says. “By then he had gotten a lot of offers, but I thought he needed to mature a bit.”

So it was off to renowned IMG Academy in Florida for a post-grad year that went great. In the end, AJ had attended five high schools in five years, albeit for reasons that were outside his control. When the time came to make his official college choice, Storr enrolled at St. John’s, firmly hitting the (admittedly biased) radar of the #SLAMfam’s college fans by putting together a Big East All-Freshman campaign highlighted by 40 percent shooting from three-point range, 9 ppg and an exciting style of play. Alas, the Johnnies fired Mike Anderson and Storr decided to transfer back to the Midwest, putting together an All-B1G Second Team season (17 ppg, 4 rpg, 1 apg) in Madison and establishing himself as a future pro. Storr flirted with entering this year’s draft before instead deciding to transfer one more time. To the best team in the county. 

“Playing for all the different teams has really helped my IQ. I’ve learned different plays, different coaches, different cultures,” Storr says, explaining the benefits of his journey. “Off the court, every school has welcomed me and made it like a family. I’ve got friends from every school.”

In Storr’s mind, the ascension from unknown high schooler to likely first-round NBA pick is not because he recently got good at the sport. For better or worse, exposure still matters. “I’ve been pretty good at basketball my whole life, but I had to get around the right platform and coaches and take advantage of the opportunities,” he says. “St John’s is in a great conference. Then I went to the Big Ten and the Badgers, who have made Final Four runs and are known worldwide. Being there helped me a lot. Now I’m looking forward to taking my game to another level at Kansas.”

Storr describes himself as very coachable and has learned bits and pieces from all the coaches he’s played for, but none of them have been around him consistently enough to have developed a deep mentorship. For daily support as he pursues his dream, Storr points to the people who have been around the longest. “I’ve got a team with my mom, my sister, my management,” he says. “It takes a team to accomplish your dream. You can be the most talented player, but if you don’t have the right people around you, you’re not going to make it.”

For her part, Mom could not be prouder. “I’m so excited for him,” says Brandy, who recently got a new job—and bought a house—back in Rockford. “He has put in so much work to get here.”

And to reiterate, Storr himself views his varied experiences as a positive. “My game translates to a lot of different places,” he says. “I know how to buy into a program. I respect all my coaches. I’m a great teammate. Once you step on that court or in the weight room, you become brothers. Where I’m trying to go, you gotta be prepared. In the NBA, guys get traded all the time. So this could be an advantage.”

Portraits via Missy Minear Kansas Athletics.

The post From Undiscovered to Unrivaled, AJ Storr Has His Sights Set on the League After Transferring to Kansas appeared first on SLAM.

South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, is, as I write this, the proud home of a national basketball team hooping in the Paris Olympics, an outrageous accomplishment for a strife-ridden nation that has only existed since 2011.

Even if this program was led by people that no one at SLAM had ever heard of, the accomplishment is so grand it warrants our attention. Alas, it’s led by two of our favorite people in the sport, gentlemen who have been bringing smiles to us and all who love the game for almost as long as SLAM has been around: Luol Deng and Royal Ivey.

Deng, who most of you should know from his longtime NBA career, if not the many remarkable steps in his life path before or since, is the crux of this story. I learned about Luol around 2000, when his older brother, Ajou, was a highly touted recruit at UConn and agents started whispering about a younger brother they called “Louie” who would be even better than Ajou. By late 2002, I was hanging out at Blair Academy for a feature on then-Blair senior Luol and his teammate, Queens’ legend and future NBAer Charlie Villanueva. Luol was certainly one of the most impressive teenagers I’ve ever spoken to (as if writing about high schoolers for SLAM wasn’t enough exposure, now I have a teen of my own), and he came with a breathtaking backstory. 

Born in the southern part of Sudan when it was still one country in the throes of a civil war, Luol and his mother and siblings fled the country for a safer life in Egypt in 1990, and in ’94, they reunited with his politician father, Aldo, in London. Luol spent some formative years in the South London neighborhood of Brixton, picking up a proper love for Arsenal and football but also hooping all the time. And growing. Luol followed Ajou’s footsteps in coming to America for prep school, which is how we found him at Blair. And he wasn’t just a nice kid playing some ball while getting a quality education to set himself up for a college scholarship; he was the second-best player in his high school class. Literally, pretty much every 2003 high school ranking system or all-star game had a No. 1 and No. 2 player. Luol was No. 2. No. 1 was LeBron James.

Deng went to Duke for one season, leading the Blue Devils to the Final Four (where they lost by 1 point to Villanueva’s UConn team, ironically). Deng was the seventh pick in the ’04 Draft and began a 10-year stint with the Bulls that featured two All-Star appearances, two seasons leading the NBA in minutes per game and a ton of playoff games. This was mostly the Thibs-Derrick Rose Bulls, and Deng was the engine that made them go. He played five more seasons after Chicago to give himself a tidy 15-year career in which he was absolutely beloved by his coaches and teammates and always a pleasure to chat with in locker rooms (especially if I led with Arsenal check-ins). 

Deng was not satisfied just being a star on the court, though. Off it, he created the Luol Deng Foundation and was regularly going back to London and Africa to take part in various charitable efforts and basketball events designed to grow the game. In 2021, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, which is one of those very British things that, at least in Great Britain, means that he should be presented as Luol Deng OBE; becoming “Sir Luol Deng” might happen in the future. At the same time that he was making his mark with charitable work in his adopted home of England, Deng was reigniting his relationship with his real home of South Sudan. He’d been named President of the South Sudan Basketball Federation in 2019 and began spending more time there. “Imagine your family fleeing a country and going to find life somewhere else,” Deng says in a mini-doc about the team qualifying for the Olympics that was shared with SLAM. “And instead of you being in that other country and forgetting about South Sudan and enjoying your professional basketball career, you’re actually committing to come back and play for that same country that you fled because of the war, and you’re the one now bringing all this positivity to it.”

Beautifully said, Luol. Unsurprisingly for a country of less than 13 million that has been around only 13 years—and suffered through internal fighting and development challenges the whole time—building a basketball program was not a priority. But there is a heritage of the sport there and in the people who come from there, beginning with famed NBA shot blocker Manute Bol (who originally inspired Deng and his brothers) and continuing with Deng, former Syracuse star Kueth Duany, Manute’s son (and SLAM fave) Bol Bol and heading into the future with young stars like Khaman Maluach, a 17-year-old incoming freshman at Duke who is projected to be a top-five pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

Since his appointment as president of the SSBF, Deng has instilled structure around the team and sought to get the best players from the South Sudanese diaspora suiting up for the country of their roots. Things coalesced last summer when South Sudan, playing in its first-ever FIBA World Cup, earned an Olympic berth by finishing as the highest-ranked team from Africa.  

If Deng has been the SSBF’s Jerry West—the retired legend now building a roster with guile and conviction—Royal Ivey has been their Pat Riley, a retired role player turned motivational master as head coach.

Ivey, currently an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets, has been on my radar since 1999, when he led what was once unquestionably the #SLAMfam’s favorite high school, Queens’ (NY) Cardozo (shout out Ronnie Z and Coach Naclerio!), to an NYC PSAL title, earning MVP honors in a 57-47 win at Madison Square Garden that gave Naclerio, now the winningest coach in New York State public school history, his very first title. 

After graduating from Cardozo with that ’99 title on his CV, Ivey spent a post-grad year at Blair where he played alongside…a young Luol Deng. “Luol has been like my little brother since I met him his freshman year at Blair,” says Ivey over Zoom from Kigali, Rwanda, where the South Sudan team is holding pre-Olympic training camp. “I was older and I wanted to protect him, but he was also motivation to me. I was 17 years old and he was 13, waking me up at 6 a.m. to get in the gym. Then we were in the same draft class and we’d hang out in Chicago and stay in touch. Later on, I worked his camps in London.”

Ivey was a 6-3 2-guard who couldn’t shoot all that well, but he always played hard—especially on defense—and he was a great teammate. He played four years at the University of Texas, reaching the ’03 Final Four and making such a mark with his intangibles that he was the 37th pick in the ’04 NBA Draft despite four-year college averages of 8 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists per game.

Ivey’s numbers were even lower in the pros, but he lasted a decade in the League and then, after his final stint with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2014, OKC GM Sam Presti asked if Ivey would serve as an assistant with their G League team, the Blue. Ivey’s been on the coaching grind ever since. 

“The way I got this job was crazy,” Ivey shares today. “I was watching Luol coach [South Sudan] on Instagram. I’m coaching in New York. [Then-Knicks head coach David] Fizdale gets fired. I was looking for a new opportunity and I was intrigued about helping Luol move forward. I told him I’d love to be part of the staff. You don’t have to be a part, Luol told me. I want you to run this thing.”

And with that, the two—friends through two wild decades in the business of basketball—were off and running, coming out of the pandemic with a fast playing style and the buy-in of more and more good players. South Sudan has plenty of work to do as a nation, but when the basketball team, nicknamed the Bright Stars, plays and wins, there’s a national pride that is not typically on display. “We’re here to put South Sudan on the map,” Ivey says. “We’re here to heal. To bring a country together through sports is something life-changing. I’ve been there and touched the ground and touched the people.”

Adds Deng in the mini-doc: “I want these guys to realize what sports does for the country. Sports is gonna be the vehicle of unity.”

Clearly, there’s a full-length movie to be made here. I know I’ll watch it.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post Building the Foundation: Luol Deng and Royal Ivey on the Rise of South Sudan’s National Basketball Team appeared first on SLAM.

We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.

Most players in the “SLAM 30” would, honestly, be in most basketball outlets’ rankings of the most relevant 30 players of the last three decades. Brandon Jennings, however, is a special case. Thanks to a truly symbiotic relationship made possible by Brandon’s love of SLAM, the people he surrounded himself with and our admitted bias to players who fuck with us as hard as we fuck with them, BJ is like “our” All-Star.

The relationship started regularly enough—not that it didn’t mean the world to a young Brandon. He got what we used to call a “little Punk” story in our high school section, shot in his Compton (CA) Dominguez uniform and interviewed by Ryan Jones. Just a sophomore at the time, Jennings remembers it fondly. “That was my first look in SLAM,” he says on a recent Zoom. “In the Dominguez locker room. I was so fucking excited! Like, Everybody is gonna see me. I’m known now. The SLAM thing was always the biggest thing in sports and basketball magazines. When you did the cover shoot with Sebastian [Telfair] and LeBron James and I was a kid in the 7th grade…I had to be like them. SLAM was always that stamp of approval.” 

Jennings’ path got more unique from there—as a player and a SLAM subject—as he transferred to Oak Hill Academy in VA for his last two years of high school. Not a shocking move, but to travel all the way from L.A. and go for two years was rather brave. BJ made a couple appearances in SLAM/related pubs while he was a Warrior. In August ’07, while in NYC for the second annual Elite 24 game (in which, he proudly reminds me, he set a record that was never broken for assists in the game with 23), he posed for the cover of our special PUNKS magazine alongside fellow top guards Jrue Holiday, Tyreke Evans and Lance Stephenson. Half a year later, back in the Big Apple for the Jordan Brand Classic, we shot Jennings at Grand Central Terminal for our High School All-American First Team. He’s got fond memories of both shoots but does share the one gripe he has with us in our long history. “I’m not gonna front—I was mad I didn’t get the diary that year,” Jennings says of the storied column that was penned by Evans that season.

Jennings’ path took two massively unexpected turns after high school. For one, the University of Arizona commit chose not to wait out any debates surrounding his academic eligibility and turned pro—in Italy! For another, he did so in Under Armours, becoming the first signing the famous “football” brand ever made in hoops. UA’s foray into basketball was largely led by Kris Stone, a former SLAM Advertising Manager who had a flair for marketing, a belief in Brandon and a loyalty to the Basketball Bible. We became, in many ways, the perfect place for UA to hype its move—with Jennings at the forefront. And since we’re always suckers for good access to a dope baller with personality—we were down. After a couple more small appearances in our pages, Jennings’ next SLAM hit was big time: the European adventurer was on the cover of SLAM 128 next to a more conventional Continental prospect—Spanish wunderkind Ricky Rubio. 

Future Shock, indeed.

“That was so unreal for me,” Jennings recalls today. “The decision I’d made. Ricky being who he was. I was a little nervous. The first time I met him was at that shoot, the night before we played against each other in Barcelona. I met his mom, too, rest in peace. Ricky and I just shared a little chit-chat that day. We knew we were about to do some big shit.”

Jennings’ time in the L came sooner than Rubio’s. A little while after that cover, he was in the 2009 Draft, going 10th overall to the Milwaukee Bucks. And soon after that, in just his seventh NBA game, Jennings dropped 55 points. On the Golden State Warriors and their rookie PG, Stephen Curry. What were we supposed to do? Put him on his first solo cover, of course. Behold SLAM 135, an Adam Fleischer-Atiba Jefferson production that featured Jennings bursting off the front page in a fire red Bucks uni. “That meant that I made it,” Jennings says. “I was that kid running to the store to get that magazine. Now I’m on the cover. That was a full-circle moment.”

Jennings played all 82 as a rook and copped a solo KICKS cover the next summer. He’d go on to play 555 games in the League, bouncing from Milwaukee to a few different spots before finishing his career as a Buck in ’18. It was an appropriate ending, because it connected Jennings to the Giannis Era in Milwaukee and greatly extended the lifespan of his #BucksInSix quote.

And even though he stopped playing, Jennings has stayed fresh and relevant. Most notably, he’s the founder of streetwear brand Tuff Crowd. And in another full-circle moment, the brand recently collabed with Under Armour and its current signature hooper, none other than Curry. 

You’ll never guess where you can read more about it…

Photo by Atiba Jefferson. Featured image via Getty Images.

The post THE 30 PLAYERS WHO DEFINED SLAM’S 30 YEARS: Brandon Jennings appeared first on SLAM.

We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.

Where does he fit on your list? Top 50 ever? Top-five shooting guard? Shoot, a lot of people have him third after the anointed two of MJ and Kobe. Dwyane Wade’s exact placement in the pantheon doesn’t even matter. He’s an all-timer, and no one will ever argue that.

And this same dude, a little more than two decades ago, had to call a press conference to announce if he was turning pro or returning to college. For his senior season. In an era when high schoolers were going in the lottery regularly. And the press conference’s outcome was hardly a given. Media in attendance, to say nothing of Marquette University’s fan base, really didn’t know what Wade was going to announce about his plans. Why do I have such vivid memories of a relatively small moment in a Wade career that was filled with much bigger ones? I was there. I pretty much shadowed Dwyane that whole day, much of it with our man Atiba Jefferson by my side taking photos.

How was this future legend not already in the League like many of his peers? He was the type of late bloomer the game rarely creates these days. Wade was lightly recruited out of Richards High School in Illinois, a suburban school just southwest of Chicago, in part because he was trending toward being academically ineligible as a freshman. He chose Marquette because then-MU coach Tom Crean made Wade his number-one target and promised him he’d take Wade even if he had to sit out a season—which he did. 

As such, Wade did not really become a “national” name at all until he was a sophomore in college. That’s also the year he made his very first appearance in SLAM, a slim “In Your Face” in Issue 62 in which we spelled his first name “Dwayne” [absolutely pathetic, if not as bad as the biter hoops magazine making that mistake on its cover years later.—(Previous) Ed.]. That issue featured high schoolers LeBron James (a recurring theme) and Sebastian Telfair on the cover. Unless this is the first time you’ve read SLAM, you know that the GOATs rarely make it past 16 or at least high school before gracing our pages.

The feature I wrote off the day I spent with Dwyane in Milwaukee (he did indeed declare for the ’03 Draft) ran in SLAM 71. The story—graced with beautiful black and white photographs by Atiba—began immediately after Ryan’s classic story on LeBron, who was making his first solo appearance on our cover. A bit of foreshadowing, all this. LeBron did and has outshined Dwyane, sure. But the closeness of the pages is also analogous to how much closer their careers would prove to be than anyone imagined. Bron was The Chosen One. Dwyane was the unknown. But from that day and story onward, the floodgates were open. 

On the court, Wade was a success from the jump, finishing third in the ’04 ROY voting after averaging 16.2 ppg (Bron won, naturally). By year three, dude was averaging 27.2 per and was an NBA champion—and runaway Finals MVP at that. By 2010, a ring-less LeBron felt compelled to leave Cleveland for South Beach to team up with Wade and their ’03 Draft classmate, Chris Bosh, to chase titles. And it worked. LeBron got his first two. Dwyane ended the partnership with three to his name.

That’s how many rings Wade would end up with, but the accomplishments and accolades flowed well through the 2010s. The 6-4 2-guard ended his 16-year NBA career with per-game averages of 22 points, 4.7 rebounds and 5.4 assists, with 13 All-Star appearances and 12 All-League honors to his name. Save for brief stretches in Chicago and Cleveland, the uber-tough Wade spent his career in Miami, embodying #HeatCulture and cementing himself as the greatest player in that franchise’s short but storied history.

Off the court, Wade followed a groundbreaking footwear path that started with Converse, detoured as he became the face of Jordan Brand and ended with a literally game-changing deal with Li-Ning. He married Hollywood superstar Gabrielle Union. He’s become a vocal champion of trans rights in the wake of his daughter’s gender transition. And he made up for his late start with SLAM, appearing countless times in our pages, from McDavid ads (!) to champs issues to a handful of classic solo covers—SLAM 127, “Tropic Thunder” being my personal favorite.

In ’22, Wade received an honorary degree from Marquette and gave the commencement address to that year’s graduating class. Last August, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. 

But in so many ways, the journey from little-known amateur to globally renowned professional began on that April day in 2003 when he announced he was leaving Marquette. 

And Teebz and I were there. 

Portrait by Atiba Jefferson. Photo via Getty Images.

The post THE 30 PLAYERS WHO DEFINED SLAM’S 30 YEARS: Dwyane Wade appeared first on SLAM.

We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.

The coolest play in the coolest sport in the world is the slam dunk. We love it so much we named our magazine after it, and we’re hardly alone in our obsession/fascination. And as neat as they can be in contrived dunk contests or glorified exhibition games that may also go by the names “streetball” and “All-Star Games,” the greatest dunks of all happen in games. And NBA games are the highest form of the game in the world. And now, for everyone from the front to the back to hear loud and clear: VINCE CARTER IS THE GREATEST IN-GAME DUNKER IN HISTORY.

The run he went on during his truncated Rookie of the Year campaign in 1999 through the Sydney Olympics in 2000 [Doug Collins: “He jumped OVER HIS HEAD”] and maybe another season or two in Toronto had never been seen before. “Fine,” you say. “Dunkers have evolved. Elgin to Doc to MJ to Vince. Of course someone at the turn of the millennium was iller than a dude from the ’70s.” Yeah, well, no one has done it like that since either. And it’s been more than two decades! Go through the SLAM archives and read the SLAMadamonths from back then. They were almost all Vince, and only Russ could make the monotony seem fresh. Or if YouTube’s more your thing, here’s a PSA that will be old news to longtime SLAM and SLAMonline readers but new to many of you: check out “Matt Adam’s Infamous Vince Carter Mixtape” below and sit back.

Nine-plus minutes of joy, and irrefutable proof of the in-game dunker assertion I made earlier.

If Figs and SPT told me to write 250 or so words about VC’s inclusion on this exclusive list, I’d call it a day and feel my work is done. That’s how memorable and impactful Vince Carter’s run as the GOAT dunker was.

Alas, they need more words, and he actually impacted the game three other big-time ways. 

The first is that he saved the NBA in Canada. When Carter got traded to the Raptors on Draft night in 1998, they stunk and their colleagues in Vancouver were even worse—and on the fast track to moving to Memphis. Carter’s arrival on NBA courts, fresh off a terrible lockout and the retirement of Michael Jordan, was a boon to the entire League, sure, but it had actual resonance in Canada. “The most exciting player in the NBA plays in Toronto,” was not a sentence anyone—let alone Canucks—ever expected to utter. He the North, indeed. Not to keep giving you video-watching assignments, but there’s literally a documentary about this: The Carter Effect. Stream and learn.

Another incredible fact about Carter that deserves major props is that he played the third-most games in NBA history. More than Stockton and Malone. More than KG. More than LeBron (at least when you read this). The only players who’ve played more games than Vince Carter are Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who are ineligible for this list because they didn’t play in the SLAM era (the Chief did barely, but you get the point). So at 1,541, Vince Carter is the games-played leader in SLAM history. Further inexorable proof of his relevance and also a stat that you never would have fathomed in those early days when he was literally jumping over defenders. Because as you’d imagine, that style of play came with injury risk, and for much of his career, VC was labeled injury-prone. But he got better at avoiding contact, got better at shooting from distance and morphed into a locker-room favorite who could provide some pop off the bench until he was 43 years young. 

Last but not least, VC deserves eternal props for his impact on the sneaker game. He played in fly Nikes and Jordans at UNC before becoming the rare NBAer to rock Pumas as an NBA rookie. By his second year in the L, he was having issues with Puma and had a stretch of de facto free agency. This led to him wearing the AND1 Tai Chis for the 2000 Dunk Contest. No shade to those shoes, which are classics, but it says here that Vince’s iconic wearing of them is the reason the shoes have lived on to this day. VC circled back to Nike for the balance of his career and rocked pure heat. To quote the famous campaign and one of the more genius SLAMadamonths in Russ’ oeuvre: “Boing.” 

Photo via Getty Images.

The post THE 30 PLAYERS WHO DEFINED SLAM’S 30 YEARS: Vince Carter appeared first on SLAM.

Important reminder: there was women’s basketball before the WNBA, and there were players who helped elevate the game the whole time. The W has helped take the sport to a whole new level, and for that we are all thankful—and excited to see what’s next. But women were hooping way before David Stern and his gang got involved.

As the authors Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford detail in their 2005 book, Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball, women have been playing the sport since 1892. If we at WSLAM are allowed to use this platform to encourage further research on this topic, we’ve got it for you. Read the aforementioned book, and visit the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, TN. Completing these “assignments” will give you a sense of just how wide this sport’s reach has been and just how many memorable players have influenced
the game’s history. 

For the time being though, we really wanted to concentrate on five players from the pre-W era who we feel every fan of women’s basketball must know about. Some of the players we considered—that we can perhaps cover in the future or that you can simply look up—include Molly Bolin, Joan Crawford, Denise Curry, Anne Donovan, Hortencia Marcari, Pearl Moore, Uljana Semjonova, Theresa Shank-Grentz and Ora Washington. There were also folks who, whether you think of them as pre-W or not, did play in the W era, such as Nancy Lieberman, Katrina McClain and Lynette Woodard.

In the meantime, consider this a Cliffs Notes of sorts. This is an all-WSLAM, pre-WNBA team that would have lost exactly zero games and consists of players that we promise would have been in editions of SLAM/WSLAM had we existed back then.

All fans of the sport should know every single person listed, all members of the inaugural class of inductees into the aforementioned Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999. Class is in session.

Cheryl Miller: The GOAT

It is not sacrilege to say that women’s basketball was not a big part of the zeitgeist when many old-school SLAM staffers—or the mag itself—were growing up. But Cheryl Miller? She seemed to float above the sexism and noise to just be known as a baller. A 6-2 small forward who could score from anywhere on the floor, Miller was a four-time Parade All-American during an outrageous high school career in Riverside, CA, that once saw her put up 105 points in a game her senior year. Miller basically repeated her high school exploits at the college level, staying close to home to star at USC where she again received All-American honors all four years. She led the Trojans to national championships in ’83 and ’84 and posted career numbers that border on the absurd.

Over a four-year, 128-game college career, Miller averaged 23.6 points, 12 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 3.6 steals and 2.5 blocks per game. There was nothing she couldn’t do on the court, and she did it all with a flair and grace that transcended the sport. In the summer of ’84, Miller was the star of the US Olympic team that won Gold right at home in L.A. She hurt her knee soon after college, or else she surely would have made it as a pro with some combination of men’s teams, overseas women’s outfits or hanging on til ’97 and playing the first few years of the W like some of her contemporaries. And yes—her brother is Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, an all-time great in his own right. But don’t get it twisted—Cheryl was the far better player.

Carol Blazejowski The Blaze

A 5-10 shooter with the perfect nickname for a quick scorer, Blazejowski was a late-blooming baller from New Jersey who didn’t get serious about the game until she was a senior at Cranford High School. The Blaze moved just up the Parkway for college, becoming a three-time All-American at Montclair State from 1976-78. Playing before there was a three-point line, Blazejowski nonetheless scored a nation’s best 33.5 ppg in ’76-77 (including a Madison Square Garden-record 52 points in a March win over Queens College) and 38.6 ppg in ’77-78 (including topping 40 in her last three collegiate contests.)

Her hoop options after college were AAU and international play, and she excelled at the latter, winning gold at the ’79 World University Games and FIBA World Championships, where she led Team USA in scoring. She would have been a star on the ’80 Olympic team, but the US boycotted that summer’s Games in Moscow. Blazejowski signed a reported three-year, $150,000 deal with the New Jersey Gems of the short-lived WBL but the league did not last. Fittingly for a woman who set MSG on fire with her performance as a college player, Blaze returned to the Garden as vice president and general manager of the Liberty in ’97 and worked for the W’s flagship franchise through 2010.

Lusia Harris-Stewart: The Queen

A product of the deep South, Harris was one of 11 children born to the sharecropper Willie Harris. All of them hooped, but the 6-3 Lusia had a special gift. A classic big who piled up points and rebounds, Harris attended (barely) integrated Delta State University where she played for legendary coach Margaret Wade (whose name is on the annual Wade Trophy, awarded to the best women’s college player). Harris helped make Delta State the preeminent power of the AIAW, which was the biggest platform for women’s college sports in the ’70s. The only Black player on her team, Harris led Delta State to AIAW championships in ’75, ’76 and ’77 and finished her college career with per-game averages of 25.9 points and 14.4 rebounds. She was also the leading scorer for Team USA at the 1976 Olympics.

Harris achieved notoriety when the NBA’s New Orleans Jazz chose her in the seventh round of the Draft, but she declined the chance to try out for them and was largely out of the sport’s spotlight after that, living a quiet life as a married mother in Mississippi. Lusia’s story got a well-deserved injection of attention with the release of the 2021 documentary, The Queen of Basketball. Directed by Ben Proudfoot with Stephen Curry and Shaquille O’Neal listed as executive producers, the film won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) just months after Harris-Stewart passed away at the age of 66. Needless to say, the film is a must-watch for readers of this issue.   

Ann Meyers Drysdale: The Athlete

Born into a sports-loving family in Southern California, the 5-9 Meyers’ high school career(s) alone is the stuff of legend: she lettered in seven different sports and won 13 (!) different MVP awards. Meyers then attended UCLA from 1974-78, where she became the first woman to ever receive a four-year athletic scholarship. UCLA more than got its money’s worth from the deal as Meyers was a star the whole time she was in Westwood. She was a four-time All-American and concluded her college career by leading the Bruins to the ’78 AIAW championship. Meyers also hit the podium for Team USA repeatedly in the late-’70s. After college she became the first-ever pick in the WBL and was co-MVP of the fledgling league in ’79-80. Shortly thereafter, she signed a contract with the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and had a legit tryout with them.

When her playing career ended, she pivoted into a ground-breaking, lengthy and extremely successful career as a broadcaster for the likes of the Pacers, Phoenix Suns, WNBA and the Olympics. As for the Drysdale part of her last name? That came when she married former Los Angeles Dodger pitching great Don Drysdale in ’86. When Meyers was voted into the Hoop Hall in ’93, they became the first married couple ever with both parties in their respective Hall of Fames.

Nera White: The Pioneer

Pre-WNBA can still feel like near-modern history when the players in question can still be seen on TV broadcasts and around the sport. But the women’s game has people who built it even before hooping in college was a realistic option. The greatest of the game’s true building blocks from the playing side of things has got to be Nera White. A native of Tennessee who played primarily for Nashville Business College’s AAU team, the 6-1 White was an AAU All-American 15 years in a row (1955-69) and won the AAU Tournament’s MVP award 10 times. As the Basketball Hall of Fame puts it in her bio, White was “quite simply faster, quicker and stronger than most women of that generation.”

Women’s basketball was not an Olympic sport until 1976, but the FIBA women’s World Championship has been around since 1953. White made her mark on that tourney in 1957 in Brazil, when the US faced the Soviet Union for the first time in a major competition. The Americans won the title game over the Soviets, 51-48, wrapping up MVP honors for White, who averaged a team-high 14.1 ppg for the event. White’s performance earned her the unofficial title of best female player in the world, which she could stake a claim to for years after.

Photos via Getty Images.

WSLAM 3 features cover stars A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young.

The post The Hall of Famers Who Helped Pave the Way Long Before the WNBA—from Cheryl Miller to Nera White appeared first on SLAM.

Named in honor of his uniform number, the curvy, almost dream-like (I see puffy clouds) KB8 was considered an addition to the Feet You Wear line that Bryant had rocked previously, with its round edges making the silhouette extra agile, comfortable and good looking. The KB8’s tech features—mesh lining, EVA midsoles and adi’s Torsion system—made it one of the most advanced basketball shoes to hit the market. Unsurprisingly to those who know the game, Bryant’s second season in the NBA represented a major step forward: he started the All-Star Game, upped his scoring average to 15.4 ppg and helped the Lakers reach the Western Conference Finals for the first of many times in his career. On the court, his star only grew. Adidas rode Kobe’s wave straight through a number of signature releases and three straight NBA championships before the brand and player had a falling out during the 2002 offseason.

After an epic ’02-03 sneaker free agent season that saw Bryant play in a variety of non-adidas sneakers, he famously signed with Nike and wore the Swoosh for the remainder of his career. A 20-year Laker who scored more points than anyone ever has in the iconic purple and gold (mostly wearing Nikes), Kobe is thought of by many fans as a Nike guy, which is fine. But old heads know: Kobe entered the game in adidas, and when history carved out a pair for him, it was the KB8. Bryant’s departure from adidas meant the brand could no longer use his name or initials on any product, but adidas knew a winning shoe when they had one. Rechristened the Crazy 8 and retroed for the first time in ’07, the classic kicks have been seen on the likes of Derrick Rose (during his ’10-11 MVP campaign, no less), Justin Bieber (during the 2011 Celebrity All-Star Game) and various young adidas NBA athletes through the years. They cause a stir every time they come back on the market. Clearly, Crazy 8s will be here forever.

BUY YOUR COPY OF SLAMKICKS PRESENTS TOP 100: THE GREATEST BASKETBALL SNEAKERS OF ALL TIME

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THIS EMAIL IS CONFIDENTIAL. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE ITS CONTENTS WITH ANYONE.

So it began. Was the Duke student who received this email—from a university email address—in trouble? Not exactly. 

You have been identified as a potential candidate for the position of Blue Devil Mascot. If this is something you would be interested in pursuing, simply reply “yes” by noon (12:00 p.m.) on Thursday and you will receive additional information and instructions. If, on the other hand, becoming the ultimate Cameron Crazy, the face of Duke University and Duke Athletics, and having either floor or front-row seats to all basketball games does not appeal to you, simply disregard this email and discuss it with nobody. Again, this email is confidential.

The Duke Men’s Basketball program is known most of all for the legendary coaching run that Mike Krzyzewski just completed, and after that for the scores of great players who have played there and the arena in which they’ve done it.

But please don’t sleep on the Blue Devil’s role in making the program so iconic. 

This is actually the perfect time to take stock of the Blue Devil’s history, given that this year is the 100th anniversary of his being around, a fact that Lisa Weistart, who was the Blue Devil from ’90-92 and now works at Duke Alumni Engagement and Development, figured out while researching the mascot’s history a few years back. 

To celebrate the occasion, there was a Blue Devil reunion at this fall’s Homecoming Weekend, and 16 of the former mascots showed up to celebrate.

“It was awesome,” gushes Stratton Thomas, who graduated last spring after serving as a Blue Devil for all four of his years on campus. “It was so cool to meet mascots all the way from the ’70s. They really shaped the program and the history and the mascot that I was. It was really cool to see how near and dear being a mascot was, even after 30, 50 years, however long it was.”

The name “The Blue Devils” was chosen by the staff of the student paper after naming contests focused on nicknames that leaned into Duke’s blue and white color scheme. Beyond the obvious fit with colors, Blue Devils served as an ode to the Chasseurs Alpins, also known as “les diables bleus” (“The Blue Devils”), a French military unit in World War I that wore blue jackets and had impressed many Duke students and alumni returning home from the Western Front. 

Well after the university’s sports teams started playing under the Blue Devils nickname, a uniformed mascot was created to cheer on the team and get crowds fired up. Previous versions looked relatively mischievous, but the current look (which has been around since ’08) is more playful, as befits a character who brings joy to all who encounter it. Except opposing fans, of course.

“We always love having the Blue Devil around,” says former player and current assistant coach Amile Jefferson. “His antics and swagger are on another level. We’ve been fortunate to have so many students over the years bring the passion, energy and creativity required to make sure the Blue Devil is locked in for us. Cameron isn’t Cameron without the Blue Devil roaming the sidelines in there.”

These days, the Blue Devil can be found at all men’s and women’s basketball home games, numerous neutral-site hoop games, including Final Fours, all football games (home and away) and assorted other sporting events. The costumes are slightly different if a Blue Devil is attending a basketball or football game. Even with the remarkable success Duke Athletics has had as a whole, the athletic program is certainly best known because of its men’s basketball team, and that’s where the Blue Devil really shows off his skills.

“My freshman year, I was friends with a cheerleader who noticed I was at every game and a bit more enthusiastic than most fans. It was my sophomore year of 2008-09 when I got the mysterious email,” recalls Pat Rutter. (Don’t worry, Pat, we won’t tell anyone where we got it.) “I started being the Blue Devil that winter and did it through my senior year. I took over the Blue Devil email address, started the Twitter account.”

The email address is important because that’s where the Devil is contacted about appearances, including attending weddings. While all the work at official sporting events is volunteer, those who work outside events as the Devil can make a few bucks, which seems more than fair. 

“It was pretty good money for a college student,” confirms Rutter. 

But the greatest pay the job offered was the experiences, like traveling to Final Fours and surfing the crowd at Cameron.

“I have no bad memories at all,” says Thomas, the recently graduated Blue Devil. “I’ve got two favorite memories. The first is my sophomore year at the [2K] Empire Classic in New York. It was my dad’s birthday [for] one of those games. I did my headband to say, ‘Happy Birthday Dad’ and one of the announcers was like, I didn’t know the Blue Devil had a father!?! The other memory is last year’s Final Four. Even though it didn’t go the way we hoped, getting to travel to the Final Four in New Orleans and be on the court with 75,000 people screaming down at you while you act like a fool was amazing.”

Last year’s Final Four was extra special, of course, because it represented the end of Coach K’s illustrious career and the rare chance to play archrival North Carolina on the game’s biggest stage. Playing such a familiar rival also meant the mascots could put on a little extra show.

“The Rameses at the Final Four was one of my good buddies,” says Thomas of the UNC mascot. “We’d each been mascotting since our freshman year so we played with each other really well. When it’s a rival school, the interactions are definitely heightened as we can get in character more, give the people a bit of a show.”

Bringing up Rameses raises the question of where the Blue Devil ranks among the iconic collegiate mascots. Some Googling shows that the general lists of such topics tend to lean heavy on football schools, and while Duke has a nice history on the gridiron, it hasn’t been terribly relevant for the last generation. But when you look for rankings of best college basketball mascots, your boy is in the building.

“I frankly think we rank among the top,” Thomas says. “Of course I’m biased, but I do know there was an article a couple of years ago that ranked the ‘sexiest mascots’ and the Blue Devil was No. 1. With our rich history, I think we’ve got one of the best in the country.” Shout out to college sports for even generating such conversations, huh?

One of the great ironies of the whole thing, of course, is that those who work as such an iconic figure, getting wedding invites and all sorts of television time, can’t actually be famous themselves. For one thing, it’s the character that people love. For another, in a given year, there are usually two to five students sharing two or three physical costumes, so it’s not like there’s one Blue Devil anyway. 

“We’re a member of the cheerleader squad, but we want to keep it private,” says Rutter. “I think I did a pretty good job staying unknown, but people wanted to know why I had a credential around my neck. If I did the first half of a game and then showed up in the second half, they’d figure it out.”

Rutter also remembers back during his Devil days when one particular Duke player didn’t quite get the message. “Kyrie [Irving] kept forgetting that it’s supposed to be anonymous,” he says. “He’d yell at me through a crowd, Hey, Blue Devil! He was always so friendly about it.”

In the land of mascots meet social media, Thomas explained to the Duke Chronicle, when the time comes to reveal yourself, the likes follow. “It’s something that every mascot at every school gets the opportunity to do,” he said last May. “[The reveal post] has become my most popular Instagram post, so no complaints there, but also all the comments from both friends and acquaintances that I’ve known since my freshman year are overwhelming and amazing.”

There may be nothing in college basketball like The Brotherhood, the collection of ex-players who stay close to the program and cheer on their fellow brothers and current players with equal enthusiasm. But if you take a minute to think about all of the Blue Devil mascots over the years, it’s clear that they have their own brotherhood, too. 

Photos via Getty Images.

The post The True Story Behind the Iconic Duke Blue Devil Mascot appeared first on SLAM.

It’s easy to explain the 1993 NBA All-Star Game in today’s terms: Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson are MVPs as their team wins an OT classic. Neat as it would be for the locals if Markkanen and Clarkson played a big role in this year’s game—were they even to make it—or even if this was last season and the Gobert-Mitchell partnership starred, that doesn’t actually do justice to what went down at the Delta Center on February 21, 1993, the first and only time Utah has hosted the game until this year.

The ’92-93 NBA season saw two Jazz legends at their steady and consistent best. Power forward Karl Malone, at 29 years old and in his eighth season, played all 82 regular season games, averaging 27 points and 11 rebounds per game for a Jazz team that was on the rise. Many of his points came via feeds from Utah point guard John Stockton, a 30-year-old in his ninth season who led the League in assists at 12 per while also notching 15.1 ppg and 2.4 spg. At that point in their careers, in fact, Malone and Stockton had each only missed a total of four games. “DNP-rest” did not exist back then, to say the least. The two pick-n-roll greats didn’t rest on the day of the All-Star Game that year, either, each starting and playing more than 30 minutes.

Obviously, every All-Star Game is filled with the best the NBA has to offer, but the way that
year’s classic fell in certain players’ career trajectories gave it an extra sheen. And this was despite the fact that this was the first All-Star Game in NBA history (dating to 1951!) without a Celtic or Laker on a roster.

We had to re-watch this joint on YouTube in part because, in something as rare as the Celtic-Laker stat but in reverse, SLAM wasn’t there. And for an awfully good reason—we didn’t exist yet. So we’ve got no funny stories about run-ins with other media or PR staff, over-the-top gifting suites, too many free drinks, off-the-hook Stance Spades parties or Sprinter vans on the loose. Considering SLAM launched before the ’94 All-Star Game took place, this ’93 mid-winter classic belongs in the record books for that reason alone: The Last All-Star Game Before SLAM. 

And just to stay on that tangent, the cover of the very first SLAM, which hit stands sometime around Jan 1, 1994, featured Larry Johnson, who started the ’93 All-Star Game, which shows how fly a player he was. And yet…you know a crazy stat about LJ vis a vis the other star(ter)s in the ’93 Game? He’s the only one who is not in the Hall of Fame. 

Peep the greatness from the other nine ballers who were on the court for the game’s beginning: Malone, Stockton, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler and David Robinson in the West; Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Scottie Pippen and Isiah Thomas in the East. 

The game was the last of 12 straight Thomas would make in his career. It was the last All-Star appearance Jordan would make before he won his third straight NBA title and then shocked the world with his first retirement. It was the first All-Star appearance of 15 O’Neal would make in his big career. The ’93 All-Star Game also featured classic pivot men Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon off the bench, along with the penultimate All-Star appearance for Dominique Wilkins, who appeared in a total of eight as a member of the Atlanta Hawks.   

Chock full of dudes known as much for their competitive spirits as their on-court abilities, the game was entertaining and tightly contested from the jump, which the video of the game confirms. With Dick Enberg on play-by-play duties and Mike Fratello and Magic Johnson on color commentary, the early hype around the game focused on Jordan (already well on his way to GOAT status) and Shaq (the first rookie to start an ASG since…Jordan in ’85). When the PA announcer ran through the Western Conference starters, he led with Stockton and closed with Malone, who got by far the biggest applause of anyone. It all felt cute, but not like these were real MVPs-in-waiting.

As was their custom, though, the Jazz stars steadily asserted their influence on the game, wearing down the East with their all-around excellence. Jordan was the leading scorer, notching 30 points and making the biggest pass of the game, when he hit Ewing to complete a perfect pick-n-pop for a game-tying jumper with seconds left in regulation. When the West took control in overtime, however, the writing was on the wall. A strong performance in the fifth period helped Stockton and Malone to final stat lines of 9 points and 15 assists (the only player with double-digit dimes) and 28 points with 10 rebounds, respectively. Within about three seconds of the buzzer sounding to end the game, and before the players could even have been told, Enberg made it official: Stockton and Malone were co-MVPs.

What else happened that weekend? Well, not as much as would happen at later extravaganzas, to be honest. Friday was media day, but MJ didn’t even get to town for that because he was off playing golf (as he would do most years). There was no All-Star Friday night because there was no Rookie Game, Rookie-Sophomore Game, Rising Stars Challenge, etc. That whole concept didn’t exist yet. Like SLAM, that was an invention that the world would need to wait until 1994 for. 

All-Star Saturday was a thing, and 1993’s version was, let’s say, average? The Three-Point Shootout was won by Mark Price, which is fun because dude really was a bonkers shooter and because he won the next year, too. Those were the only two three-point shootouts Price was ever in, which is a dope stat. 

The Dunk Contest had already fallen from the ’80s highs of MJ vs Dominique but was still a place you might catch a future star do their thing. In ’93, Harold Miner provided a glimpse of what might be, winning the contest as part of a rookie year that saw him, believe it or not, average 10 points in just 19 minutes per outing with the Miami Heat. The dunks and the instant offense were, as of February 1993, enough to make one think maybe the “Baby Jordan” moniker that had been attached to the 6-5, shaved-head-sporting shooting guard was accurate. Alas, by year three of his career, his numbers had fallen off precipitously, and while Miner did join Price in the two-time champ club when he won the ’95 Dunk Contest, he was out of the League for good by ’96. It could be argued the rookie year dunk title was the high-point of his career.

There was also, if our photo research can be believed, some sort of celebrity dunk contest that involved Jaleel White and Mayim Bialik. We literally can’t figure out what was going on there and probably don’t want to. Honestly, all of the Saturday “action” was long-forgotten by the time Sunday’s game reached its exciting climax. As Enberg would say in his second to last line of the broadcast, the game had produced a “Utah Jazz parlay” in the form of the co-MVPs (Enberg’s sign-off that day was “Wayne’s World is next.” The ’90s were on one.), and that’s all anyone in Utah cared about. Malone himself summed things up with a perfect quote after the game. “I guess if you were writing a storybook,” The Mailman said, “this is just about how you’d write it.” 

Photos via Getty Images.

The post A Look Back at the 1993 All-Star Weekend in Salt Lake City appeared first on SLAM.

“How you doing, man?” the 52-year-old Russell answers jovially when I call the number that Utah Jazz Director of Alumni Relations Quincy Lewis gave me. Attention ’90s hoop fans, please feel free to re-read that sentence for the full experience. 

Not that it was easy to hear Russell talk over the music thumping in the background but a) he apologized for the noise and b) why shouldn’t he be partying on a Thursday night? In the “Calabasas area,” where he lives, no less? This is a gentleman who spent 13 seasons in the NBA and cleared more than $25 million in the process.

And Russell was about as relevant a non-All-Star could be for several of his seasons in, of course, Utah. A second-round pick for the Jazz out of Long Beach State in 1993, the 6-7 swingman from San Bernardino, CA, spent the first nine years of his pro career in Utah, making the playoffs every last one of them (and the Finals twice; we’ll get back to that in a minute).

While he was occasionally deployed as a versatile sixth man, the bulk of Russell’s time in Utah was spent starting alongside the legends Karl Malone and John Stockton, usually guarding the opponent’s best player. Over his nine seasons in SLC, Russell averaged 9.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.2 steals, numbers that speak to all the ways he provided value.

Asked for a favorite memory of his time there, Russell doesn’t hesitate, if not in the way you might expect from a multi-NBA Finalist. 

“Everything there is a positive memory,” he gushes. “There was never a dull moment, and it was all phenomenal. When I played there, we had great chemistry, great teammates and great coaches. And the atmosphere was great, too—probably the loudest fans in the League, I’d say.”

All this to say that, yeah, if you want to remember him for something else, like, being the defender Michael Jordan made his famous “last shot” over to lock up the ’98 NBA Finals and give the Bulls their second straight six-game Finals win over Russell’s Jazz, fine. Bryon is not sweating it. “I wish we woulda got one, sure,” he says. “But I’m not mad or disappointed at all. We did our best.”

Russell certainly did. In the ’97 Finals loss, he played a workmanlike 39 minutes per game, second only on the team to Malone, scoring 11.3 ppg in the process. Similarish story in the ’98 Finals, when Russell was second to Malone with 36.2 mpg. And almost all of these minutes, over both series’, were spent covering the greatest player of all time. What a time for Bryon Russell to be alive.   

With Utah’s near-dynasty winding down in the early ’00s, in the summer of 2002 Russell signed a free-agent contract with the Washington Wizards, who featured none other than…Michael Jordan, playing his truly last season. The year in DC was followed by a season with the Lakers—where he played for former nemesis Phil Jackson and with long-time teammate Malone—and then wound it down with two seasons in Denver.  

Russell’s been out of the League since ’06, and mostly out of the spotlight as well. As mentioned up top, he lives happily in or near Calabasas, heading back to Utah “whenever [the Jazz] call me.”

The outro on our call is as amusing as the intro. When I follow standard current protocol and ask Bryon what fans could look out for from him—anything to plug, so to speak?—he says, “just look out for Bryon having a good time.”

Good night. 

Photos via Getty Images.

The post Bryon Russell Reflects on His NBA Career, Playing in Utah and What He’s Been Up to Since Then appeared first on SLAM.

Better late than never, a hero of the historic Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas is getting some love. Former star player, coach and athletic director Barbara Brown-McCoy was good enough to make a US Olympic team but played her best basketball in the late-’70s, when proper opportunities for female hoopers were almost non-existent.

A true bridge of eras in the sport, Brown-McCoy got pregnant while she was a student at South Oak Cliff High School. Dallas Independent School District rules at the time dictated she could not be a high school athlete as a teen mom, but SOC head coach Gary Blair, who would go on to a storied 42-year career as a college coach (primarily at Texas A&M), fought for Brown-McCoy’s right to play. 

“Gary was trying to help me and my mother so that I had an outlet after high school,” says Brown-McCoy, beaming about the recently completed Barbara Brown-McCoy Showcase, a 14-team invitational held at SOC HS that kicked off the girls’ high school season in Texas in early November. “That made me work harder because he gave me a second chance. Hard work has always been a part of me.”

Brown-McCoy’s high school career came at the end of the “six-man” basketball era. If you’re not familiar, it was a rule in some states (Iowa, most famously, but also Texas until it was abolished after Brown-McCoy’s senior year in 1977) under which each team played three girls on offense and three girls on defense and none of them could cross halfcourt. Brown-McCoy was, to say the least, a dominant defender.

“I knew how to shoot because in middle school I played 5-man, but in 10th, 11th and 12th grade, I played nothing but defense,” recalls Brown-McCoy. “When I played for SOC, we were loaded with talent and I was OK with being a defensive player. I was an all-stater and defensive Player of the Year three years in a row, so there were honors just like if you were a leading scorer.”

Asked what her secret was on the defensive end, Brown-McCoy says, “My ability to block shots. I could jump. By 10th grade, I was touching the rim. That’s how we intimidated the other teams. The short ones would touch the net. The next group would touch the backboard, and then I would touch the rim. I was the first girl’s player in Texas to be called for goaltending.”

Having kicked off a dynasty for Blair at SOC with a 102-9 record in three years on varsity that was capped off by a state title in ’77, Brown-McCoy sifted through tons of college offers before settling on in-state Stephen F. Austin University, wanting to mix good hoops with a chance to stay close to home. 

Brown-McCoy had a spectacular college career under another legendary coach, Sue Gunter, and was chosen for the 1980 US Olympic team. Alas, that team did not get to play in the Olympics due to the US boycott of the ’80 games in Moscow. Brown-McCoy flirted with joining the short-lived Dallas Diamonds pro team but instead fulfilled a promise to her mother and graduated from SFA. She then stayed in the USA Basketball orbit through the ’84 Olympics along with many other players from the ’80 roster who had not turned pro, scrimmaging and touring with the ’84 team. Professionally, however, Brown-McCoy left playing behind and transitioned into coaching.

She had a short stint at Bryan Adams HS in Dallas before returning to SOC as head girls’ basketball coach, reaching the state title game. In 2001, Brown-McCoy made history yet again when she was named the first-ever female athletic director in the history of the Dallas Independent School District. 

Now a 64-year-old mother of three, Brown-McCoy has been retired from formal work since 2011 but is still very much a presence in the Oak Cliff community. And, thanks to the work of photographer and documentarian Don Tortellini (peep his beautiful profile of “Ms. Barbara” on @villageoakcliff IG) and other things like the freshly started high school showcase event, she is rightfully getting her flowers.

“I’ve always been behind the scenes. I played basketball because I had a God-given ability to play it and I enjoyed it, not for any accolades,” Brown-McCoy says. “Now I have to say ‘thank you, Don.’ I’ve been in Dallas all these years and no one has gone to the lengths Don has to tell my story. I’m so thankful for him. My prayer is that, eventually, the platform will come where I can talk to young mothers who think their lives might be ending because they had a child. But if you’re willing to put in the work…it’s actually just beginning.”

Portrait by Don Tortellini. Follow them on @villageoakcliff @shyaboutmyart.

The post Dallas legend Barbara Brown-McCoy, a Former Player for USA Basketball, is on a Mission to Inspire Young Mothers appeared first on SLAM.

That’s how I learned about the Hall of Famer English, and even though I was a kid in the ’80s, he and the Nuggets were overlooked by adults back then, too. Just ask an NBA fan of any age this question: Who scored the most points in the 1980s? Even if they know Michael Jordan’s career started too late and that Magic Johnson was too pass-first, they have a host of household names to offer up. Moses Malone. Larry Bird. Dominique Wilkins. George Gervin. All-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The 6-7, 190-pound English outscored all of ’em. English used his elite mid-range game, willingness to run the floor and all-around efficiency to score 21,018 points in the decade (Moses was second at 19,082). 

The above would be interesting to SLAM readers at any point in the magazine’s history and to be sure, Alan Paul did a piece on English for SLAM 21 back in 1997 that pointed this out. Sadly, the scope of the eight-time All-Star’s achievements and the lack of credit they’re given have renewed relevance in the wake of the NBA selecting a mostly glorious 75th Anniversary team that did not include English. 

Besides being wowed by Nuggets box scores in the paper and enjoying the occasional game on TV against my local Knicks or Nets, my love for English was enhanced by the fact that my late grandfather recognized him on a plane once and asked for his autograph. I still treasure the little scrap of paper that says “Best Wishes Ben Alexander English.” 

Speaking on the phone from his native Columbia, SC, the University of South Carolina legend and current member of the school’s Board of Trustees chuckles at my autograph memory (“We were certainly flying commercial back then!”) and proves to be a charming and engrossing subject. 

SLAM: You played for the Bucks and Pacers before you went to Denver. What’s the short version of what happened at your first two stops? It looks like you were putting up numbers from the very beginning of your career. I would have thought Nellie [longtime Bucks’ coach Don Nelson-Ed.] would love you? 

ALEX ENGLISH: I got drafted by the Bucks in the second round. Wayne Embry was the GM and Nellie was an assistant coach. I had a make-good contract, which meant I had to make the team to get the contract. I signed for $55,000 with a $10,000 bonus if I made the team. That was a lot of money back then! I made the team and had a decent rookie year. I mostly played behind Bob Dandridge. The next year they traded Dandridge to the Bullets but drafted Kent Benson, Marques Johnson and Ernie Grunfeld. [Johnson and Grunfeld] played my position. I was the sixth man [English averaged 9.6 ppg in just 18.9 mpg.—Ed]. Nellie was the head coach by then and we made the playoffs. The NBA standard contract was getting ready to change. I was a restricted free agent—I could go anywhere I wanted but my current team could match. At midnight on the first day of free agency, [Pacers’ coach and GM] Slick Leonard signed me to a three-year deal: $135,000, $155,000, $175,000. I signed that contract. The Bucks had the opportunity to match and I’d have to stay. Wayne says Don said it was too much for me. So they let me walk. I had a good year and a half in Indiana but then they had the chance to bring George McGinnis back home so Slick Leonard traded me to Denver for him. 

SLAM: That trade was during your fourth season. In year five of your career, Doug Moe becomes the Nuggets’ head coach. In my mind, that’s when your career started.

AE: Well, I was putting up good numbers in Indiana, that’s why the Nuggets wanted to trade for me. I was [an] all-around [player]: rebounded, blocked shots, passed the ball. Averaging about 16 points a game, maybe 8 or 9 rebounds. But, yes, what happened in Denver was Doug Moe. He was the best at up-tempo offense. 

SLAM: You guys were the highest-scoring team in the NBA in the ’80-81 season even though Donnie Walsh started the year as the head coach and Moe was an assistant. In Coach Moe’s first full season, ’81-82, the Nuggets averaged 126.5 ppg! Still the most in NBA history.

AE: It was Doug’s system. We played at a breakneck pace, and people couldn’t keep up with us. Once we got in shape, we were unstoppable. We had Dan Issel and we got Kiki Vandeweghe, too. They talked about us being a “high-powered offense.” It was just natural to us. That was what we did. One thing we knew was that other teams feared us. Teams knew they had to be ready to roll as soon as they got to the arena to play us. 

SLAM: Was playing on those teams so much fun?

AE: Fun doesn’t even begin to describe it. I couldn’t wait to play every single night. It was almost like a dance. Like making ballet. That was my art. Every night was a different game, so we were making different art every night. I miss it so much. 

SLAM: Do you have a favorite memory as a Nugget?

AE: Wow, there were so many wonderful moments. That was a good squad with good people. I miss that camaraderie. We did things as a team—parties, cookouts, all that stuff. That’s the thing I miss about being in that setting. And it showed on the floor. We all accepted our roles. If we didn’t do what was expected, we felt bad about it. My team relied on me to get 26 points a night, pass the ball, block a few shots, get 6 or 7 rebounds. TR Dunn knew we depended on him to lock up Clyde Drexler and Michael Jordan as best he could. Fat Lever knew we were expecting near a triple-double. Bill Hanzlik was gonna play defense and frustrate the other team. And Coach Moe was there the whole time. He gave us the tools and leeway we needed.

SLAM: You rarely missed a game and led the NBA in scoring for the ’80s. You were still left off the 50 Greatest list in ’96 but were elected to the Hall of Fame in ’97, which was the first year you were eligible. The NBA had a chance to make include you with the 75th Anniversary team this season, but you were left off again. How did that make you feel?

AE: I felt slighted. It’s been like that throughout my career. Look at the record in my Nuggets’ career. All those playoff appearances. Reached the Western Conference finals. I was an all-pro three years [English was second-team All-NBA in ’82, ’83 and ’86.-Ed]. The scoring. And then they don’t tend to look at the other things. I’m the all-time Nuggets leader in points and assists. I blocked shots. Got steals. To see how I was treated…I rarely watch NBA games anymore because I’m so disappointed to not be in that group. When I look at who they chose, not to slight anyone, but I know what I did. To be slighted like that, it soured my taste for the League.

SLAM: After an amazing decade in Denver and one season in Dallas, you retired from the NBA and spent a season playing for Napoli in the Italian league.

AE: I’m a world traveler and I always wanted to live in another country. Unfortunately, I played for a team in Naples that wasn’t what it could have been, but I still wouldn’t change that experience for the world. Eating the food, meeting the people there.

SLAM: You had a stint as President of the NBA Players Association while you played and after your season in Italy, you returned to the States and worked for the PA, right?

AE: Yes, I’d planned on working for the NBPA and I did that under Charles Grantham. A lot of stuff they have in place, I put there. The player programs, AIDS education, money management and degree completion, rookie transition program. Those are programs I put in place that are still there now. The high school camp the PA runs, we put that together. I wanted the PA to get a connection to the players before they get to the NBA. The guys who are still running it—Tim McCormick and Purvis Short—those were my guys. I’m proud of all that work.

SLAM: After you left the PA, you did some work with the NBA and then transitioned into coaching.

AE: Yes. I found out the NBA was going to do a developmental league and wanted to put a team in Charleston, SC. I petitioned for that job and got it. I moved to Charleston as the head coach of the Lowgators. We were the subject of the first sports reality show [Down Low, Life in the D League, from ESPN. Google it!-Ed]. It was revolutionary. My team lost in the championship. After that first year, the Hawks asked me to be an assistant coach. Then I coached with the Sixers and Toronto.

SLAM: Let’s talk about all your connections to the women’s game, from the WNBA to South Carolina to the fact that your daughter, Jade-Li, is now leading the women’s basketball division at Klutch Sports.

AE: I was in New York when Ange-Marie Hancock put the template for the WNBA together years ago. You look at how much it’s grown…last year’s WNBA Finals was so exciting. 

Overall, the game is so pure. It’s like [how] it used to be with men. There’s the mid-range game, post-ups, an emphasis on getting position. The women look for three-point shots but it’s not the total game. Fortunately, for me, I’ve gotten to see some of the best right here at South Carolina. A’ja Wilson. Aliyah Boston. All the other women who have been here. We have the greatest women’s coach there is in Dawn Staley. I’m just a big supporter. We’ve got two top-10 high schoolers right here in this city and the fan support here is off the charts. That’s from watching Dawn. One of the girls [HS senior Ashlyn Watkins-Ed.] is signed with Dawn. The other is in the 11th grade—Milaysia Fulwiley—and I’m telling you, she is a game changer. Like the same way Magic changed the game. Hopefully she signs here, too.

Ben Osborne is a former SLAM Ed. and is now Head of Content for Just Women’s Sports.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post Alex English Opens About His Prolific Career and Supporting Women’s Hoops in South Carolina appeared first on SLAM.

Welcome to the life of a ballplayer from Montreal. Or at least, the old life of a baller from Montreal. When Anthony was en route to winning a ring 10 years ago, there were just a handful of players from the entire country of Canada in the League, and they were basically a novelty. And French-speaking Canadians from Quebec’s largest city? With all due respect to Bill Wennington, they were a pure anomaly. Today, the country that sends the most players to the NBA other than America is Canada—a story you’ve probably read before—with more and more coming out of Montreal, which is a story you probably didn’t even realize was happening.

“There was no dream of making the NBA when I was younger,” recalls the 39-year-old Anthony, who eventually played college ball in Montreal (Dawson College), JUCO in Florida (Pensacola JC) and DI in Nevada (UNLV) before making the L as an undrafted free agent in 2007. “I  loved it, I watched it, had favorite players like Jordan and the Bulls, and Shaq as a big I looked up to, but I never saw myself as having an opportunity to play in the NBA. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

As Anthony took baby steps to the NBA, he would encounter various forms of incredulity from his teammates. In college, “It was, They have basketball players in Canada? What? They didn’t even know there were Black people in Montreal,” Anthony remembers. When he got to the NBA, “There weren’t a lot of Canadians. Just Steve [Nash], Jamaal [Magloire] and Sam [Dalembert, a rare Montrealer]. When people found out I was from there, they were surprised. I realized what a big deal it was when there were a lot of articles and people talking about it back home, like, People like us don’t make it to this level!”

While Anthony grinded his way through a 10-year NBA career, Toronto-area players like Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins and Jamal Murray made Canadians a regular presence in the Draft lottery and the L at large. Hoops slowly took hold in Montreal and its broader province of Quebec as well, with first- and second-generation immigrants from French-speaking nations across Africa and the Caribbean helping to hasten the region’s interest in sports beyond Canada’s national sport of hockey.

As The Globe and Mail pointed out in an article last May, the presence of Montreal products Khem Birch, Chris Boucher, Luguentz Dort and Karim Mané in the NBA “reflects the sport’s rapid growth in Quebec, where soccer and basketball have begun to chip away at hockey’s supremacy. The week of May 10 was a symbolic watershed: That Monday, for the first time in team history, the Montreal Canadiens had no Quebec players in their lineup. The following night, the Toronto Raptors had two.”

According to a 2019 article in the Quebec newspaper le Soleil that cites data provided by Basketball Québec, from 2013-2019, the number of people participating in the sport within the province jumped from about 38,000 to about 52,000.

Boucher’s manager, Ibrahim Appiah, grew up in Montreal and made the jump to DI High Point University in North Carolina in 2007. Since completing his playing career, he’s become a coach and advisor to players throughout Quebec. Appiah was part of a group that discovered Boucher, a completely unheralded kid who had moved to Montreal from St. Lucia and was as raw as he was athletic. 

“Around here, it’s almost taboo to say you think someone could make it to the pros,” says Appiah. “But I thought Chris could. And really, if anyone could, it would be him. We saw what he could do and kept comparing him to Anthony Davis.”

Boucher has not reached AD status but now, in his fifth NBA season, the 28-year-old is a legit rotation player, coming off a season in which he averaged 24 minutes, 14 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocks per game for the Raps. Dort, meanwhile, is in his third season in the NBA and is now a full-on starter for the Oklahoma City Thunder, the only team he’s played with.

After their youth careers in Montreal both Boucher and Dort did brief stints at Pac-12 schools (Oregon and Arizona State, respectively) before reaching the L as undrafted free agents. Their Instagram feeds overflow with love for their home city and shoutouts to the various camps and youth programs they both support in Canada.

Alex Victor, another big influence on the Montreal hoops scene (please see the story on his Institut de Sport Dynastie), loves what he’s seeing from Montrealers in the L right now, and is even more excited for a prospect who’s right around the corner. “Check out Ben [Bennedict] Mathurin,” Victor says of the 6-6 wing who’s about to kick off a super sophomore season at the University of Arizona. “He is projected to be the first player from Montreal to be a lottery pick.”

Such an achievement will represent a logical step in this evolution, Anthony says. “Montreal has always had ballplayers, even if we didn’t get the recognition we deserve. The type of players who have made it have been underdogs, guys who came in and had to really work and grind their way through. But now they’re developing on offense…and people are taking notice.” 

Ben Osborne is a former SLAM Ed. and is now Head of Content for Just Women’s Sports.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post Montreal Has Emerged as a Major Hub For NBA Talent Out of Canada appeared first on SLAM.

Yes, this is how Kenny Anderson answers his phone when I call on behalf of SLAM. “I’m finishing up at Starbucks with my wife. Let’s talk in 20 minutes.”

“You got it, my guy,” I reply in kind.

The hilarious and always positive Kenny Anderson character you can follow on Twitter (@chibbs_1, though he says he’s on hiatus ’til March…more on that in a bit) is that way in real life, too.

Anderson, the 50-year-old former NBA All-Star who spent 14 years in the L and is now the head coach at NAIA Fisk University in Nashville, really just wants to do good.

“Everything is working out for me the way God planned,” Anderson says when we jump back on the phone after his standard morning Starbucks run. “I’m just here to help others. It’s not about Division I or Division II, just helping. That’s why I took this job. I love that we’re building something.” 

Even though I know the ins and outs of his career as well as anyone’s, as Kenny himself says, “The young kids don’t know me too well, but their parents do.”

So let’s review real quick.

Kenny Anderson was, literally, one of the finest prep players ever. The late, great scout Tom Konchalski called him “the greatest high school point guard of all time.”

A rail-thin six-footer who grew up in the LeFrak City housing complex in Queens, Anderson was a four-year phenom at Archbishop Molloy in Queens, leading the Stanners to two CHSAA titles and scoring a then-New-York-state-record 2,621 points in his career. As a senior, the ballhandling wizard averaged 35 ppg on 77 (!!) percent shooting from the floor en route to winning consensus National Player of the Year honors. “Mr. Chibbs,” as his family had called him since he was little, could make shots from outside, slither through the lane and score at the rim or dribble and dime as if defenders were cones. And he did it all with a smile.

“Coming up in New York I had coach Jack Curran at Molloy and my mentor, Vincent Smith [older brother to fellow Molloy product and longtime NBA player, Kenny Smith],” Anderson recalls. “And I really followed the path of those four guys that were right ahead of me—Kenny Smith, Rod Strickland, Mark Jackson and, RIP, my guy Pearl Washington.”

As good as all four of those NYC “point gods” and some others of that era were, Anderson was in a class by himself. The top recruit in the country in the high school class of 1989, he headed to Atlanta for college and starred at Georgia Tech from day one.

As a freshman, Anderson teamed with upper classmen Brian Oliver and Dennis Scott to form “Lethal Weapon 3,” a trio that won the Yellow Jackets the ACC Tournament and reached the Final Four, where they lost an epic semifinal game to the legendary UNLV team that would win the national title two nights later. 

Oliver and Scott departed after that season and, though his game was surely NBA-ready, Anderson returned to ATL for his sophomore campaign. “Going hardship” after just one season of college basketball was hardly ever done at the time. Anderson labored to carry the weight without his great teammates from the year before, at one point losing hair due to the stress of leading the team and the pending decision about turning pro. Struggles or not, Anderson still averaged 25.9 ppg that season (alongside 5.7 rpg, 5.6 apg and 3 spg) and led Tech to the second round of the tournament. And, sure enough, he did turn pro, quickly getting scooped up by the New Jersey Nets with the second pick.

 To this NYC-hoops-obsessed fan, it felt like a fairy tale, seeing Kenny paired with Derrick Coleman and Drazen Petrovic on a super-fresh Nets squad that played just over the river in New Jersey. Between injuries, the untimely death of Draz and endless front-office/ownership squabbles, however, those Nets never quite fulfilled their promise.

Maybe Kenny didn’t fulfill his individual promise all the way either, though in retrospect it’s pretty easy to attribute that to his playing for shaky coaches at shaky franchises, and frankly, a God-given body that was not exactly built for the rigors of an 82-game NBA season. Anderson still earned the start in the ’94 All-Star Game and parlayed his time in the Swamp into a seven-year, $49 million free agent contract with the Portland Trail Blazers in 1996, theoretically setting him up for life. All told, Anderson spent 14 seasons in the NBA (making the playoffs six times), finishing his career with averages of 13 points and six assists in 30 minutes per game. A real-ass career, in other words. He also made approximately $63 million in pre-tax salary. 

The money was enough to achieve Anderson’s main life goal—to take care of his single mother, Joan. It also brought on all sorts of off-court drama; fathering seven children with five different women ate away at the funds and led to a bankruptcy declaration in 2005. This, combined with Joan’s passing the same year, made for some hard post-NBA years.

Eventually, Anderson settled in South Florida with his new wife, Natasha, regrouped and got into coaching, first at the AAU and then high school level. He was also the subject of a 2017 documentary, Mr. Chibbs: Basketball is Easy, Life is Hard, that expounds on that tagline, a phrase Kenny utters frequently and knowingly. (Full disclosure: I proudly donated to the Kickstarter to help get that thing made.)

In 2018, then-Fisk President Kevin Rome reached out. “The president of the school went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, so he knew me from my days at Georgia Tech,” Anderson recalls. “He brought me in. I knew the school needed some work in the athletic program. I thought about my high school coach, Jack Curran, and that’s what I wanted to do. Start low, give these young men something to reach for.”

Fisk is a historically Black university (less than 1,000 students) in Nashville that was established in 1866 and is far more known for its academics than its athletics. The list of notable Fisk alums is jaw-dropping, featuring such historical figures as W.E.B. DuBois, John Hope Franklin, Nikki Giovanni and Congressman John Lewis, among many others. No famous hoopers, though. The big program in Nashville is Vanderbilt of the Power 5 SEC, where Anderson’s contemporary, Jerry Stackhouse, is head men’s basketball coach. “We can’t compete with them, of course, but I am hoping we can get a scrimmage with them in the future,” Kenny says.

Anderson succeeded Dr. Larry Glover, who is now Fisk’s Athletic Director, as head coach for the 2018-19 season. Glover was thrilled. “The president brought it to my attention that he had spoken to Kenny about coaching here,” Glover says. “We thought it was a good idea. He didn’t have the college coaching résumé, but the playing experience was enough to compensate for that over the long run. For ex-players who have played for a lot of coaches, it’s kind of innate. And when you play at the level he has played, you know the game inside and out. We thought it was a win for basketball and athletics and the school itself.”

Mentor Vincent Smith, who met Kenny when he was 9 years old and shepherded him through his amateur basketball career, is still the man Anderson turns to for advice. Smith encouraged Anderson to take the Fisk job and thinks he has the makings of a great coach. “Kenny always had a high basketball IQ,” Smith says from his home in California. “He wasn’t the guy who made it because he had a 40-inch vertical leap. He knew how to change speeds, he was the master of the midrange game and he always knew how to run a team and get people involved. Point guards know every position on the floor. The coach and the point guard have to be connected and on the same page. We knew he could be a good coach.”

All that said, a variety of unexpected hurdles make it feel like Anderson’s college coaching career is only starting in earnest this fall. In that first 2018-19 season, coaching players he didn’t recruit, Anderson’s Bulldogs went 8-17 and Chibbs was struggling. “I wasn’t eating right,” he says. “I was stressed out. Guys weren’t taking it serious enough. It was a lot of stress on me, I realized.”

On February 23, 2019, just days after the season ended, Anderson suffered a stroke while at his house in Florida. Only 48 years old at the time, he might have died were it not for his scared dog (the Instagram-famous Caleb) and daughter, Tiana, who realized what was happening. Tiana called Natasha, who got home and got Kenny to the hospital. Doctors saved his life, but months of mental and physical rehabilitation followed.

Anderson recovered pretty miraculously and was ready for the start of the ’19-20 season, albeit without having had a proper offseason of recruiting and preparation. The team struggled again as Anderson continued to recover from the stroke, finishing his second campaign with a record of 10-20. 

Shortly after that season, another shockwave hit: COVID-19. Fisk’s entire ’20-21 season was canceled.

So here we are in August, 2021, and Mr. Chibbs is healthy and ready to rock. “I’m [a patient] at Vanderbilt Medical. They’re taking care of me. I have no limitations physically, but my memory isn’t so good,” he says.

One of Fisk’s returning players is Devyn Payne, a junior PG out of Memphis. He raves about playing for Anderson. “Playing for Kenny is a lifetime dream,” Payne says on the phone from campus during the first week of the school year. “He’s a known NBA legend. He was that dude. That dog. He still has it, too. He’ll shoot the ball, toss it around his back. He’s still got the sauce.”

Glover says that Anderson’s presence at the school has meant better recruiting pipelines, more attention from alumni and more media interest. “The alumni from the ’80s and ’90s really know about his career. The players don’t know too much, but their parents do! So that helps,” Glover says. “I think this year, he really made his mark with recruiting. He’s been working some camps. We’re getting a level of player we haven’t had before.”

Fisk has had erratic conference affiliations over the years (and been an independent at times) but this year the Bulldogs are rejoining the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, which the school had previously belonged to a decade ago (other members include New Orleans-based universities Dillard and Xavier. Word to Scoop Jackson). “It’s the only NAIA league that is all HBCUs, and we’re very proud to be a part of it,” says Fisk Sports Information Director Scott Wallace.

NAIA schools do not offer traditional athletic scholarships, but can give academic scholarships to players who are also great students. Given Fisk’s academic standards, Anderson’s recruits need to clear a particularly high bar. “It’s kinda hard being so big on academics,” concedes Payne, who majors in Business Administration. “The requirements to get in are hard. Making the honor roll here means a lot. Graduating from Fisk means a lot. People know it’s tough over here. It’s good because Fisk is historic and known for academics, but it is hard for recruiting.”

“Basketball is secondary here,” Anderson confirms. “You gotta be real educated. I want to help kids get themselves a real good career.”

Adds Payne, “He is always on us about being in class, getting our schoolwork done. He talks about that a lot. He always preaches about hard work, academics and life. Then basketball. I love playing for him.”

This is absolute music to Vincent Smith’s ears. “Anytime you can help young men get better, you feel great about it. Each one, teach one. People gave a lot to Kenny and now he’s giving back,” he says.

Whatever impact Anderson is having on the young men who play for him is matched by what the experience is doing for him. Unsurprisingly, if you follow the rapid-tweeting legend, Kenny works the addictive platform into his explanation of how the job and his life are playing out.

“I’m going to be off Twitter from August 15-March 1,” says Chibbs, who had already broken his vow as of press time in the form of RTs, though he has avoided typing out any original tweets. “Everybody is going to miss me on there and it’s gonna be tough for me. But I’m gonna read novels. I’ve gotta gravitate to other things. All positive. My mother passed away and she wanted me to change my life. This job has changed me a great deal. That’s what my mother wanted.”

“Kenny’s mother would be running around and jumping up and down,” Smith co-signs with a chuckle. “She’d be so happy with what he’s doing right now.” 

Ben Osborne is a former SLAM Ed. and is now Head of Content for Just Women’s Sports.

Photos via Tamara Reynolds and Getty Images.

The post NBA Great Kenny Anderson Is Ready To Make an Impact at Fisk University appeared first on SLAM.

That’s what happened to PGA Tour player Harold Varner III in 2017, when a strong performance at that August’s Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, NC, helped prompt a text from “the boss.” MJ himself, who is as serious about golf as he is about basketball, reached out to Varner.

“I had been wearing Oxford Apparel and using a Nike Elite account to buy my golf shoes, but I really wanted to join Nike or something athletic. And then MJ hit me up. It was perfect,” Varner says.

By the first event of 2018, Varner had lost his Srixon hat and basic Oxford Apparel and Nike cleats and took the course at the Sony Open in super clean gear and some dope Jordan XIII golf cleats. It’s been on ever since.

“Without a doubt. I’ve seen grown men go crazy over something I’m wearing,” Varner says. “(Other Tour players get excited too, but) I don’t give a fuck about what they want. They’ll be like, ‘Can MJ get me some of those shoes?’ I just tell them to figure it out themselves and keep it moving.”

There are five other Jordan golf athletes—Keegan Bradley, Luke Donald, Pat Perez, Camilo Villegas and Bubba Watson—but they have other sponsorships that require branding on their clothes.

HV3 (a great IG follow @hv3_golf, fwiw) on the other hand, a super solid golfer who has finished in the Tour’s top 110 for the last five years but has no career wins on Tour and isn’t terribly well-known for his golf achievements, has been quick to embrace all the buzz his head-to-toe Jordan gear generates.

“Every time I play well, people want to talk about my shoes,” the 31-year-old Varner says. “And I’m sure seeing me wearing all this stuff on TV is good for their popularity.”

Jordan Brand won’t share specific sales numbers and in the case of golf (akin to Jordan’s relationship to Nike in baseball and football), the footwear is really just an arm of Nike Golf, but growth can be ascertained by the fact that there is now a standard Jordan golf shoe available year-round—the ADG3, which retails for $140—in addition to the occasional retro drops which set reselling sites on fire much like their basketball siblings.

In a sport that hasn’t traditionally been known for its inclusivity, Varner thinks the exposure of his cleats and apparel has been a unifier. “My shoes have gotten me attention from everyone, from millionaires to poor people. Jordans really seem to bring people together.”

Ben Osborne, a former SLAM Ed., is now Head of Content for Just Women’s Sports.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post How a Text From Michael Jordan Changed Pro Golfer Harold Varner III’s Career appeared first on SLAM.

Can you name the biggest player taken in the 2003 Draft? Here’s a hint: He’s Greek.

Nope, Giannis Antetokounmpo hasn’t been around that long. 

The answer is Sofoklis Schortsanitis, aka Baby Shaq, aka Big Sofo, and while he ultimately never played a second in the NBA, he had one heck of a pro career. A career that basically just ended, in fact, putting him near the top of the list for length of careers amongst all the legends selected back in June, 2003.

“I am totally retired now,” Schortsanitis says over a WhatsApp call from his home in Athens. “I had a lot of injuries and I wasn’t able to return 100 percent so I decided to retire.”

Schortsanitis, a 6-10 center whose weight was all over the map (Basketball-reference lists him at 345 pounds) during his 20-plus years as a pro, made the announcement last December. While it didn’t make any waves in the US, hoops fans throughout Europe, especially in Greece and Israel, took notice.

Schortsanitis was born in Cameroon on June 22, 1985. He moved to Greece with his mother and father, a Greek man who’d been working in Cameroon, shortly after. He got Greek citizenship through his father from the moment he arrived.

Sofo wasn’t always big, and he did not instantly take to basketball. “In Greece everyone cares about soccer,” he told ESPN in 2010. “So when I first played basketball when I was like 7 or 8, I didn’t like it very much.”

He grew, though, and that inevitably led to a push towards hoops. By 14, he was playing regularly—and often dominating the low post.

By 16, he was getting paid to play for Iraklis, a pro club in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. In 2003, having gained some buzz for his club play as well as with the Greek Junior National Team (he was MVP of the international Albert Schweitzer tourney in ’02), Schortsanitis entered his name in the draft.

GET YOUR COPY OF SLAM PRESENTS THE ’03 DRAFT NOW

European scouting was not as refined as it is today, but NBA teams were certainly intrigued by prospects from the continent (more than a third of the picks in the ’03 draft were from Europe). Confident he’d get picked, if unsure when, Schortsanitis came to New York City for the draft, which was held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

“That was my first time in the States,” Sofo recalls. “It was overwhelming but fun. I was at the draft and when they start announcing names you start to get anxious. But eventually I got drafted by the Clippers and I was really happy.”

A first-round selection would have meant a guaranteed NBA contract. Going in the second round placed Schortsanitis in a purgatory of sorts, with his rights belonging to the Clippers but buyouts attached to his contracts overseas.

While he was generally playing well and having fun with the Greek National Team and several high-profile Greek teams (most prominently Olympiacos, with whom Sofo played exhibitions against the likes of the Spurs and the LeBron/Shaq Cavs in ’09), Schortsanitis wasn’t talked about much in NBA circles through most of the ’00s. He was also occasionally disciplined for exceeding weight limits.

In the summer of 2010, a fit Schortsanitis returned to the States and took part in Summer League with the Clippers, who still owned his rights. He was 25 and the window to make the NBA was still open. Alas, it didn’t happen. In the years that followed, his rights were involved in a couple of NBA trades but he never really got close to the NBA again.

“It’s OK that it never happened,” Sofo says today. “If I was in the United States for a career, I wouldn’t have met my beautiful wife or have my kids, so it all worked out.”

While the NBA wasn’t in the cards in 2010, Schortsanitis still advanced his career, joining the EuroHoops power Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, with whom he spent the better part of four years.

“The highlight of my career was my years with Maccabi,” he says. “The people there were great and I had a lot of fun. I was blessed with having really good teammates all the time. We won the Euroleague. That was great. I still have a lot of good friends over there.”

From 2015-20, Schortsanitis played primarily in Greece, slightly diminished by age and injuries but still a big, popular player.

Being in Greece, which was on strict lockdown for much of the pandemic, meant a lot of family time. As things open back up, Schortsanitis says he may not want to ever become a full-time basketball coach, but that he does like working with kids on their skills. That could include his kids, a 9-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter.

“They tell me they want to do basketball like I did,” Schortsanitis says. “But I don’t want to be that kind of dad that tells them they have to play. They’ll decide what they want to do. We’ll see. I’m happy that they’re thinking about that.”

In the meantime, he’ll support his friend Giannis and the Bucks (“Of course!”) and be hit up for historical pieces like this one every once in a while. Extremely modest on the phone and showing a humility typical of Greek culture, Schortsanitis declines my claim that he is a part of history. But he doesn’t deny that, at least because of the greatness of his peers, his draft class was something special.

“Carmelo, Wade, LeBron, Bosh? We had so many great players.”

SLAM PRESENTS THE ’03 DRAFT AVAILABLE NOW.

Ben Osborne is a former SLAM Ed. and is now Head of Content for Just Women’s Sports.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post Long Before Giannis, Sofoklis “Baby Shaq” Schortsanitis Blazed a Trail as a Greek Hooper appeared first on SLAM.

A native of Queens, NY, Konchalski followed in his brother Steve’s footsteps as a strong student at local Archbishop Molloy High School. While Steve was a standout basketball player who played college ball in Canada before becoming a Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame coach at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, the 6-6 Tom focused more on watching the game. He wrote for the Molloy student newspaper and then attended Fordham University in the Bronx, graduating magna cum laude with degrees in political science and philosophy.

Canadian hoops insider and former NBA scout Greg Dole says of the brothers, “A parallel I draw between the two men is that they did not take. They were very generous with their time, had a real love of the game and shared it with young people. They earned a living, but it was a humble living. They were old-guard custodians of the game who never looked to bleed it.”

After college, Tom taught math and science for 10 years at Catholic elementary schools and considered getting a PhD but never lost his passion for scouting. He started working for Five-Star founder Howard Garfinkel’s service, High School Basketball Illustrated (motto: “Others tell you where they’ve been. We tell you where they’re going!”), eventually buying it outright in 1984 as Garf focused on the camp business. Konchalski’s tremendous writing skills and memory were perfectly suited for a world in which reliable information is king.

I learned of Tom Konchalski the way a lot of young suburban New Yorkers did—via his appearances on the old MSG Network show, “High School Sports Weekly,” hosted by Mike Quick. Starting in 1990, Konchalski appeared on the show’s “basketball preview” every December and as a source in profiles of tri-state ballers regularly. For a high school kid who couldn’t play much but loved following the game, getting inside dirt on the best local kids was like finding your grails at a mom-and-pop shoe store.

Depending on your age and where you grew up, maybe the high school baller you first followed was someone like Connie Hawkins (that was Tom’s answer), LeBron James or Zion Williamson. I messed with Kenny Anderson, Stephon Marbury and Jamal Mashburn on the high end, but it was name-dropping lesser known cats like Terrence Rencher and Jerry “Ice” McCullough that really made me feel like a city hoops expert. Konchalski knew more about all these guys than most of us know about our cousins.

Recalls Quick, “When it came time to preview the basketball season, I leaned on Tom to educate me. Our show changed names, sponsors and channels, but Tom and I did a tri-state basketball preview every year from 1990-2015. I’ve come to find out it was one of the most appreciated shows we did every year and introduced a lot of people to him. It was like clockwork—he’d send me his HSBI season preview two weeks before we taped. I’d forget to open it ’til the morning of our taping and try to study, but really, all I had to do was tee him up and he’d take it from there. Back then, the Daily News, New York Newsday and the Post all had full-time high school reporters. And we were on MSG, available in 8 million homes. The ’90s were definitely the heyday of high school media coverage in New York.”

Having learned of HSBI through Konchalski’s TV appearances, some high school friends and I weaseled our way into a few copies and ate ’em up like candy. Every player I’d heard of from the Northeast, and many I hadn’t, profiled by their vitals and Konchalski’s ranking (1-5 with pluses and minuses where applicable, along with pithy one liners that got to the core of the player).

SLAM was founded in 1994—global in concept, New York in its heart. I got to SLAM in ’97. Recruiting coverage had expanded, and as we hit the 2000s, the internet put info at our fingertips, especially about the big names we focused on. So Tom’s value to SLAM was in his historical perspective. Need to fact check or get a quote about Lew Alcindor, Chibbs or the mercurial Lloyd Daniels? Call Tom and he’d tell you what the player had been like. Since he lacked a cell phone, computer, email address or—save for a brief stretch, an answering machine—calling Tom meant dialing his 718 landline and hoping he’d answer. If it was a weekday morning, he often did.

Matt Caputo, a former SLAM staffer, grew up near Konchalski in Queens and loved talking hoops with “The Glider.” Matt’s older brother, Christian, is a Molloy grad who’s been a DI assistant for 19 years, the last 10 at Miami.

“I don’t think there’d be a SLAM without him. The concept of ranking players, summaries, waves of information, that was Tom’s thing. Everyone who works in basketball benefitted from him,” Caputo says. “He was so inclusive. He’d rank 200 kids in New York City because, well, some coach in Pig Knuckle, AR, might need New York’s 200th-best player. His biggest asset was knowing the intimate background of the players. Not just grades and high school coach. Parents. Church. Any relatives related to basketball in the bloodline. You paid for that HSBI subscription and got a 24-hour resource.”

SLAM founder Dennis Page, as big a prep hoops junkie as you’ll find, left the reporting to us writers and editors but had similar historical experiences with Konchalski in the last year. “We started taping interviews with him to get his opinion on all the great guys,” Page says. “He knew, without exception, about every single player we asked him about.”

Adds SLAM board member Peter Robert Casey, another hoops lifer, “I knew who Tom was since I went to Five-Star in 1996. Then I bumped into him in 2001 while going to NYU, at West 4th, and introduced myself. A couple of years later I was living at home, uncertain about my career path, and I was like, I’ll reach out to Tom Konchalski and get his advice about working in basketball. I emailed Steve and said I’d love to get in contact with your brother. Good luck with that, he replies. Try and write him a letter. So I did—told him I respected him and would love a call for some advice. A couple of months later, he calls me! If you want to coach, there’s no substitute for experience. Call your high school or AAU coach and see if you can volunteer. Emailed my AAU coach and volunteered with him for a whole season. My passion for basketball came roaring back. In 2008 I’m helping out the EBC at Rucker Park and I see Tom, and he said, Why don’t you ask SLAM if you can write about the EBC Finals? So I hit you up and you let me write about it, and a couple of other pieces. A whole sequence of events, all triggered by his words.”

So, yeah, the great Tom Konchalski was #SLAMfam.

I could quote another 50 media members who loved the guy. But he didn’t work for us. Nah, the newsletter, three-to-six pages faithfully produced on a typewriter in his Forest Hills apartment, then xeroxed, stapled and mailed out in hand-addressed envelopes 16 times a year, was for college coaches only.

“Ask him about a kid on the phone, he’d tell you if he was a good fit,” says long-time coach Mitch Buonaguro. “Like when I was at Villanova, he’d say, I don’t know if this kid is a fit for Villanova’s academics. But he might be right for St. Joe’s, if you want to call someone over there. His veracity for facts, his insatiable appetite for getting to know the kid and the total evaluation he provided were so helpful.”

“We’ve been using [HSBI] all along,” says Kyle Steinway, an assistant at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. “When you get into the recruiting world, you learn he’s the most trusted evaluator. The reason he continued to stand out, even as there were more and more options, was his character. Zero self-promotion. Tom just gave an honest evaluation. He was also true to his roots. He covered the northeast. He covered the games, and not just the big games. Some of the other reports would come with profiles of all these top-100 kids. I don’t need to pay to know that Cole Anthony is good. Tell me about Isaac Grant! At our level you really appreciated that.”

Before Sacred Heart, Steinway coached at Stonehill College, his alma mater Providence, Newberry College and Hofstra. How many of those programs subscribed to HSBI? “All of them,” Steinway exclaims before texting some photos of the last issue.

“First page had a little color in the logo, the rest just black and white. Typed. I don’t think I ever saw a mistake.”

Davidson’s Matt McKillop is another long-time assistant forever grateful for Konchalski’s work—and kindness. “My father [longtime Davidson head man Bob McKillop. Ask Steph Curry about him!] and Tom go way back. I’ve been coaching here 13 years and my father has been here since 1989, and HSBI came the whole time. Tom had really cool and unique ways of describing kids’ traits. ‘Nose needs to calcify’ meant the kid had to get tougher. That’s as good as it gets. Another thing that was really cool is that he would address different issues to different members of the coaching staff. You’d be grabbing the mail and knew it was HSBI from the packaging. When it had your name on it, in his handwriting, it was so special.”

Evan Pickman was the head coach at College of Staten Island from 1970-84, then had a 26-year career as an NBA scout with the Cavs and Clippers. He got close to Konchalski, a true contemporary, working summers at Five-Star. “I’m 74 and I’ve seen a lot of death, but this loss is hard for a lot of us to take,” Pickman sighs. “When I met Tom, I was scouting, not recruiting. I started working at the camp and talking to him about players. I was scouting college players, and he knew all of them. He wouldn’t say anything negative, but he had a way of saying a kid was capable of playing in the NBA…or not. I actually think you could take anyone that likes basketball and knows it a little, and they could go to a college game and say which two guys can make the NBA. What Tom did was much harder. The levels of play he had to break down—this kid could play at Duke, but this kid belongs at Staten Island—that’s a big range.

“Tom started coming to my wife and I’s apartment in Manhattan for dinner. We’d have a party on draft night and Tom and Garf would come. It grew to where we’d have 12-14 guys coming over, crammed in our one-bedroom apartment, and Tom made sure we kept up the tradition even after Garf died. We couldn’t do the full draft party in November because of COVID so it was just me, Tom and my wife. And it was one of the best nights we ever had. I thank God for that friendship.”

Despite Konchalski’s resolute commitment to a tech-free existence (he finally got a cell phone but barely learned how to use it), the next gen scouts know what he meant to the game. Justinn Delaney is the owner and creator of @njhooprecruit, the ultimate IG account for Garden State basketball. “Before I knew who he was, I recognized that old guy with the note pad,” Delaney remembers. “I met him primarily at Hamilton Park in Jersey City, watching guys like Louis King and Jahvon Quinerly. He didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my phone, but we always had kind, basketball conversations. Middle of summer, 90 degrees, it would just be me and him at mid-court, in the top row of the metal bleachers.

“He just busted his ass,” Delaney continues. “This is a 70-year-old man hitting the streets as hard as me. It validated what I was doing. If I saw him, I knew I was doing the right thing, seeing the right hoops, covering the right kids. It was humbling to see what hard work looks like. Hamilton Park on a Friday night. Jamaica  on Saturday morning. He was there.”

Konchalski inspired journalists, held the key to coaches’ job security and showed generations of scouts how to do it. His value to players was even greater. The outpouring of love for this man on social media was most poignant when the words came from players who felt like they owed some of their success to him. Mark Jackson. Tobias Harris. Julius Hodge. Bobby Hurley. Dana Dingle. And on and on.

The love was non-stop. Russ Smith, a Molloy man himself, might have put it best on IG: “Dear Tom Konchalski, words cannot express what you mean to me as a person, player & Archbishop Molloy alum. You along with Coach Curran at the time when colleges never looked my way always had my best intentions…Your mannerisms for the game of basketball were so graceful in an industry where unprofessionalism is so common…Thank you for believing in me when you didn’t have to. Thank you for helping me. My dad & mom loves you. You genuinely make New York basketball a better place.”

Konchalski’s memory was famous and has starred in most stories about him. I’ve got an example that is particularly dear to me. One of my oldest friends, Chris White, was a tall kid from Brooklyn with hoops in his blood who ultimately played at Brown University. “I went to Five-Star around 15 years old and was on a team with Reggie Freeman, Charles Jones and Andre Patterson. There was no reason to watch me in that group. Tom Konchalski comes up to me as soon as he sees me and says, ‘You’re Albee White’s son.’ What?’ ‘I scouted your father and I recognized him in you.’ Unbelievably weird. My father had been a good player at Erasmus High when that meant something, but that was almost 30 years earlier. I didn’t even grow up in the same house with my father. Then I bumped into Tom in an airport 20 years later and it’s like, Chris White, how are you? From my dad in high school to me in the airport was almost a 50-year gap! And I didn’t have a career that anyone cared about. He just knew and remembered so many details. If you were anywhere in that world in the past 50 years, Tom Konchalski had a complete profile of you in his head. We’ve lost a living encyclopedia.”

So how do we honor this man? Collectively, let’s make sure he gets in the Basketball Hall of Fame, where he’s up for nomination this year (as are Curran, Garf and McKillop—New York stand up!). Media members, treat each other with respect. Fans, let’s respect greatness in players and note their flaws with compassion, like he did. As people? The horse has left the proverbial barn when it comes to our technology addiction. But can we keep our handshakes firm? Make eye contact when talking? Remember a few more details about people’s lives? Tom Konchalski didn’t need all the distractions of modern life because he was so rich in things that mattered.

 “I feel bad for that 8th grade kid who won’t know who Tom Konchalski is,” says Quick, “to get to shake his hand and be written about by him and maybe get to college thanks to what Tom would have written about him. As of 3 pm on February 8, New York basketball will never be the same again.”

The post The Man Who Could See The Future: Remembering the Late Tom Konchalski appeared first on SLAM.

*Double take.* Given the fact that the 17-year-old Cedric is still just learning English and about half of his answers come with translation help from one of the school’s founders, Alexandre Victor, who has set up our WhatsApp video call, I want to make sure Cedric understood the question. “I asked what you liked about being there?”

 “That is what I like,” he replies with a chuckle. “It was a little hard back home, too, but…”

“There are a lot more details here,” Victor elaborates. Are there ever. The brainchild of three long-time friends in their 30s who share a love of hoops and similar backgrounds—Victor, Woodwendy Séraphin (both born in Canada to Haitian parents) and Bachir Outtara (born in Senegal, now living in Canada)—Dynastie’s plan is to build a prep basketball experience like no other. Professional-style workout sessions are just the beginning.

“Our goal is to be the hub for kids from French-speaking countries who want to go to the NCAA or the NBA,” says Victor. “We feel like if you take a kid from Côte d’Ivoire, and put him in the US directly, it’s a big jump because culturally, it’s so different. They need to adapt. And usually they’re young—15, 16 and 17 years old. So we felt it’s a more normal transition if they come through Quebec, have that transition from French, mostly European-flavored culture, to English and North American culture and the business of basketball rather than just a sport. So they transition here and then they go on to play Division I in the US. I believe that as time goes on and we’re able to build our résumé, we will be able to attract the best talent from all of the Francophonie and still have enough roster spots for the best local kids.” 

Francophonie, of course, refers to the broad collection of nations where French is regularly spoken, which includes not only the motherland and its European neighbors but also large swaths of West Africa (Cameroon, Senegal, etc) and the Caribbean (Haiti and Martinique, among others). If you’ve looked at any NBA team rosters lately, you’ve surely noticed that there are a lot of players who fit the category, such as Joel Embiid, Serge Ibaka, Skal Labissiere and Pascal Siakam.

Well aware of the abundance of potential talent who would qualify for the program, and with a gameplan in mind, Victor and the other founders, who all played competitive hoops when they were younger and would often chat about business ideas after pick-up games the last few years, purchased a church and its neighboring presbytery. The group promptly turned the church into a high-performance gymnasium and the presbytery into dorms. The project went live in the fall of 2019 with prospects from Quebec enrolling, while accepted international students like Cedric showed up throughout the year as paperwork was approved. 

Dynastie had one full roster by February 2020, and showed flashes of strong play down the stretch of the NPA (Canada’s elite basketball league, the National Preparatory Association) season. Then Coronavirus hit, travel shut down and the 13 current players—especially those who came from overseas—have basically been around ever since, studying at the appropriate schools (Dynastie partners with three local institutions and kids attend whichever one is right for their age and nationality) and hooping a ton.

“We’re in the gym just about every day,” says Séraphin, the head coach. “We are one of the few private gyms in Quebec that can be open and run workouts. The kids live together, they take classes online, so we are in a bubble. We never really had to stop. The challenge is keeping the kids motivated and engaged. We don’t have that usual candy of games in front of them right now. And they live together so they may get on each other’s nerves a bit. But we will get through this.”

To the solidly built Séraphin, who was also a football player, coaching these kids the right way is personal to him. “I played high-level basketball in Canada but I was not developed properly. I was 6-4 and I was pushed in the post,” he says. “I feel like I should have been a shooting guard. My experience really made me passionate about developing players and their skills. Like, now my point guard is 6-4 [chuckles].

“We’re a pretty athletic group,” he continues when asked to describe his team and their style of play. “I’m a new-generation [type of] coach. I like stats. I don’t want mid-range shots—I want dunks, layups, threes. Maximize possessions. But don’t be a robot, especially on offense. I want to develop guys who can think on their own and [are] able to fit into a lot of different systems.”

Lath, who is 6-10 and 235 with a 7-2 wingspan and Thierno Sylla, another 17-year-old big man who starred for his native Guinea in the 2019 FIBA U16 African tournament, are the most prominent prospects at Dynastie now. “Physically, I think Cedric is a pro. He is special,” Séraphin says.

For his part, the workout-loving Cedric is unfazed by any props he may receive. “I think I am a modern Shaq,” he says with a straight face, adding that the current players he studies and looks up to are versatile big men Joel Embiid and NBA rookie James Wiseman. “But Shaq couldn’t shoot three-pointers. I shoot three-pointers.”

The founders expect a lot more players with Lath and Sylla’s potential to find their way to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu once the world is back up and running again and Dynastie’s rep grows. “We’re at 14 kids and one team now, but we want to have two teams in the future,” Victor says. “One will be the traveling team, playing a national schedule in the US, really big. The second one would play in Canada, 12-15 kids each team. We believe 30 kids would be the capacity. Having half [from Quebec] and half [international] will allow us to always be competitive with teams like Montverde, Oak Hill…This is our goal for the traveling team. And bring all those talents to North America, basically.”

The emphasis on French-speaking ballplayers is certainly unprecedented in North America, but Victor feels that, regardless of primary language, he doesn’t think Dynastie has a peer in the prep hoops game these days. 

“The closest to us would be Orangeville Prep [in Ontario],” he says. “It’s also 100 percent privately run. But our business model, with the culture-first approach, makes us different from everybody. Everybody else just tries to be elite, elite, elite. My personal belief is that, before economic comes culture, and that to create wealth you need a strong base which is your culture and your values and all that. So we’re putting that forward and creating an identity, which I believe is stronger. For example, in March we’re going to have artists [and] painters that get paired with each player and we’re creating an exhibit with that. A lot of our business and what we’re teaching our kids goes beyond basketball, and that I haven’t seen, personally. I don’t know if it exists. But we feel this is our competitive advantage as far as getting sponsors, kids and building a unique niche.”

Thus far, besides money the founders have invested themselves, Dynastie has gotten financial backing from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Groupe Park Avenue, a car dealership with locations throughout Quebec. More relevant to the SLAM audience, and my personal curiosity, is Dynastie’s shoe/jersey situation. Dynastie rocked Puma kicks and gear last year, which made sense because of the brand’s cultural approach to the game. It’s looking like the team will be in Pumas again this season (should one happen, *fingers crossed*), but other brands are understandably sniffing around a program that features international talent and perhaps some future NBA players. 

Regardless of what’s on the team’s collective feet, the folks involved with Dynastie are sure they are on to something big. 

“It’s been amazing so far, the talent level we’ve been able to attract in just our second year,” Séraphin gushes. “There is nothing like this in Quebec. To be working with French-speaking kids from around the world? It’s very special. We feel like we are changing these kids’ lives as soon as they arrive, and we can only imagine what is in front of them and for this school.” 

—

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Ben Osborne served as Editor-In-Chief of SLAM from 2007-16, as well as Bleacher Report from 2016-20. You can follow him on Twitter @bosborne17

Photo credits to Jeff Photo. You can follow him on Instagram @jeffphoto.ca and Facebook JeffPhotoMTL

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Chris Mullin is only a few years older than me. Kids who grew up in or around New York City in those days knew the Celtics, the Lakers and the Knicks. The hardcore fans also knew the Nets and the Sixers. If we knew the Warriors (who were never on TV), it was as the crazy team with bright yellow unis and a dude named Sleepy who took all the shots. Mully didn’t know much more than us, honestly. He moved all the way across the country and had to leave most of his fam—of the blood and hanging out varieties—behind. He had to get his body on an NBA level. He had to manage expectations of an impatient fan base he’d never even known existed. He had to manage a predilection for drinking away his pain that would get worse before he eventually got treatment and quit alcohol entirely.

But the saying is true—game recognize game. And Chris Mullin had too much of it not to flourish. There was the shot, of course. Lefty. Smooth. Pure. His 18-footers (step off, stat nerds, Mully did his thing in the pre-analytics days and he did it damn well) were like putting a knife through butter that’s been sitting out for a day. Soft. And they went down, believe. Mullin averaged 14 points on 46 percent shooting from the field (90 percent from the line) as a rook and then began a decade-long run where he rarely averaged less than 15 ppg or shot below 50 percent from the field, mostly on the strength of that shot.

But it’s like I said before—dude had game, and that encompasses a whole lot more than a wet J. He wasn’t quick afoot, but his hands were lightning fast, making him a menace to sloppy dribblers or lazy passers, often gobbling up steals to the tune of 2-plus per game. His court vision was a thing of beauty, rendering cutters invisible to the untrained eye the recipients of a Mully dime that led to a lay-in. He could also weasel his way into the lane and steal rebounds from bigger, better-jumping opponents with his incredible court sense. Chris Mullin was a “shooting guard” in name only. His real position, at least as a young Warrior, should have been called, simply, “basketball player.”

Eventually, recognition for all this followed. There were five All-Star Games. Four All-NBA selections. A spot on the original Dream Team. And induction into the Hall of Fame. Inspired by his mind-bending feats on the court, and perhaps a little by his swag-without-trying buzzcut and New York accent, Mully was a fan favorite on both coasts whose appeal reached Middle America, too, when he later played in Indy.

The New York accent survives to this day, which finds him back in Queens, trying to rebuild a once-proud St. John’s program that actually has some talent this season. And don’t be surprised—whether it’s to gain cred as a basketball historian, fan of his coach or just as a dude with great fashion sense—if you see hotshot SJU freshman Shamorie Ponds walking the streets of Jamaica in this throwback Warriors jersey.

—

Photos: Mitchell & Ness, Getty Images

The post Can You Rock It Like This appeared first on SLAM.

Martin was—and is—Team Detroit, which trickled somewhat into supporting the Pistons, though like many of us in the States, he was more interested in the players. “Kevin Garnett was my favorite player growing up, but Allen Iverson was another guy I really loved. I think for me and basketball, it’s more about the individuals that I fell in love with as opposed to the team.”

We understand all that—and the way Martin’s hoops interest trickled into what dudes had on their feet. “I always had Iverson shoes growing up, and when someone would come to school in a new pair of Jordans, it was always cool,” he says. “It was always awesome to get a new pair but now I’ve really fallen in love with it. I think it would be cool to collect at least one of each pair of Jordans.”

We’re speaking with the 27- year-old Martin inside the comfy and chic confines of Extra Butter, the sneaker boutique on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that became Martin’s go-to store as he established himself as a key member of the New York Islanders. “The guys here are huge Islander fans. I was following them on Instagram and Twitter and bought my first pair of Yeezys from here. Then I saw them at our games and ever since then, they’ve hooked me up with pretty much everything that I have.”

A couple weeks after we kicked it with Martin in June, the 6-3, 215-pound tough guy signed a free agent deal with his “hometown” Maple Leafs. Having spent 2016 All-Star Weekend in TO, we know Matt will have no problem finding a place to buy kicks there. Or the crew at Extra Butter, which helped create an Islanders x Extra Butter x Reebok collab last March, can surely take care of their beloved customer by mail.

Regardless of where he cops his shoes, rest assured Martin will keep buying them, and rocking them. “Every time Extra Butter gets a new pair they think I’d like, they message me and I decide whether I want them,” Martin says. “And yes, I wear them all. I thought about keeping some of them and not wearing them, but really, what’s the fun in that, right? There’s worse things I could be doing with my money than buying cool shoes and wearing them out, right?”

Amen, Matt.

—

Photos by Ian Reid

The post Iced Out appeared first on SLAM.

It’s a line of questioning I’m used to…from high school kids interested in journalism careers. Not from a dude who was days away from being selected in the Lottery by the Phoenix Suns.

Most young prospects these days are as media-savvy as political candidates, often from age 15 or 16 and up. That’s what happens when the ESPNs, Scouts and, well, SLAMs of the world are watching you develop and play and sticking phones in your face all the time. Chriss is a different case. A “late-bloomer,” as they say.

“I first started playing organized basketball when I was 14,” says the 6-10, 233-pound (numbers that can still grow!) Chriss, who hails from Sacramento. “I always played football so basketball kind of came later for me. I would play for fun, like, at the park, but I never took it serious until my sophomore year of high school.”

Obviously, in this day and age, that is awfully late. Many American kids pick a sport to “specialize” in by age 12. European players with promise are typically in pro-style academies by 14.

Marquese Chriss was playing his first game at that age.

“At first I was still kind of playing for fun because I couldn’t play football anymore. And then I got moved up to varsity during my sophomore year and it kind of became more real.”

The realness only grew from there. Playing at Pleasant Grove High, Chriss learned to harness his athleticism and became well-known enough that Pac-12 schools showed interest. As he played the game more, he also watched more, too, which was pretty easy in a one-sport town that loves its hometown Kings. “I went to a lot of Kings games with my friends but I decided not to have a favorite team,” remembers Chriss, who ultimately committed to the University of Washington with little fanfare. “I did have a favorite player, though—Rudy Gay. He’s interesting to watch and I enjoyed watching his highlights and things like that.”

Following high school, Chriss migrated north, where Lorenzo Romar’s Huskies haven’t always had the best win-loss record, but talent keeps cultivating. Chriss was considered a project even on the college level, and there were certainly games when his inexperience showed, but on balance, Chriss’ freshman year was a resounding success. Playing alongside freshman PG Dejounte Murray (scooped up late in the first round by the Spurs), Chriss averaged 13.8 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 1.6 bpg and 0.9 spg in just 25 minutes a night, hitting 53 percent of his shots from the field.

“You look at him, and he is immensely talented,” Romar told Arizona Sports 98.7 FM after the Draft. “He’s so athletic. He can step outside to shoot the basketball. He plays with a lot of fluidity. One day in practice he took off with two feet right in front of the free-throw line. One of our players was trying to take a charge and he just made a wicked, wicked dunk on him. He made some eye-opening plays.”

The Huskies went just 19-15, but Chriss showed so much potential that he was quickly faced with a decision even he had not expected so soon. “When I went to college, I didn’t think I was going to leave after one year. It was [going to be] more like a development thing,” he says. “However, it happened quicker.”

No kidding. And once Chriss threw his name in the proverbial Draft ring, his rep only got bigger. “I think my stock rose because people have gotten a chance to see me,” he says. “I think playing in the Pac-12, we didn’t get as much publicity. I just think I have a better opportunity now that I’m kind of in my own light.”

For sure, as we witness after the interview, Chriss looks good in workouts. Even in an age of face-up forwards who can do a little of everything, it’s still unusual to see a well-built 6-10 dude flick threes one second and explode to the rim for a showy jam the next.

Draft night arrives a few weeks after we sit down with Marquese, and his ascension continues to the point that there’s rumors he’ll go as high as No. 3. He ends up being selected on behalf of the Phoenix Suns at No. 8. If there are any concerns about his maturity (shit, maybe being a polite kid who hasn’t been jaded by the underbelly of “amateur” hoops in this country is a positive, anyway), they are more than outweighed by the excitement of what a kid like this can turn into once he’s spent more than four years really playing the game. (Out in Las Vegas forSummer League, MC posted averages of 10 points and 9 rebounds per game for the Suns.)

And Chriss will be excited, too. “It’s gonna feel surreal playing in the NBA. It’s going to be different, people are going to be looking at you that way. Like younger kids are thinking of you how you thought of other people and it’s going to be a cool experience.”

You can bet some of those kids will have questions for him, and it says here that Chriss will answer them with a smile.

—

Photo via Getty Images.

The post Rapid Rise appeared first on SLAM.

The other players who have made my time here so special are too numerous to mention, so I’ll just shout out one: LeBron James. In the simplest of terms, this issue’s cover marks the culmination of all SLAM has wanted for him since we started covering him 15 years ago: that he get his fair props from the entire basketball community. Congrats, Bron.

Likewise, there are too many people here that have made my life better to list them all, so I’m just shouting out one. It’s been said, accurately and many times, that SLAM is bigger than the people who work here. It’s a community of millions now: staff, subscribers, advertisers, social-media followers. But without one person, this magazine simply would not exist. That person is Dennis Page. Respect due.

Peace,

Ben Osborne

P.S. Last month, we were saying good-bye to Adam Figman; now we’re welcoming him back. He’ll be the new Ed., and he will kill it. #SLAMisFam

SLAM 201 is On Sale Now! Check out the cover here.

The post SLAM 201 Ed. Letter appeared first on SLAM.

Much respect to organizer Rus Bradburd and special guest Shawn Harrington.

—

Photos courtesy of Michael Gaylord James

The post 2016 Basketball in the Barrio (PHOTOS) appeared first on SLAM.

SLAM: What are you up to now?

Felipe Lopez: I’ve served as an NBA Cares Ambassador for over seven years, and on the side, I do some community work for the New York Knicks. I spend a lot of my time in New York and then I do a lot of traveling internationally, for the simple fact that I am from the Dominican Republic. I work with a lot of the Spanish-speaking countries—Mexico, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela. I’m looking forward to going to Peru and Bolivia sometime this summer. It’s all about contributing to the game of basketball, whether through the NBA or independent work I do through my foundation, Ministry of Faith, which uses basketball to spread the word of God.

SLAM: How much basketball had you played when you arrived in New York at age 14?

FL: I was one of those kids that right after school, we’d go right to the playground. It was my safe haven. I picked up basketball because it was the one sport that everyone did around my neighborhood in Santo Domingo. We didn’t have the grass or space to have a baseball field. But we did have basketball. And that was not the reason I came here. We came to the United States because my father, through my grandma, was given an opportunity to move here to improve the lifestyle of us.

I have a funny story. After we moved here, to 142^nd and Brook Avenue in the Bronx, I would play basketball around my house. Because I didn’t know how to count in English, I felt cheated a lot. You would ask for the score and you can tell when you’re scoring a whole lot of points, but you’re still down 4. How is it that I’m down 4 but I’m scoring more than everybody here? I couldn’t fight it. That pushed me to learn how to count a little bit quicker. It also pushed me to learn how to call my own fouls.

SLAM: How did you quickly grow from some new kid in town to one of the best players in the city—and country?

FL: It was being introduced into the Gauchos program. Coaches Dave McCullough and Dave Jones built a foundation with me for the work ethic and gave me a lot of opportunities. We had a team of players that used to go to different high schools and they were the best players. I was thrown into the mix playing with these guys and we went all over to play in different tournaments outside New York City and even though I wasn’t a starter, I was able to learn a lot from these guys. When I got in a game, I didn’t have that responsibility of scoring. It was more having fun, playing with those guys. That really helped me to build confidence. So when I ended up going to Rice, I was already playing at a varsity level, and that created great buzz. Then I went to Nike Camp and played against Jason Kidd, Jerry Stackhouse, Baron Davis and Randy Livingston. A lot of those top players from all around the country really helped push my name at an early age, not just in New York City but all over the US. I always wanted to play against the best guys.

SLAM: What do you remember about being the first In Your Face in SLAM’s 200-issue history?

FL: The shoot was done at Gauchos Gym and it is one of my favorite photos, along with the Sports Illustrated one (Felipe famously posed for the cover of SI before his freshman year at SJU). But this one was a really awesome time of my life. Thinking about this now brings me so many great memories. To be the first one posted in SLAM Magazine is an honor. I’m sitting here just smiling because of what it meant to me around that time and what SLAM has meant to the basketball world throughout all those years that it has provided service, information, promoted players. It’s awesome.

SLAM: How would you sum up your four years at St. John’s?

FL: It was great. The only thing I would’ve wished for myself and my teammates is that we could have won more.

SLAM: Did you feel relieved when you made the NBA?

FL: In a sense I was relieved that I was leaving college and I really enjoyed the process of making it to the pros. I got drafted 24^th. I felt pretty comfortable being drafted and unfortunately my career got cut early because of injuries. I tore my ACL. But at the end of the day, I really enjoyed the process. I became the first Dominican to be drafted in the new era of basketball, where the commissioner gets to call your name and he gets to know who you are because he called you out. I’m kind of emotional a little bit because I was with Karl Towns yesterday. He got drafted by the Timberwolves, which was the last team that I played for. He told me he’s having a jersey made with my name that he’s going to wear when he’s walking around Minneapolis. That really touched me because of how far can we go with inspiring somebody. That’s what basketball has done for many of us.

—

Ben Osborne is the Editor-In-Chief of SLAM Magazine. Follow him @bosborne17.

Photo via Getty Images.

The post El Original appeared first on SLAM.

In a way, Chriss’ relative inexperience has helped his image. After all, teams see an extremely fluid, 6-10, 233-pounder who can rain threes and fly at the rim and say to themselves, How good is this kid going to be when he learns the game?

With so much upside, it says here Chriss made the right move leaving U-Dub after just one underwhelming college season. We caught up with him a couple weeks ago as he prepared for his Landmark Sports pro day, and enjoyed hearing his take on his (still-nascent) career. Watch for yourself and think back on this when he blows up down the road…

Photos by Atiba Jefferson 

Video by Shoot To Kill NYC

The post WATCH: Get To Know Rising Lottery Pick Marquese Chriss appeared first on SLAM.

At the other end of the gym, I sit at a table alongside some copies of SLAM Presents KOBE. Sitting across from me is Miguel Bennett, President of Basketball Operations for Open Gym Premier, the outfit that’s been working out the Bahamian superstar the last few weeks. As Bennett thumbs through the KOBE issue, I tell him I’ve heard Buddy does some super-intense late-night shooting workouts, usually with his local music blasting. “This guy is just a beast,” he says. “He’s been doing three workouts a day and keeping a very strict regimen. Sometimes he’ll come back to the gym and shoot even more, after he’s done three full workouts.” A former standout at DIII Chapman University who has been working out high-level players in the OC for a decade, Bennett pauses. “Really, the only guy I can compare his work ethic to is this guy,” he says, holding the KOBE issue up. “I’ve never seen anyone work harder than Kobe. But Buddy’s close.”

Suddenly, it starts to make sense how a kid who grew up in the modest village of Eight Mile Rock could be less than a month away from shaking the NBA commissioner’s hand and cashing NBA checks. After all, a long shot like Hield needed more than just the ability to make long shots.

After his workout ends and he cools off, the 6-4 shooting guard who just graduated from Oklahoma sits down to explain how he got here. “My friends and my family didn’t love basketball, but I just fell in love with it,” recalls Hield. “I used to wake my friends up in the morning, knock on their windows, let’s go to the court. They’d say, ‘Buddy, go home. It’s too early for this.’ We’d all play but they never took it serious like I did.”

Without friends or family members (“Everyone in my family ran track,” he says) to push his game, nor many role models in his entire country (the most famous Bahamian player before Buddy was NBA Champ Mychal Thompson, who has lived in the States far longer than Buddy’s been alive), Hield really had just two sources to learn the game: TV and his incredible imagination. “I would watch guys like Kobe and Allen Iverson on TV, and then try and mimic their moves,” he remembers. “And when we’d play three-on-three or full-court, I would try those moves and try to perfect them each and every day.

“Even when I wasn’t tall yet, I had a lot of heart. Whatever I put my mind to, I accomplished. To be honest, I used to be so stubborn. I thought I could have made it to the NBA when I was just coming out of high school when they had that rule. I thought I was that good. My friends would laugh at me. But I always had that mindset that I was good enough to play in the NBA. I just had to get my chance to do it and prove it.”

The proving began on a wider scale at Wichita (KS) Sunrise Christian, where Hield played after being discovered at a showcase in The Bahamas. It continued in Norman, where he was named the Sooners’ Most Inspirational Player as a freshman and won Big 12 POY as a junior. Still, there was one more bout of doubt. “Last summer, between my junior year and senior year, is when I really exploded to the player I want to be,” Hield says. “You’re the Big 12 Player of the Year but not on everybody’s first-round Draft board, so you kind of feel embarrassed. That made me work so hard to become the player I wanted to become. When I came back last season, I had the mindset that I’m going to kill everybody from tip until the end.”

That’s an accurate description of what Hield did in a season that saw him sweep national individual honors while averaging 25 ppg and leading OU to the Final Four. And in the unlikely event he loses the hunger that’s gotten him this far, words from his mom will straighten him out. “Sometimes you just want to give up when you’re working out hard each and every day,” Hield says. “But my mom always reminds me, ‘Remember the kid back in the park who didn’t have nothing.’ So I remember what got me here and I never lose my edge and I never forget where I came from.”

—

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM Magazine.

Portrait by Atiba Jefferson

Video by Shoot to Kill

The post Pure Determination appeared first on SLAM.

Some fans, and certainly some media outlets, chose to pick one or the other. As if loving one of these cats made you a sellout for loving the other. Not SLAM. As proven by their repeated appearances on the most-revered real estate in basketball media throughout our 200 (!!!!!!) issues, we have the deepest love and respect for both of these guys. On a given day we might admit to liking AI’s wardrobe or music choices more than Mike’s, and on a different day we might wish AI could follow MJ’s lead and not say certain things that could cast him in a negative light, but ultimately, we don’t really give two shits about that stuff.

Critics have discussed SLAM over the years in music terms and racial terms, and in many cases, by using pretty unflattering language. We never paid all that much mind, though, because our mission is honestly a little more straightforward: to be the best basketball magazine ever. And when it comes to hoops over the course of our history, these two just did it iller than anyone else. So we celebrate them now like we have so many times over the years.

**Special thanks to everyone who voted in our SLAM 200 reader poll—the results are in the mag!

—

WATCH OUR MICHAEL JORDAN VS ALLEN IVERSON MIXTAPE

The post SLAM 200 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Sure enough, that’s what happened in Game 3 of the NBA Finals tonight at Quicken Loans Arena. Playing faster and lighter without Kevin Love (sitting due to the concussion he suffered in Game 2), the Cavs came out possessed, scoring the game’s first 9 points and hardly ever looking back as they cut the Warriors’ series advantage to 2-1.

Kyrie Irving, who had been criticized almost as much as Love after the first two games, was on FIRE the entire first quarter, which ended with his 16 points equaling the entire Warriors team as the Cavs took a 33-16 lead after the period.

https://vine.co/v/i3wjXQFLmBj

As much of social media opined in real time, the defending champion Warriors hardly rolled over after the first, coming out strong in second quarter. The score was actually 51-43 at halftime, which seemed pretty good from the G-State angle, considering Stephen Curry had just TWO points at that juncture.

Unlike Games 1 and 2, however, the Cavs did NOT fold in the third quarter, staying aggressive and continuing to take advantage of any bigs the Warriors put on the floor (Kerr did not deploy his short “death lineup” much tonight). Curry at least showed some life in the third, but it was not enough as the Cavaliers maintained control of the game and led 89-69 after three.

https://vine.co/v/i3dOgDPADem

The Cavs would not let up in the fourth, either. With LeBron James (who else?) leading the way at both ends of the floor, the hosts kept the proverbial foot down, forcing turnovers, pushing the pace and basically beasting on the visitors as the Quicken Loans Arena crowd got increasingly raucous.

By the time the game got inside the five-minute mark, the outcome had been determined. Both sides had pulled all their starters and fans started to head home. On the Cavs sideline, LeBron could feel great about his 32-point, 11-rebound, 6-assist game, which featured dunks, a three and a TON of emotion from the erstwhile League MVP.

He got ample support from Irving, who finished with 30 points and 8 dimes, and the mercurial JR Smith, who resurfaced to the tune of 20 points in 37 minutes.

For Kerr’s oddly uninspired Warriors, the Splash Brothers were the biggest disappointments, as Curry finished with 19 points on just 13 shots, and Klay Thompson—perhaps hampered by a thigh contusion in the first half—had only 10 points.

The Warriors’ best player tonight was actually Harrison Barnes, who went for 18 points and 8 rebounds and had a couple momentum-stopping (momentarily) jumpers earlier in the game.

The rejuvenated Cavs will host Game 4 back here on Friday night, and we will of course be in the house.

The post Fired-Up Cavs Roll to 120-90 Win in Game 3 of NBA Finals appeared first on SLAM.

Irie, who’d already made his name on the local station 99 JAMZ and in clubs, jumped at the chance. “I asked them how teams and DJs were doing it in other cities and they were like, Nope, nowhere else is this even being done,” recalls Irie, whose real name is Ian Grocher. “That was my motivation.”

If Irie was ever even tempted to get bored by the gig, the franchise’s success—thanks to Pat Riley’s steady hand in the front office and Dwyane Wade’s stellar play on the court—has kept him fired up. “We won that first Championship with Dwyane and Shaq so we knew what it took,” Irie says. “From there the franchise was doing its thing, and then free agency comes along and all of a sudden you realize: We can have LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in the starting lineup! Honestly, the energy at that Welcome Event was probably the same as the greatest nights of the Finals during that special four-year run. It was like a dream developing right in front of your face.”

Post-LeBron life in Miami has been somewhat of a reality check as the Heat are back in the solid-if-not-spectacular class of NBA teams, but Irie’s music and the team’s chic, newish AmericanAirlines Arena keep things popping on game nights.

What’s more, with three NBA Championship rings and countless nights spent spinning for Heat fans under his belt, Irie has been able to branch out in recent years. He’s done deals with Cadillac, Carnival Cruise Lines, Target and other A-list brands, and as we speak on the phone, he’s preparing for his 12th annual Irie Weekend. “June 22-25, hopefully bigger and better than ever,” gushes Irie. “We golf, we party, and we raise a lot of money for after-school programs, cultural experiences for kids who rarely get off their block.”

Jam on.

—

Photo by Jeremiah Lazo

The post Irie Jams appeared first on SLAM.

The reason why I’m worked up now is because it exposes how the whole thing was haphazard PR bullshit. If the NBA truly cared about its players sartorial choices—as if there was indeed a link between what dudes wore to the game and the product they put forth while playing—then Russ would have gotten the biggest dress code violation ever on Saturday. He’s been toeing the line for awhile now, but dude showed up in a completely sliced-up, totally sleeveless shirt. THAT IS THE FIRST VIOLATION IN THE DRESS CODE!

Please read the original rules, as I found in an ESPN.com/Associated Press story from October 18, 2005, when the dress code was announced:

NEW YORK — There will be no more dress down days in the NBA.

 

The league announced in a memo to teams on Monday that a minimum dress code will go into effect at the start of the regular season on Nov. 1. Players will be expected to wear business casual attire whenever they participate in team or league activities, including arriving at games, leaving games, conducting interviews and making promotional or other appearances. Specific penalties have not yet been announced, but NBA spokesman Tim Frank said players and their teams will face fines for violations—adding that repeat offenders would be subject to suspensions…

 

Players will no longer be able to wear:

 

• Sleeveless shirts

• Shorts

• T-shirts

• Chains, pendants, or medallions worn over the player’s clothes.

• Sunglasses while indoors.

• Headphones (other than on the team bus or plane, or in the team
locker room).

 

Players will also now be required to wear a sport coat on the bench when they are not in uniform.

 

Not all players feel that the new dress code is in the best image of the League. “I understand they’re making it out to make us look better to corporate and big business. But we don’t really sell to big business,” Suns guard Raja Bell said. “We sell to kids and people who are into the NBA hip-hop world. They may be marketing to the wrong people with this.”

 

Commissioner David Stern is expected to announce the penalty for dress code violations next week.

Yesterday, we reached out to the NBA, with the following question: “There’s lots of conversation in our office this am, as well on social media, about whether or not the NBA still has an official dress code. Is there any official word from the League?”

The response, which took six hours to generate, was: “Yes, we have a dress code.”

Nothing else. Why does a League that runs the sport we all love so dearly have to be so lame in matters like this? Please strike the dress code from the “rule book,” apologize to AI for the strife you caused him—and the money you cost him by making him buy “business casual” gear. And continue to let Russell Westbrook wear whatever he wants. Like AI—a League MVP, lest you forget—should have been allowed to.

—

Photos via Getty Images

The post The NBA Dress Code is Nonsense appeared first on SLAM.

Now, the caveats. As I’ve said in hundreds of interviews, LeBron is a once-in-a-lifetime player. Ben is not as athletic as LeBron and no one is LeBron, athletically or otherwise. A better ceiling, as we discussed in the office, is Magic Johnson: similar build, passing skills and questionable shot (at least at these stages of their respective careers). Ben’s floor is probably a guy like Evan Turner, renowned when he entered the League as the No. 2 pick for his versatility but unable to ever turn it into more than solid role playing.

At this point, we’re aiming for the sky, wishing Ben the absolute best and trying to sell magazines with dope covers. Here’s hoping it all works!

Portrait and cover shot by Tom Medvedich

—

READ THE SLAM 199 COVER STORY ON BEN SIMMONS HERE

The post SLAM 199 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

A cool, stylish, hoops-loving golfer with NBA bloodlines, Tony Finau is the type of athlete SLAM roots for. We caught up with Finau—the first person of Tongan/American Samoan descent to play on the quietly diversifying PGA Tour—hours after his practice round at the Valspar Championship, and days after one of his favorite games of the season…and days before his first PGA Tour win. Watch out for Tony—and his fly gear—this weekend at the RBC Heritage and all season long.

SLAM: Where’d you play high-school ball, and what type of player were you?

Tony Finau: I went to West High in Salt Lake City and played through my senior year. I’m 6-4 now but then I was just 6-3, playing center against guys six inches taller than me. But I was the leading rebounder in the state my senior year!

SLAM: And you got basketball scholarship offers?

TF: Yes, from Utah State and Weber State, which are kind of a big deal if you’re from Utah. And a bunch of DII.

SLAM: What if the Utes had offered?

TF: [Chuckles]. I don’t know. As much as I enjoyed playing, I think there’s a reason I’m on the golf Tour instead.

SLAM: I saw that clip on Instagram [@tonyfinaugolf] where you threw down a dunk from a flat-footed position; I guess you got those rebounds with athleticism?

TF: I am pretty athletic, but I also knew how to use my body and track shots.

SLAM: Do you still play now?

TF: Yes! I still play once or twice a week whenever I’m home.

SLAM: One of the ways we tracked you down was through your relationship with SKLZ, who makes great training tools. Do you look at basketball as a way to stay in shape?

TF: Absolutely. I’m proud to have SKLZ as a partner, and I use their stuff for golf all the time. I haven’t used their basketball stuff yet. Even though I know there are injury risks in playing basketball, I do think it’s one of the best ways to stay in shape. It helps with cardio. I have a passion for it—it’s really a great sport that has always brought my family together.

SLAM: Speaking of family, Jabari Parker is your cousin, right?

TF: He’s my second cousin. My dad and his mom are first cousins, but they grew up in the same house so they’re almost like brother and sister. I’m not as close to Jabari as some people think—we speak every once in a while—but I do follow him and the Bucks and it’s very cool to have someone I share blood with succeeding at that level.

SLAM: What other teams do you follow?

TF: I’m watching Steph and the Warriors because I appreciate what they’re doing. But historically, I’m a Laker fan. That’s my team. I enjoyed that win over the Warriors the other night.

SLAM: Lastly, I wanted to ask you about kicks—you’ve been wearing high-top Nike Flyknit golf shoes?!

TF: Yeah man, Flyknit Chukkas. I’m newly signed to Nike Golf and I feel that I can embody what Nike is all about as far as embracing the modern athlete. They’re trying to show cooler clothes, cooler shoes and move the game more in that direction. We need to do that to make it more accessible and interesting to young people.

SLAM: And I take it your off-course kick game is improving, too?

TF: Yes! My Jordan collection has gone way up in the last few months. My favorites now are Retro IVs and also the Air Force 1 Flyknit, but if you talk to me next month, I’ll probably say something else.

The post New Look appeared first on SLAM.

In the spring of ’96, before Kobe turned pro, we did a big feature on him called “Higher Learning.” It was SLAM’s 11th issue—we were finding our footing as an increasingly well-known publication just as Kobe was finding his footing as an increasingly well-known ballplayer. He turned pro a couple months later, ended up with the storied Laker franchise, and the march to international stardom was on. Obviously, Kobe Bryant’s popularity grew far larger than SLAM’s, but we grew, too, publishing 150-plus-page issues on the regular and sometimes selling 250,000 copies. He’d made it big and we’d made it big, and some of our best-selling issues, not coincidentally, featured Kob. There was his first cover (24), when Piotr Sikora shot Kobe and his ’fro and Cheo Hodari Coker penned a classic cover story. There was the happy cover with Shaquille O’Neal (43), black-jersey issue (66; pictured in his hands above), the snake cover (97), the USA cover (114), the two-Kobe issue (126), the gritted-teeth Champs issue (131) and the gorgeous Martin Schoeller close-up (136). We actually tallied up all the SLAM cover subjects recently, and KB is currently tied for the all-time lead with LeBron James: a whopping 21 covers each.

As Kobe aged, he changed. He became less explosive, but smarter. He grew from a brash teen to an old head. He started speaking out on social issues and started a company, Kobe Inc., which is a multi-armed operation in Newport Beach that will keep its namesake plenty busy in retirement. SLAM is still pretty brash, I’d say, but we have matured, and we’ve transitioned from solely a print product to a multi-media brand that reaches more people than ever before, albeit in a variety of social–media–based ways that didn’t even exist back when SLAM and Kobe were getting started. Now Kobe’s hanging up his playing shoes, and we’ve chosen to honor him the best way we can: with this beautiful collector’s magazine that tracks his entire, legendary career with words and images that represent the way we’ve always covered him. Eventually, he will be passed in covers and SLAM will have new heroes and legends that we grow old with. But we’ll never forget what he meant to us. Just as his fans will never forget what he meant to them.

RELATED: Is Kobe the G.O.A.T.? Michael Eric Dyson spoke with a bunch of NBA players—Kobe included—to find out.

Not finding this mag on newsstands. Order it by mail here: https://www.circsource.com/store/storeBackIssDescription.html?backIssueId=6391

The post SLAM Presents KOBE is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Trust, both apply to me. I grew up falling in love with all that Michael Jordan did on the basketball court, so I—like many others—was devastated when he retired at age 30 in October ’93. Sure, he’d already won seven scoring titles, three MVPs and three Chips, but it was clear there was so much more he could accomplish. Instead, he went to play…baseball?

After a full season of baseball and preparations for a second one, Jordan was supposedly spending more and more time around the Berto Center, the Bull’s practice facility. But in the early internet/pre-social media era of ’95, whispers of MJ actually rejoining the Bulls were pretty much just that—whispers—especially if you didn’t live in Chicagoland. News and rumors didn’t travel so fast back then. So it was that the fax (Google what that is if you must) MJ sent on March 18 really was when his return was officially news.

The next day, a Sunday, the Bulls played at Market Square Arena against the Indiana Pacers. Suiting up for the first time in more than 21 months, Jordan played 43 (!!) minutes and shot 7-28 from the floor in a ragged Bulls loss. Nothing like easing your way back, huh? Besides the decidedly un-Mike-like shooting percentage and perhaps a few new wrinkles, the other thing that was different about ’95 Jordan was his uniform number. He was rocking 45.

After a March 22 road win in Boston, Mike made his return to the United Center—and debuted the crispy white 45 jersey you see on this spread—in a 106-99 loss to the Magic that saw Jordan shoot poorly again.

In all, he’d play 17 regular-season games in ’95, eight at home and nine on the road. The highlight of the road run was obviously the March 28 game in New York, when MJ dropped his “double-nickel” on the Knicks. He actually had no truly memorable home games in that stretch, posting a lot of poor-shooting, 20-something-point outings as the Bulls struggled to get in a rhythm.

When the Playoffs tipped off, MJ stayed rocking 45 and seemed to turn his game up a notch. He went for 48 points, 9 rebounds and 8 assists in 47 minutes in a Game 1 win at Charlotte in the first round. The Bulls won that series, 3-1, and actually seemed capable of reprising their title runs of the early ’90s.

Up next was the Magic, who’d won 57 regular-season games before rolling past the Celtics in round one. In the first game of the Magic series, Orlando edged the Bulls, 94-91, as Jordan had another rough shooting night and committed a key late turnover. Speaking of the turnover he helped cause, Orlando’s Nick Anderson told the media after the game that “No. 45 is not No. 23.”

Motivated by Anderson’s tweak, Jordan took the court in No. 23 for the second game of the series. His 45 jersey would never be worn again. So, all told, Mike played just 22 games in No. 45—only 10 in the gorgeous home white one.

It’s one of the weirder chapters in sports uniform history, really. A guy who became the most famous athlete in the world wearing a very specific number, who would go on to double his success and fame in that same number, had a brief period where he wore something completely different.

Given the discrepancy in achievements, it’s fair to say that MJ’s 45 doesn’t stand for the same level of greatness 23 does, but it does stand for Jordan’s resilience in rejoining a team in the heart of a Playoff race and giving his all immediately.

It also stands, to me at least, as a symbol of the pure joy his comeback brought.

—

Action photo via Getty Images

The post Fax Only appeared first on SLAM.

Well, sure enough, the text came. It was this pic, in fact. Right from Adam Figman, our Senior Editor, who almost singlehandedly made this whole thing happen (he can share credit for the idea with Dave Schnur, but everything after that was all Figs). It was a Friday night. Adam was at the Raptors’ new training facility. Photographer Atiba Jefferson was there. Kyle Lowry was there. DeMar DeRozan was there. And then, suddenly, Drake was there. And one of the most unique shoots in SLAM history was underway.

And why this cover? Why now? If it was as simple as SLAM being the “hip-hop basketball magazine,” a description bestowed on us for years by outsiders (if not us), we would have put a rapper on the cover years ago. It had to be the right rapper, which Drake, with his millions of fans, upcoming album and official role as the Raptors Global Ambassador, is. And it had to be the right players, which Kyle and DeMar, fresh off their All-Star spots and still hungry for their first SLAM cover, certainly are. And the right timing. With the upstart Raptors poised to go on the franchise’s deepest Playoff run ever, our Playoff Issue certainly fit that bill. Hope you guys agree.

SLAM 198 hits newsstands next week. Read the issue’s cover story here!

Photography by Atiba Jefferson

READ SLAM 198’S COVER STORY

The post SLAM 198 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Some guys—especially ones who are leading the NBA in minutes for the second year in a row—would use the injury as a reason to take a well-deserved vacation. But that would require being bored with the trappings of NBA stardom, which Butler is a long way away from. In fact, he’s still struggling to believe how fast it’s hit him.

“This isn’t something I even dreamed about as a kid,” Butler says of NBA stardom. “Honestly, I didn’t even think I had a decent shot of being a pro until my senior year in college.”

The Chosen One, Jimmy Butler is not.

You probably know the story by now, but it bears at least a quick repeat. Born in Houston 26 years ago, Butler didn’t see much of his father, ran into trouble with his mother and spent part of his high school years effectively homeless. Needless to say, this was not the best background to become a professional athlete, and Jimmy (blessed with size and athleticism, at least) had to bust his ass at Tomball (TX) High just to earn his way onto the team at Tyler (TX) Junior College.

Solid play at Tyler earned Butler DI looks, and he transferred to Marquette, where he averaged an underwhelming 6 points and 4 rebounds as a sophomore. By his senior year in Milwaukee, Butler was averaging 16 and 6 and getting scouted by teams in the League.

When Draft night came, Butler was chosen with the last pick of the first round by the Bulls. For reference, here are the 30th picks in the Drafts before and after Jimmy’s: Kevon Looney, Kyle Anderson, Nemanja Nedovic, Festus Ezeli, Lazar Hayward and Christian Eyenga. Who he play for? No one.

“At first, the only thing I could do was play hard,” Butler remembers. “The instruction I got from the Bulls was to give effort. With effort comes defense. If you’re playing hard, you’re trying to guard. That’s where I made a name for myself at first.”

Despite his humble beginnings, Butler didn’t lack confidence once he saw how he matched up with other players, at least physically. And before long, he wanted more: minutes, opportunities, shots.

“From the moment he got in the League, Jimmy had unbelievable faith in himself and confidence in his abilities,” says Adrian Griffin, a Bulls assistant when Butler entered the L who now works for the Magic. “But he wanted to run before he walked. I helped teach him that it will take time to get where he wanted. But he took what he learned and ran with it. A lot of guys in this League say they want to be great, but don’t actually show it in their work. Jimmy did the work. He put in extra work before practice. Extra shooting after practice. Watched film. I also remember countless hours discussing the power of thoughts. Believing you can make shots, stuff like that. He worked on every aspect of the game.”

Gradually, the work paid off. When Luol Deng, another one of Butler’s mentors and theretofore Coach Tom Thibodeau’s do-everything swingman who was leading the L in minutes, got hurt halfway through Butler’s second season, the minutes started coming Jimmy’s way. The next season, the Bulls dealt Deng. “When Luol got traded, that’s when Jimmy really got a chance,” Griffin remembers. “Thibs started playing him more and we were like, Wow, he’s not scared of big games. Wow, he’s not scared of guarding LeBron James. Those little moments added up and showed Thibs and the organization that they had someone special.”

From there, it was on, with both the work ethic and the confidence playing out. “I got with my trainer, who is with me right now, and we worked on getting my offensive skill set flowing,” says Butler after our photo shoot has wrapped, gesturing a few feet away at personal trainer Chris Johnson. “Chris is the best at what he does, and my confidence comes from the work I did with him. I’ve been playing basketball since I was young. Some things you’re going to be better at than others, and that’s OK. I think I’m pretty decent at all of them, and now the offensive game is starting to sprout.”

Co-signs Johnson, “In order to be a great teacher, you’ve got to have a great student. So all this success goes to him for all the things that he does and believes and he deserves everything that comes to him. Whether it’s really light and just working on mechanical footwork, or it’s really going hard or shooting, Jimmy’s a joy to work with.”

The confidence showed when Butler turned down a four-year, $44-million contract before last season, betting that he’d get even more as a restricted free agent a year later. Sure enough, Butler exploded in ’14-15, leading the League in minutes while making his first All-Star team and averaging 20 ppg for a Bulls team that had the eventual conference champion Cavs on the ropes in the second round of the Playoffs. Suitably impressed, the Bulls gave Butler the five-year, $92-mil extension he wanted.

Basketball-wise, the contract did little to slow Butler’s ascension. He worked as hard as ever last summer and came back this year with by far the most advanced offensive skills of his career, while remaining a top defender. As of press time, which reflects the 48 games Butler played before the knee injury, his numbers are pretty eye-popping: 22.4 points, 4.3 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 1.7 steals in a League-high 37.9 minutes per game. He’s got an elite-level PER of 21.9 while shooting 46 percent from the floor, 33 percent from three and 83 percent from the line. He dropped 40 in a half against the Raptors on January 3, then put 53 on the Sixers less than two weeks later. Jimmy Buckets, indeed. “In my opinion, he’s the best two-way player in the League,” Johnson says. “He plays both ends, he logs the most minutes. He’s had a coaching change. He still maintained an All-Star status. This All-Star experience has been really good because you see a lot of really great players in the game come to him and embrace him and say, ‘Jimmy, it’s your time. It’s your time. This is your League, you can do this. You’ve done it once, do it again, do it again.’”

As an individual story, it’s almost impossible to find a flaw in Jimmy’s progression. He came from next-to-nothing to have a mega contract, a lucrative deal with Jordan Brand (see sidebar for more) and to traipse around Toronto repping the NBA and Jordan while also getting to shoot his first SLAM cover. He’s gone from being the last pick in the first round of the 2011 Draft to being one of just three players in that class to be chosen for multiple All-Star Games (Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson are the others).

There is a team aspect to this story, too, though. And that one is decidedly incomplete. The Chicago Bulls’ most famous player is Derrick Rose. Their most accomplished is Pau Gasol. The longest-tenured member of their roster, who also happens to own the team’s largest personality, is Joakim Noah. But at this point, Jimmy Butler is a better player than all of them. But who’s the leader of this erratic, potential-filled mix of a squad that has a first-year coach (Fred Hoiberg) who has seemed in over his head at times? A team that has played like the best team in the League some nights while looking like a Lottery team many others?

For his part, Butler, who is generally open and cheery with myself and the entire SLAM crew during our shoot and interview, sort of dodges the question when I pose it to him. “I’m just trying to be the best player I can be and be the best person I can be,” he says generically. “I’m going to continue to be a good basketball player and help the Chicago Bulls win games. And I think more importantly, continue to be who I am, and be true to myself.”

Even Griffin hedges on the leadership question. “For any player in this League who wants to be a great player, an All-Star, the first thing you have to do is sustain your high level of play over a stretch of time,” he says. “Jimmy is on the brink of that, as you can see by him being an All-Star two years in a row. That is how you earn the respect of your teammates and the entire League.”

Is that enough? One person close to the Bulls describes Butler to me as “moody, up and down, and definitely not a leader.” Another says “he’s definitely ‘gone Hollywood,’” and it’s not meant as a compliment. There have been stories—some published, some not—that describe a tension-filled Chicago locker room that is desperate to have one voice give some order.

Deep breath.

Jimmy Butler is one of the most unique talents in a League filled with preternatural athletes. He is newer to superstardom and its accompanying trappings than anyone else in his position because of the lateness with which it came to him. He plays for a team with a history of divisiveness between and among coaches, players and the front office, with a skeptical, impatient fan base spoiled by the six-ring era.

Personally, I think everyone should chill. Embrace the player Jimmy is becoming. Take note of the renaissance Derrick is enjoying. Picture them each at full health as the season hits its homestretch and heads into the Playoffs where a ton of other flawed teams await. It may work out after all.

And if it doesn’t, well…Jimmy Butler has proven time and time again that he will put in the work to get better.

—

Ben Osborne is a former Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on twitter @bosborne17.

Portraits by Atiba Jefferson

The post Jimmy Butler: The Rise appeared first on SLAM.

In my many years attending All-Star Weekend for SLAM, I’ve seen and been a part of many memorable moments. Executing a cover shoot smack dab in the middle of it had never been one of them, though. And the shoots we did in Toronto were no run-of-the-mill cover shoots, either. It was two guys, from two different conferences. One of ’em injured, the other one about as into media obligations as his legendarily laconic teammate, Tim Duncan.

And yet, we got it done. Mixed-up schedules? Sub-zero temperatures outside? Barely warmer temps inside (we shot inches above the ice in the “old” Maple Leaf Gardens)? Well, when you’ve got Atiba Jefferson running point on the camera side of things and the Jordan Brand and Taylor Strategy crews running point on the talent side of things, we can make magic happen. Obviously the cooperation of two very gracious All-Stars, Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard (together above, but separate in their respective SLAM covers below), was essential, too. The result is two great-looking covers, and two great-reading stories, featuring two young, improving players who excel at both ends of the floor and hold the keys to success for their respective (and iconic) franchises.

All-Star for us is usually about meetings, interviews, parties, slam dunks, slammed drunks and more taxi rides than we take in an entire year in Manhattan. This year we threw a cover shoot into the middle of everything and crossed our fingers everything would work out. And did it ever.

Major, right?

The post SLAM 197 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Last year at this time, the basketball world’s focus was on New York City, and when all the events and hype had happened and it was time for the best players in the NBA to just go out and ball, one particular dude rose above all the others: Russell Westbrook. You guys remember? Taking the floor at Madison Square Garden and attacking the East All-Stars as if they were the host Knicks (’14-15 edition), Russ came off the bench (silly fans) to score an ASG-record 27 points in the first half and finish with 41 (one short of Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time record) in less than 26 minutes of play to lead the West to a 163-158 victory that doubled as a referendum on just how insanely talented this dude is. It marked the fourth time (incidentally, RW’s career shooting percentage in the mid-winter classic is an unconscious .557) that Westbrook played in the ASG as a reserve, but the first time he’d been the game’s best player and chosen as its MVP.

Is it last year’s stellar showing that prompted fans to wise up and vote him in as a starter for the 2016 edition? That got Jordan Brand to put its full and considerable marketing might behind him as the face of the much-awaited Air Jordan XXX we’re gonna see on his feet this year? That led SLAM to give Russ his first completely solo, not-split cover? Seems likely times three.

This issue, which features a front-to-back redesign that looks amazing, will be out nationally (and of course in Canada/Toronto!!!) next week. Enjoy.

Portrait by Trevor Paulhus

Illustration by Ty Paulhus

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“The original Legend and Hardwood Classic socks were a huge success for the brand. The socks sold exceedingly well, but more than that, they opened a lot of new eyes to Stance,” explains Clarke Miyasaki, executive vice president of Business Development at Stance. “We were the first ones to sublimate NBA images onto socks. Since that time, a lot of people have tried their hand at it. It’s time for us to up the game again.”

One update is in the form of the Trading Card line, and the other is the Ink Splatter line, which work action images of past NBA greats into a much more aggressive design. There are also caricature socks that emphasize certain players’ hairstyles (ie, Allen Iverson’s cornrows and Bird’s blonde mop). “Ink Splatter and Trading Card are our newest designs. The trading cards were definitely inspired by 1980s and 1990s trading cards and both of them are inspired by our love for basketball, design and history,” says Tzvi Twersky, basketball category director for Stance. “A while ago, we gave our designers the task of coming back to us with something new, innovative and original. Weeks later, they came back to us with this incredible line of socks. Almost immediately, we knew that they were ready for our consumers.”

Besides consumers and #SLAMFam, obvious potential fans of the Legends socks are the great players who have appeared on them. “Reactions to the socks have run the gamut, from nonchalant to, ‘Yo! Send me 100 pairs for my family!’” explains Twersky with a laugh. “It’s pretty cool, though, when you hand a player a pair for the first time. It probably compares to showing a guy the cover of SLAM when he’s on it. There’s a sense of ‘I made it!’ mixed with ‘What took you guys so long?!’”

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RELATED:
Here’s how the Stance x NBA deal came together.
Learn about the technology behind Stance’s official NBA socks.
Stance assembled an eclectic team of NBAers to rep the up-and-coming sock brand.

The post True Legend appeared first on SLAM.

March 13, 2000, Bulls vs. Jazz. The last time I was in Chicago was Sunday, June 7, ’98. Game 3, Bulls vs. Jazz. You remember that night, when the Bulls absolutely humiliated the Jazz, 96-54, a still-record NBA Finals performance. Michael, Scottie and crew made the United Center a special place, but by the end of that week—after a Bulls’ win in Game 4 and a Jazz miracle in Game 5—the excitement at UC was over. Like the excitement and myself, Utah was out of Chi-Town, aided by a lockout in not returning until tonight.

“I don’t think we even care about being back here,” Utah’s Byron Russell says in an attitude-laced statement in the pregame locker room. “It ain’t even like it’s the same arena if it ain’t have the same personnel.”

Out by the court, Russell’s opinion is hard to argue with. People may be filing into the seats (the Bulls are still selling out games), but there’s little buzz other than the one generated by geeky Jazz fans snapping photos of their aging heroes. This is not what I remember from my last Bulls’ game. “F— them,” I thought of those damn Jerrys, who ruined all the fun and apparently signed a long-term lease in Lotto-land for the once-dynastic Bulls.

Twenty-four hours later, however, having interviewed many of the key witnesses and investigated the case, I had a much different outlook on the killing of the Jordan Bulls. This Chicago situation is actually far different from the ones taking place in Oakland (the Warriors), Los Angeles (the Clippers) or the Great White North (the Grizzlies). The Bulls have a plan, and thanks to a pair of rookies from New York, things are off to a great start. That .200 winning percentage the Bulls lugged into April? You won’t be seeing a number like that out of Chicago again for many years. Ron Artest and Elton Brand won’t let that happen.

“People laugh too much when they play against us, like it’s a game,” Artest says before the Jazz game (which he sits out with a sprained ankle). “But it is not going to be a game for long. Soon we’re going to start just murdering people. Word up.”

If Artest, the 20-year-old Queensbridge native who spent the last two years at St. John’s before being picked 16th by the Bulls in last year’s Draft, is the erratic and fiery ball of potential in the Bulls’ future, then Brand represents the molten rock that can assure it glows.

Tim Floyd, the Bulls’ friendly second-year coach, is positively ebullient when you bring up his two key rooks (seldom-used Michael Ruffin also debuted with Chicago this year, but there are no guarantees that he’ll be there for long). When asked what Brand has done to enter the home stretch of the season as the Rookie of the Year favorite over the inconsistently spectacular duo of Steve Francis and Lamar Odom, Floyd’s down-home demeanor does little to diminish the confidence of his answer. “Oh, Elton had a couple of games at the beginning of the season that weren’t all that spiffy. But I think [his consistency] is because his motor is always on. Elton is a guy’s who’s very prideful, who wants to be the very best at his position in the NBA. He knows he doesn’t have every answer right now, but he has the willingness to work, to watch films and stay around when everyone else heads home. If he keeps it up, this is a guy who’s got a chance to be an All-Star in this League for 10 years.”

Against Karl Malone, the greatest PF of all time and a player many observers feel Brand can approximate nicely, the 6-8, 260-pound student more than holds his own. Keeping pretty much with his post-All-Star-break numbers, and battering his season averages of 19.4 ppg, 10 rpg and 1.6 bpg, Elton goes for 26, 12 and 4 in an 87-79 Chicago loss. His game is rudimentary, based on offensive rebounding, perfectly squared-up jump shots and a soft touch around the basket. It’s more than enough—especially when combined with Elton’s decent size, long arms and “some of the biggest hands ever seen on a basketball player,” according to Krause—to see that less than a year after being taken No. 1, the former two-year Duke star is for real.

Malone always plays hard, but I swear he’s extra fired up against Elton (of whom, when asked before the game if he saw similarities in their games, Malone said curtly, “We’re both black”). Malone barely wins the personal duel with 31 and 13, smartly converting fast-break opportunities provided by John Stockton that Elton has never even seen in practice. After the game, Mail sings a different tune about his follower. “I just tell him to hang in there,” he says. “By playing on this team now, it’s going to help him out later in life…He’s on a losing team now, but if a guy can play this hard every night on a losing team, think about how much better he’ll be on a winning team.”

Across the lower room from the original, NBA classmate and former college rival Scott Padgett is also impressed with Elton. “I think I respected him a lot more than other people diid going into the Draft because I saw what he could do when I played against him. He’s a lot like Karl, where he doesn’t do anything fancy, but you look up at the end of the night, and he’s got 20 and 10. I think he shows you can be a very, very good player without all the highlights.

It was just that lack of flair that many NBA observers (myself included) confused for a lack of superstar talent, and led to questions about the Bulls selection of Brand. Elton never doubted himself, however, and has played with the confidence of a man who knows his style of play is a great fit for the Bulls’ franchise. “Of course I’d like to dunk five times a game and get all the highlights, but that’s totally not my game,” Brand says. “My job is about doing the work and staying consistent. I think by doing this over the course of the season, I’ve proven that I was deserving of the pick.”

Brand, whose collection of mostly old and mildly talented teammates kept him off the airwaves much of the season, finally opened some eyes with his MVP performance in the Rookie Game. Brand’s 14 points and 21 rebounds in a 92-83 “freshman” victory earned Elton some well-deserved love, even from a ROY rival. “Look at the guy, he got 20 rebounds tonight,” Odom said with admiration. “He’s strong like an ox, man. His strength allows him to play center if you need it, but if you try to guard him with a big guy, Elton will just take him outside and break him down.”

Brand’s strength, consistency and will allowed him to barrel right through the so-called “Rookie Wall” like it was just another hopeless four man trying to stop him on the way to the rack. “Yeah, I’ve never really gotten that tired this season or hit that wall,” Brand says in his even-tempered, slightly high-pitched voice. “I had a couple 2- or 4-point games at the beginning of the season, but that was when I was adjusting to this level. Once I adjusted, I just flowed from there.”

Growing up in Peekskill, NY, a Hudson River town about an hour north of NYC, the last thing a ball player can be expected to do is “flow” into the League. Playing against tiny high schools with tiny centers, Brand dominated in prep ball, leading his team to state titles as a sophomore and junior, and winning New York State’s “Mr. Basketball” award as a senior. But as much as Brand names his high school coach, Lou Panzanaro, his older brother, Artie McGriff, and the grandparents who mainly raised him, John and Clara Timms, as inspirations, you don’t make the NBA on love and support alone. Enter Riverside Church. In the summer after his freshman year in high school, Brand began to play with the legendary, Harlem-based AAU program, where he was introduced to a new level of competition, and started to realize he could star with the big boys, too. “[That’s when] I started to figure things out,” Brand told the Washington Post last year. “It was like, ‘This guy is going to Villanova. This kid, he’s going to Georgetown next year. This guy’s going to Florida. And I’m playing with this guys. I’m holding my own. If these guys are going there, I can play at that level, too.’”

One of the guys Brand played with on Riverside was Artest. They came from vastly different places on the New York map, but their hearts were in the same place—devoted to making it on the strength of desire, if not the anomalous athleticism some of their contemporaries possessed. “I actually met Elton the summer before he joined Riverside, after the eighth grade, at Five-Star Camp,” recalls Artest. “I remember playing against E, and he was really, really competitive. He was developing his jump shot like crazy, and king of doing the same thing he does now. Just killin’ with that basic game.”

Artest was killin’ back in the day as well, both for Riverside and his LaSalle High team, with a unique combination of bravado and persistence that he too has brought with him to the NBA. “On offense, Ron has a real crude, effective way of finishing plays,” says Floyd after practice. “And on defense he’s very versatile. He’s been able to go out and guard a Gary Payton, an Allen Iverson, and then turn around and guard a Grant Hill or Jerry Stackhouse, and do it all effectively.”

Nodding over his shoulders at the 6-6, 244-pound Artest, who’s playing a spirited game of one-on-one with teammate Chris Carr while the rest of the team has left the floor, Floyd points out that he is equally happy with Ron’s off-court demeanor. “He’s another guy who’s a great listener. He’s serious about what he’s doing, he stays late every day, and I just think he’s gonna be a terrific player.”

The candid Artest gives a much tougher review of his play this season, showing that he’s out for much more than simply proving how un-Weis, er, wise the Knicks, er, any team that picked between 10-15, were. “I think I could be playing much, much better this season,” Ron-Ron says with a grimace that ignores the fact that many NBA people consider his per-game averages of 11.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.7 steals one of the biggest success stories of the season. “I’m not satisfied with my offense, my defense or my focus mentally. And the losing is definitely tough. It’s like, since you play for a losing team, then you’re a loser, basically. Even if you play hard and play like a winner, you’re on a losing team, and I do not want to be labeled as a loser for the rest of my career.”

Of course, neither Artest nor Brand need to cope with all the Ls alone. They, New York residents, AAU teammates, and two-year college stars alike, have each other. We go through rookie trials, and with the losing there’s obviously been some rough times, but we can talk to each other about that stuff,” Brand says. “If I have a problem I can go to him, and if he has a problem he can come to me.”

Brand refers mainly to off-court problems, but they can also help each other on the court. With Artest missing the Utah game, the double teams Elton faces remind me of Charles Barkley circa ’92. “Having Ron makes things easier,” Elton says after the game. “He’s a great slasher and a great scorer. Plus, his cutting ability—he cuts so hard and so fast—is something that the other team has to respect.”

Bulls’ assistant coach and former “man in the middle,” Bill Cartwright, has greatly enjoyed watching both of Chicago’s building blocks set a foundation. “The big thing to me is that they’ve both really come to find their own identity and what they can do in this League. Some guys struggle to find a way to score, a way to guard, but I think they’ve both found a way to do those things pretty quickly.”

Corey Benjamin (remember him?) was the Bulls’ first round pick in ’98, and his nailed-to-the-bench status is yet more reason to laud Ron and Elton. Because logic dictates that if the Bulls were playing the two youngsters only to “give them an opportunity,” then the young and athletic Benjamin would be out there too. As Artest says, “No one’s giving me anything. I’ve earned my minutes.” Benjamin agrees, saying, “They’re both doing real well, a lot better than your average rookies, and that’s why they’re getting so many minutes, so many reps. And Elton, he’s playing like he’s been in the League for 15 years, puttin’ up 30 and 12 some games just like Malone.”

As good as Ron-Ron and E have been, the Bulls’ unsightly record is proof that these two alone will not make the Bulls title contenders again (they’re the only two Bulls averaging double-digit points this season). But to the credit of Jerry Krause (it hurts to write that), the Bulls have enough cap money to further re-shape their team, and they also own, potentially, two of the top five picks in the Draft (their own and Washington’s as long as the Wiz don’t land the 1, 2 or 3). Having witnessed Jerry Krause and David Falk commiserating before this season’s Carolina at Duke game (“You’ve got the money, and I’ve got the product,” the agent extraordinaire said to Krause) and knowing the Sleuth’s scouting prowess, it’s not hard to imagine the Bulls running out a starting lineup next fall that reads something like: Erick Barkley, Ron, Tracy McGrady, Elton and Kenyon Martin. The names may change, but it’s pure fact that Elton and Ron will be joined by at least two or three blue chips next year.

And when, shortly after, the Bulls are again breathing the rare air that filled the United Center in June, ’98, and their players are laughing anew at the opposition instead of the other way around, fans will know that it all started with Ron Artest and Elton Brand.

The post Reunited [And It Feels So Good] appeared first on SLAM.

Clippers-Spurs. Cavs-Warriors. Spurs-Rockets. Lakers-Clippers. Thunder-Lakers. Cavs-Spurs. Lakers-Warriors. Rockets-Clippers. Rockets-Lakers. Clippers-Cavs. Warriors-Bulls. Bulls-Cavs. Bulls-Lakers. These are all real games on true national TV in the several weeks surrounding this issue’s release. It’s like the channels and the NBA put the same eight teams in a blender and spit out various match-ups. I get it. These are rivals or “hot” teams featuing “hot” players. Honestly, for better or worse, it’s not too different from the way SLAM has put out covers over the years…which can feel with distance and a time-lapse tool something like: MJ, Iverson, Kobe, MJ, LeBron, Iverson, Kobe, Curry, LeBron, Kobe, Curry. Rinse, repeat. It’s business. But sometimes you gotta have some fun, too.

And sometimes fun comes in the form of a late-night Knicks at Kings game, somehow chosen by the NBA and Turner folks as worthy of that coveted national TV exposure. And sometimes, the players in such a rarely spotlighted matchup need their chance on a cover, too. So behold, SLAM fans young and old, two beautifully shot (thanks always, Atiba and Tom!) covers (generally speaking, in early January Kristaps will be on stands in the Mid-Atlantic states and Boogie everywhere else, but they’ll both be available for purchase via SLAMonline) of guys who have never been on their own cover from teams that rarely have been. Hope you like.

READ OUR KRISTAPS PORZINGIS COVER STORY HERE

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READ OUR DEMARCUS COUSINS COVER STORY HERE

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DeMarcus Cousins cover shot by Atiba Jefferson; Kristaps Porzingis cover shot by Tom Medvedich.

The post SLAM 195 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Thanks to the kindness of our longtime friends at adidas, we were afforded the chance to see, hold and further learn about said uniforms and apparel at an exclusive availability yesterday in the game’s host city.

Few, if any, All-Star Games have afforded as many different storylines that can influence the look and feel of a weekend. Amongst other angles, this year’s:

-Is the first All-Star Game outside the US
-Comes at a time when more and more international players—particularly Canadians—are playing in the NBA
-Is held in the city that hosted the first-ever NBA Game (Huskies, baby)
-Is held not far from where the inventor of basketball, James Naismith was born
-Is being held in one of the hippest, hottest cities on the planet
-Is where adidas endorsees like Tracy McGrady and Andrew Wiggins came to prominence
-Is being held in a city that heretofore was better known as a hockey stronghold, home of the storied Maple Leafs and the Hockey Hall of Fame
-Is being hosted by an up-and-coming NBA franchise that boasts some of the most intense fans in the League

The expert we got to speak with about these uniforms is David Cho, NBA Partnership Director, adidas Basketball Marketing. You can rest assured that Cho—who manages elements of adidas’ 11-year global partnership with the NBA, from on-court uniforms and outfitting, to the US and international retail licensed businesses, as well as all event and sponsorship activities with the league—is WELL aware of every angle listed above. Does that mean he and his design team tried to incorporate all of them onto the apparel (keep in mind that this year’s uniforms also have a small KIA logo on them)? Read and learn.

SLAM: Can you give us an overview of this new All-Star uniform we’re seeing for the first time?

David Cho: What we wanted to do was capture the cosmopolitan energy of Toronto, and tell the story of basketball and the NBA in this city, as well as to the Raptors and their recent history of success. The front has a very subtle Maple Leaf, created through the dots and the fabric on the bottom. We wanted to incorporate Canada’s national symbol on the jersey, but not in an overly obvious way on the front. Most people will probably miss it. We also always try to incorporate an element of the host city, not just the host team. So for Toronto we did a color-contrast cityscape. You can recognize the CN Tower and the rest of the skyline.

We always want to tell an evolving story around the NBA All-Star logo history. This year the star is combined with the Maple Leaf in a multi-layered pattern.

Getting to the history of basketball here, this is one of the simplest single-layer fonts you’ll ever see on an NBA uniform. The story here is that the very first NBA game was held here in Toronto in 1946. Toronto Huskies vs. New York Knickerbockers. The Huskies uniform, and really all of the uniforms in that age, were simple. We wanted an element of the design to speak to that fact, of the very first NBA game being played in Toronto.

To incorporate the Raptors, we used the jock tags, making them in the black-and-gold that you see in their new alternate jersey, as well as a version of their claw logo. This is on all the jerseys, and also on the outside of the shooting shirts as well, which will be more visible since the tag on the uniform will be tucked in when the players are on the court.

The last element of the uniform that we want to highlight goes beyond it being in Toronto, Canada. With the global popularity of the game and the NBA, we wanted to highlight that there are so many international players playing in the League. So what we did was deconstruct the colors of the flags of all the countries that international players have represented in the All-Star Game to create this multi-colored pattern that you’ll find only on the inside of the jersey on the neck and the drawstring on the shorts. So we go from basketball, NBA All-Star, Toronto, Canada, to global game, all in what seems like a pretty simple design. Simple and timeless, clean and classy, but highlighting all those stories.

SLAM: Was this a fun process to have so many extra stories that you don’t have in a typical All-Star venue.

DC: Yes, specifically trying to tell the stories of Canada, and the new Raptors identity which was changing as we went through the process, and this homage to all the players who are All-Stars not from the US.

SLAM: Did adidas work with the Raptors on their new look?

DC: We were not. They worked on that themselves and we’re merely the outfitter that produced it. And for the All-Star jersey we work exclusively with the League, even while incorporating various Toronto Raptors elements.

SLAM: Besides showing respect to the host team, you also want to include their logo for the local fans’ benefit, right?

DC: Yes. They are the host. Toronto is the city, but it’s the team that is really hosting All-Star, so we want to acknowledge the host team. Some years there have been larger examples of host city executions, but I like where we are now is a great balance.

SLAM: And on the history front, are you referring just to the NBA and the Huskies, or also the fact that James Naismith was born not far from here?

DC: It’s both. The font really comes from the Huskies, but Naismith’s is a story we’re all going to hear a lot of. He was born here, he invented the game 125 years ago, all of that. So we’re aware of it, but there is no specific Naismith reference on the jersey.

SLAM: And how about the fact that this All-Star Game will be played in a city and country that is so known, historically, for another sport—hockey? Did that play into things at all?

DC: There wasn’t. There was a design direction that could have gone down that route, but I think an overt Maple Leaf on the front, too many ties to the Maple Leafs and hockey, we didn’t want to do because there are so many legitimate ties to basketball in Canada that we wanted to focus on.

SLAM: Can you talk about some of the apparel that goes along with the uniforms?

DC: Yes. So we made the jackets as well. Heather-gray with black, the name, and a style that definitely looks more like a winter jacket. That was the design inspiration. The weight is about the same as a jacket typically worn on an NBA court, but the fabric and look is absolutely drawn from the colder climate here and the fashion of outdoor, winter clothing. We just brought it inside. And we carried over the nameplates and the military style accomplishments on the sleeve.

SLAM: This is a pretty unique look for a basketball jacket. Can you think of anything else like this?

DC: I can’t, and I think that’s what is going to draw so much attention to this jacket. It’s going to be absolutely functional as an outside jacket. Fashion influences everything we do, but you can really dial it up on a jacket.

SLAM: I think you guys are gonna sell a lot of these.

DC: [Laughs]

The post Q+A: 2016 NBA All-Star Jerseys appeared first on SLAM.

I’d say we’re in peak sock times, as evidenced by the mess on my desk, which is a good approximation of what my closet and dresser look like at home. While caring about socks may be a trend to some, it’s old news to me…which, in a roundabout way, is why I’m loving the increased interest these days.

For me, it started even earlier than caring about shoes. By 7 or 8, I was steady rocking my joints all the way to the knee, even with shortish shorts. Did I look cool? Hell no! Did I look like a pro baseball or basketball player? Well, hell no to that, too, but I was more motivated by the latter than the former. By the time I had Jordan Is on my feet in fifth grade, I knew better than to yank up my socks, and at that point I’d taken my interest to a more formal venue. Church? School dance? Anytime I was supposed to look “nice,” I had to rock “cool” socks. And to me that meant Argyle socks, ideally in the loudest colors possible. By the time I was playing JV, the Fab Five were rocking all-black socks for their games. I insisted our JV team did the same. When I went to college in Washington, DC, I fell in love with high socks again, thanks to the District’s legacy of its great players sporting the look, as evidenced by legends such as Lawrence Moten, Moochie Norris and Walt “The Wizard” Williams. Post-college I landed at SLAM, where one of my first big responsibilities was reporting for a cover story on my then-beloved New Jersey Nets. My favorite player on that team? Kerry Kittles, by a long shot. And what was he famous for? You know…

Other than always trying to score official NBA game socks, my next sock memory isn’t clear until ’07-08, when Nike started making Elite socks. Then one day I took my daughter to a New York Liberty game. JR Smith, a Knick at the time, was sitting courtside. He had on shorts, Chuck Taylors, and some of the flyest socks ever, pulled almost all the way to his knees. And I knew socks would start popping again. Next thing you know, Stance is changing the game with incredible designs and performance—and joining the #SLAMFam via our annual Draft Suite. Then our fam joined Stance when Tzvi Twersky left us to run Stance’s basketball category, leading to important office “meetings,” aka our infamous sock drafts.

Today, we’re making entire sections dedicated to Stance’s dope socks (in this issue!) and swimming in the best socks on the market. The only thing I need now is a Mark Jackson sock in the Stance Legends line. Amen.

One of the game’s most fashion-conscious (and, not coincidentally, Stance-endorsed) players is James Harden, who makes his first-ever appearance on a solo SLAM cover this month. The Rockets have obviously had some ups and downs this year (Coach McHale was fired after we went to press, in fact), but they are defending conference runners-up and James is defending MVP runner-up, so we wouldn’t give up on them or him quite so fast. This should also put the rabid Harden fans out there to rest—now you SLAM fans can find someone else to title “Best Player Never to Appear on a SLAM Cover.”

The post SLAM 194 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

The following story initially ran in SLAM 91 (September, 2005), and with the Royals in the World Series and Chris Young about to start Game 4 in a couple of nights, we figured now was a good time to re-run this piece on the MLB pitcher. Enjoy.—Ed. 

This magazine may not show the national pastime its proper respect, but this writer does. That’s why I wasn’t surprised that one of the top young pitchers in the bigs, 6-10 Chris Young of the Texas Rangers, is the same athletic guy who left a two-year deal from the Kings on the table to play hardball. A former all-Ivy League basketball player at Princeton (kid is no dummy, either), Young had been bouncing around the minors for a few years when ex-Princeton coach and current Sacramento Kings’ assistant Pete Carril saw him working out in the Princeton gym. Carril saw enough to get Kings President of Basketball Ops Geoff Petrie (also a Princeton man) to offer Young a contract, which would have kicked in last November. As a late-season call-up of the Rangers, however, Young saw the light of the mound and decided to stick with throwing brushbacks instead of bounce passes. Now 26, he’s set in the MLB but still keeping an eye on the NBA.

SLAM: So even though you hadn’t played competitively since 2000, if you’d gone with the Kings you would’ve been on their official roster as recently as last fall?

Chris Young: Yeah, the contract was guaranteed. But the Rangers made a commitment as well, and I felt like I was improving as I got more experience, so I think I made the right choice.

SLAM: You’ve got a 3.16 ERA while starting for a first-place team, and you’ve got some great initials for a pitcher, so I’d say you did. Anyway, how does your basketball past help you in baseball?

CY: There aren’t a lot of similarities physically, but in baseball, when you reach a certain level everyone is about the same talent-wise, and what can set you apart are things like mental toughness. And I think I got a lot of mine from playing basketball at a high level.

SLAM: And the Kings were looking at you as a face-up four man?

CY: What they liked is how well I would fit in their system. I have a decent post game, but I’m not big enough for that in the League, so I think they would’ve used me like Brad Miller and Vlade Divac.

SLAM: Forgetting about career aspirations, what sport did you find more pure fun?

CY: Recreationally, definitely basketball. You can enjoy yourself with just a ball and a hoop, or get some people and have a pick-up game. You can’t do that in baseball. But as far as fun while competing, I like them the same.

SLAM: Do you still play pick-up?

CY: It’s pretty specifically outlawed in my contract, so no, but I’ll shoot around sometimes. Not that I have much time for that anyway.

SLAM: What about watching hoops? Got time for that?

CY: On TV, yes. College-wise, I follow Princeton, Northwestern and Georgetown, cause it’s all coaches from the Princeton family. In the NBA I follow the Kings for the same reason, but my favorite team is the Mavericks since I grew up in Dallas. I didn’t get to any of their playoff games, but I watched them on TV whenever our schedule allowed it. They have a very exciting team.

SLAM: Do your baseball teammates think your basketball past is pretty cool?

CY: I think so. Every year in spring training, the guys think I’m going to win the March Madness pool. I have to tell them I’m just a fan and I don’t know any more than they do.

SLAM: Sounds like me telling my non-magazine friends that my picks suck, too.

CY: [laughs]

—

image via Getty

The post Q+A: Chris Young appeared first on SLAM.

Not to pat myself on the back, but I take a lot of credit for Stephen Curry’s first SLAM cover (SLAM 173—December, 2013). Not as much credit as the guy on the cover, but bear with me.

Every month, when we “build” a cover, there is a combination of competition and teamwork at play. Clearly, the most important component of a good cover is the subject. You have to have the right guy at the right time, and I think we usually do. The second-most important component is the photo. Thanks to the great individual photographers we use, as well as strong relationships with the brands we work with, our photos are usually awesome, too. The third-most important component is the cover line. We take great pride in coming up with lines that are catchy, timely and accurate. SLAM still sells a lot of copies on urban newsstands and in big-box stores like Walmart, and we believe we sell more copies when we complement the right subject and the right photo with the right line. The competitive aspect is…who is going to come up with the line we use? Publisher Dennis Page has a phenomenal track record of getting the line. Old Eds. Tony Gervino and Russ Bengtson were masters at it, and Lang Whitaker nailed a ton, too. Young bucks Adam Figman and Abe Schwadron have had a lot of wins in a short period of time. I, honestly, am not so good at it.

But when we gave Curry his first cover, two years ago this month, I was the point person from start to finish: wanted him on the cover, set up and conceptualized the shoot and had the winning line. It wasn’t as edgy as some of our hip-hop inspired joints, but honestly, Stephen isn’t as edgy as some NBA players. His game and personality leant themselves to an innocent line like “The Can’t Miss Kid.” And guess what? He hasn’t! The issue sold well, Stephen blew up, and now he is a World Champion, reigning MVP and firmly in our cover rotation. *Finally stops patting self on back.*

Along with a mega-feature on Stephen (who obviously appears on the cover, which is pictured above), SLAM 193 contains stories on LaMarcus Aldridge, Bradley Beal, Rudy Gobert, a brand-new approach to our annual NBA Preview and a whole lot more.

Speaking of covers, it should go without saying that they don’t build themselves. It takes a masterful Creative Director to put all the pieces together in a visually pleasing way. Luckily, for more than the last decade, we had one of the best in the business, Melissa Medvedich (née Brennan), designing our covers. She moved on to a new gig halfway through this issue, and we all want to wish her the best of luck in the future. We are equally lucky to get to replace her with another design genius, long-time friend of the #SLAMFam, Paul Scirecalabrisotto, who built this month’s cover beautifully. Welcome to the show, PS!

READ OUR NEW STEPHEN CURRY COVER STORY HERE

The post SLAM 193 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

The NBA’s next Rookie of the Year sits pensively, simultaneously nursing a cold and a bowl of chicken soup at a diner on Manhattan’s West Side. A 19-year-old prodigy who represents the Los Angeles Clippers’ best-ever chance at moving out of the League’s basement, he has spent the day posing for photos and discussing basketball more intelligently than any TNT analyst, as well as addressing his already-long career as the Second Coming. But at the end of day, Lamar Odom has just one message.

“You only got to put one quote in this story: Hate me now. Hate me now. Hate me now.”

Really though, Odom is being too simplistic. There is obviously some resentment that builds up when you get more ink for your sometimes-immature off-court behavior than you do for being the most intriguing player to enter the NBA in years, but in talking with Odom it seems like the bitterness is mostly beneath the surface like GZA. The 6-10 point forward is quick with the laughs and an easy smile, sharing enough to convince you (without ever saying so himself) that his being picked fourth was absurd; of course he should’ve gone first. Odom also leads you to believe that the League will never quite be the same once he starts showing more skills in the new Staples Center than there’s supplies in a Staples store. “The thing I love about the NBA game, which I think will help me, is that it’s a playmakers’ league,” Odom says. “A league for people who like to play the game of basketball. You know, someone that gets off on passing the ball and running an offense. I think it’s a league for players like that, because you’re playing with great players who can all run, jump and dunk. I want to pass to these guys, so that might make the NBA easier for me than college was.”

Jump your eyes back up the page for a quick second: the man is 6-10, with a lithe 220-pound body that has been harnessed quite well by its owner. Odom’s court vision and unselfishness—not to mention his being in the right city—make him the first player ever to warrant honest comparisons to Magic Johnson. Odom’s point about the NBA potentially being easier is a good one, even though Lamar’s slick ball-handling, powerful rebounding and graceful shooting sure helped make his one season at the University of Rhode Island look easy. But, as by far the best player on his team, Odom didn’t always get to play his game. “We really pushed Lamar and asked him to do things offensively that he could do, but didn’t always want to do,” says URI head man Jerry DeGregorio, a long-time confidante of Odom’s who served as an assistant under Jim Harrick last season. “He is so unselfish as a player and not at all conscious of how many shots he’s taking. On our team we really needed him to be more assertive than he likes to be, and once he started doing that we started to win.”

The most talented player to ever play in the Atlantic 10 Conference, Odom helped a mediocre Rams squad to a 20-13 record, serving as the team’s top scorer (17.6 ppg), rebounder (9.4) rpg and shot blocker (1.6 bpg), and number-two pass master (3.8) apg. Odom started URI’s regular season off in stirring fashion when he dropped 19, 14, nine and the game-winning shot on TCU in game one, and then finished off the job when he single-handedly delivered Rhode Island to the NCAA Tournament, hitting an NBA-range triple at the buzzer to beat Temple in the A-10 finals. “As much as Lamar feels no need to shoot throughout much of the game,” DeGregorio says, “when there’s big shots to take, he does want to shoot. And he’ll make them.”

Odom’s heroics notwithstanding, playing in the A-10 on a squad not coached by John Chaney was a good way to keep Odom’s growth as a player out of the national spotlight for a little while. “It was a great year for me,” Lamar says. “I had a lot of support from the people in Kingston, and on the court I added some discipline to my game. I thought I could have played better, but I was still happy with all I accomplished.”

The accomplishments, however, are not what got Odom his ink. Instead, the Queens-reared Lamar, who’s been in the center of the big-money world of basketball since the age of 15, remained known more for his well-publicized journey through three high schools in his senior year, a short and troublesome stay at UNLV and then a long wait to play at Rhode Island. When he finally was playing, you actually heard less about him, but the madness returned when Odom struggled with the decision of whether or not to turn pro. “It’s pretty weird that I still haven’t even played a game in the NBA, considering all I’ve been through,” Odom says. Despite not even turning 20 until this season is a week old [Nov. 6], Odom says he feels like he’s “at least 30,” adding, “I mean, reaching this League has been my dream since I was 10-years-old and playing at the park with 15-year-olds. And then being talked about as a lottery pick straight out of high school… even though so much has happened, I always kind of felt like it was my destiny to make it. Now it’s finally here.”

“He’s like Magic Johnson with a jumpshot.” —Pat Riley

If you don’t like hearing it from us, listen to Riles, a better man than anyone else to issue Magic comparisons. Riley spent eight-plus seasons coaching Earvin Johnson, and after watching Odom in a private workout the day before the Draft, the Slick One was sure he’d seen a reasonable facsimile of his former point guard. You didn’t hear much about Odom’s late-in-the-Draft-game performances, because most members of the press found it so much more fun to harp on what Odom had done “wrong” leading up to the annual cattle call (skipped the NBA Combine, split with an agent, explored returning to college). But there was some dope stuff going on.

Check it: Having realized that hiding from the teams that wanted to pick him and the vultures that wanted to represent him was not the answer, Odom started to face the music in a June 28 workout at URI in front of folks from the Bulls, Clippers, Heat and Raptors. Lamar didn’t hit many of his shots, but he showed enough for Miami to want to see more. At midnight on the 28th, Odom boarded the Heat’s private jet with Miami assistant coach Bob McAdoo, and rather than resting up for his next workout, Lamar grilled the former great like a detective, picking McAdoo’s brain for helpful hints and throwing in a line or two about how ridiculous it is that Kevin McHale is getting inducted into the Hall of Fame this fall while McAdoo remains uninitiated. Anyway, after landing in Miami and catching about three hours of shuteye, it was time for the eager student of the game to show off what he’s learned. Observers of that workout say Lamar was on, nailing a good 90 percent of his shots. When he finished, Odom hit the showers, returning to the court to find a hand-written, three-page note from Riley. The note was filled with plenty of the blather that fills Riley’s motivational book, The Winner Within, but there was also some personalized gushing, including the message that “You have a chance to be considered the best of the best,” and “You will be known as the only one who can do what you do.”

As Odom was whisked off to a workout with the Bulls, the starstruck Riley was working hard on dealing for the chance to draft him, a tall order when your greatest tradable asset is PJ Brown. Alas, no trade went down, so Lamar entered Draft night unsure of where he’d go. “All the teams I talked to seemed interested in men, and of course they tell you they want to take you, just like you tell every team you want to play for them,” he says of the cat-and-mouse game that precedes David Stern’s climb to the podium. “But I realize this is a business, and if it’s not written down I don’t believe it, so I didn’t know who’d take me.”

And anyway, Odom adds, who cares who drafts you when it’s the act of being drafted that you’ve been working your entire life for? “It was such a great feeling to hear David Stern call my name. Just shaking his hand was a great moment in itself,” he says. And the fact that once he got over the thrill, he realized he was wearing a Clippers hat? “That’s fine with me. Nothing beats basketball in L.A. I’m ready to go out there and kick some ass.”

The skills of the players picked before Odom—workmanlike 6-8 forward Elton Brand, high-flying 6-3 guard Steve Francis and flamboyant-but-bad-knee-owning 6-2 point guard Baron Davis—can be summed up thusly: save for Francis’ unique ability to walk on air, you can combine every other trait that the three own into one player and still not match Odom’s panoply of skills. So the thought that team execs in Chicago, Vancouver and Charlotte—as well as self-righteous fans and writers around the country—must live with is that the most talent and basketball-intelligent player in the Draft was passed up because he acted his age for a few weeks. A young man whose favorite player was Magic and who says about his game: “I’ve always considered my game to be on the floor. I don’t want to be known as an ‘athlete.’

“I really take pride in setting a pick, opening up to the basket, screening through. All that stuff is a big deal to me. You know, when the team is clicking [at this point, Odom begins excitedly snapping his fingers around his head to demonstrate] and spreading the ball around, it makes the game so much fun.”

And with the skills Odom has—to rebound, start a fast break, take the ball in the post, be isolated on the wing or work off the ball—he can create all the textbook elements of basketball just by being on the court. “Growing up, I played for a lot of good coaches who really knew the game, and once I learned what to do, I played and watched as much basketball as I could,” Odom says. “And since New York City basketball is mainly a guard’s game, I learned how to be a guard.”

As Utah Jazz VP of Basketball Operations Scott Layden said of Odom, “He’s a 1-2-3. His talents and abilities exceed everyone else in the draft.” But Jerry Krause, Stu Jackson and Bob Bass passed up on the rarest of players because he lacked some guidance? “My mother passed away when I was 12, and I was never close to my father. My grandmother and my aunt did a great job of raising me, but I had to learn everything about the basketball world on my own,” Odom says. As the top-ranked high schooler in the country, “everything” included street agents, despicable sneaker companies, camp representatives, and agents feeding him gifts. “You’ve got people trying to make a business out of you when you’re only 16 years old, and you don’t even know what’s going on yet. You might take a sweatsuit or two, and who knows? You just sold your soul.”

Leading up to the Draft, all the same elements, laced with even more greed, returned to Odom’s life with a vengeance. And the 19-year-old Lamar still didn’t have too many people he could trust. “I guess it was just a learning experience going through all those things, getting a lot of negative publicity towards me and my name,” Odom concedes. “As a young black man from the inner city that excels at what he does, I’m always going to be under a microscope, and I haven’t always handled it well. But now I’ve reached the NBA, the highest level of basketball, and I’ve learned how to conduct myself.”

Perhaps the hardest part for Odom was dealing with the fact that even when he would make a wise decision to cut some scumbags out of his life, those people would then do all they could to hurt him. “What makes where I am today even more special is that I had so many people trying to pull me down because I chose not to be involved with them. Now it’s like, ‘I told you I could make it.'”

So the question that all observers want to be judge and jury in the case of “The People vs. Lamar Odom” must ask themselves is this: “Which statement do you find more relevant: a) It’s about time that Lamar Odom learned who to trust, or b) Lamar Odom is 19 years old.” If you answered “a,” you must have been, or plan to be, one precocious teenager. As for the lucky team that chose “b,” well, maybe they’ve finally decided to try. I wanted to get some comments from Clippers’ VP of Basketball Operations Elgin Baylor on what he sees in Odom, but Baylor—after repeated requests—declined to speak to SLAM due to an earlier disagreement with another writer. [Ed’s note: Elgin, please get over it.]

Clippers coach Chris Ford must be having a hard time sleeping just imagining what he’ll do with this youngster who can do things like Ford’s old teammate Larry Bird used to. While Ford was also unreachable for this story (he was on vacation), he did say after the Draft that. “When we realized the Draft had gotten down to the fourth pick and [Lamar] was still on the board, we were thrilled…[He] has never had any serious trouble. We’re talking about being late, changing minds, changing schools. He just needs a little guidance. We’ll give him that.”

If they can do that, it says here that the Paper Clips aren’t that far from becoming razor blades, slicing up their opponents with a high-octane attack that should scare aging Western Conference squads like Houston, Seattle and Utah. For one thing, there’s the aforementioned Staples Center. Sharing a legit arena with the high-profile Lake Show is a huge step up from playing home games at the morgue-like LA Sports Arena. More importantly, the Clips own a rising star in Maurice Taylor—who they swear will be re-signed for the maximum salary—as well as talented and improving players like Tyrone Nesby and Michael Olowokandi. If they are able to keep Lo Wright and Lamond Murray, plus pick up a real point guard, the addition of Odom could easily send the Clippers straight into the 2000 Playoffs. Even if Wright and Murray walk and there is no nice point man added, Odom alone should be enough to boost L.A.’s W total in a big way. “I’m not totally certain what they’re going to ask of me, but I’ll wave a towel and just be a spark plug off the bench if I have to,” Odom says. “But when they asked me how I think I could help, I said as a ballhandler. I can see us playing two shooting guards, me at small forward and then a power forward and a center. In that situation you can just let me handle the ball and not even worry about having a point guard out there.”

Odom even has the Clippers’ notoriously unpleasant locker room scene figured out. “Of course guys have been miserable in the past,” he says. “When you don’t win, guys are not going to want to play. You’re going to have a coach who starts walking into the lock room all hunched over, but damn, if you win, you just kill all of that. If we can make the Playoffs you’re going to see a whole new outlook for the Clippers.”

As we leave the diner and walk the streets of Manhattan for a bit, Lamar goes unnoticed by every single person on the street, save for a random encounter on Ninth Avenue with Knicks radio man Gus Johnson, who wishes Lamar well.

A year from now will be a different story. If we sit down one year from today, what kind of season do you think we’ll be talking about? I asked Odom. “I’d say hopefully about 18 points, 7 boards and 5 assists per game, Playoffs—and the Rookie of the Year Award.”

Try to hate him after that.

The post Lamar Odom’s SLAM 37 Cover Story appeared first on SLAM.

I’d pegged him as a “young T-Mac” back when he was in high school, and I meant that in a good and bad way. Good meaning hyper-athletic with elite scoring potential…bad meaning we might see some disinterest at times. Even from a distance, that assessment seemed off pretty quickly.

Wiggins adjusted very quickly to the NBA and was getting huge minutes and usage pretty much since Thanksgiving. Then, in the season’s last month, I got the Wiggins close-up. Thanks to being responsible for our Issue 189 cover story, I got the chance to see Andrew in person against the Blazers, interview he and others about his rapid progress, and watch him play more than I had all season. Needless to say, I was very impressed.

The athleticism is about as projected, but Wiggins is already stronger than I thought he’d be. He’s also willing to go in the low-post and bang a little bit, mostly to create room for scoring, but he’s a decent rebounder as well. The intensity is also not a problem at all, IMO.

Playing for a team with zero post-season aspirations once key players started dropping like flies, Wiggins took on the role of team leader, playing the most minutes of anyone in the NBA after December 1 and saving arguably his best performances for high-profile meetings with LeBron James and the almost-his-team Cavaliers.

https://youtu.be/ggohP_Y48pY

The experience of watching Wiggins extra close, getting to interview him (and honestly, owning him in a Keeper Fantasy League) has combined to have me all sorts of pumped up on his future.

To review some actual factuals…The Canadian-born Wiggins goes 6-8 and 200 pounds, and he won’t turn 21 until after the 2016 All-Star Game (which will be held in Toronto…how would that be for a true coming-out party?) so there’s a great chance he’s going to get bigger, faster, stronger and taller.

He averaged 16.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1 steal and 0.6 blocks per game. His PIE was 8.1. Like his size, there’s no reason all those numbers won’t keep growing, too.

With all this Wiggins enthusiasm in my life, when Ryne asked for votes, I put AW all the way up at…35. Seemed fair to me obviously but I assumed others weren’t so into him, and that I may have been a victim of recency bias in voting him so high.

But…he ended up at 38, so I’m not the only believer. Way to go, SLAM Top 50 voters! Now just go do your thing, Andrew.

Rankings are based on expected contribution in 2015-16—to players’ team, the NBA and the game.

The post SLAM Top 50: Andrew Wiggins, no. 38 appeared first on SLAM.

Up close, as we were lucky to find out when he gave us time inside the Legacy Room at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Coach K is a perfect gentleman, not to mention a fascinating and personable interview. How exactly did a man make it from the Polish immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago to the top of the coaching profession? To a place where he can influence young—and grown—men who absolutely swear by him? Whether you have 30 minutes or 30 days with him, even he is not going to be able to explain exactly how it happened. But there are clues to be found in listening to him share his journey.

Krzyzewski was born in the Chi on February 13, 1947, the son of Polish-American parents who were extremely proud to be making their way in the States. “My dad was in World War II, and I grew up in a good, inner-city Polish neighborhood that was very patriotic,” recalls Krzyzewski, who, as a youngster, coupled a burgeoning passion for his country with a love for the game of basketball.

“My last two years in high school I was the leading scorer in the Catholic League in Chicago, so I was an All-State player. I was recruited by a number of schools, but it wasn’t as sophisticated at that time. After my senior year was over I started being recruited by West Point, and my parents could not believe I would have the opportunity to go there,” he says.

In basketball terms, we think of Army these days as a mid-major, scrapping for wins in the academic-centric Patriot League. But in the late’60s, Army was a national program with a coach you’ve heard of.

“First of all, I get to go to the best leadership school in the world, the US Military Academy,” says Coach K. “Then I get a chance to play point guard and be a captain for Coach [Bob] Knight, one of the great coaches of all time. How lucky can you be? It’s a culture for success and I was dipped completely into it. I’m so thankful.

“We were a top-20 team in two of my three years; freshmen were not eligible so you could only play three years then. In my junior year, we were the first team picked for the NIT and the NIT at that time was huge. We played top teams from around the country and my senior year in the NIT we beat South Carolina, who had won the ACC. We played a high-level schedule, so thank goodness we had a high-level coach.”

Then, as now, a commitment to a service academy means you have to serve five years after graduation. As much as Krzyzewski loved the discipline and “excellence” of the Army life and was honored to serve, his true love and calling was in the game. “I loved being an officer in the United States Army. I also was given the opportunity to still continue to play while I was in the Army,” he explains. “I was on, and coached, the team at Fort Carson. I played on All-Army and All-Armed Forces teams that played in different parts of the world. I was really lucky to have that opportunity while doing my commitment to our country. My love for the game has always been off the charts. Even when I was in the military I knew that I wasn’t going to make the military a career because I had to follow my heart and coach—I had to.”

By the time, Krzyzewski’s military commitment was up, Knight had moved from West Point to Indiana and was coaching the high-high-major Hoosiers. “Coach Knight afforded me an opportunity to come to Indiana,” he says. “I went to graduate school and assisted. Indiana’s always been good, but at that time it was, you know, the best in the country.”

After spending a 31-1 season in Bloomington, Krzyzewski’s alma mater reached out with a remarkable offer. “At the age of 28, I was able to get the head-coaching job at the United States Military Academy—are you kidding me? What a lucky guy,” Coach K says with a high-pitch that makes his gratitude unmistakable even 40 years later.

Krzyzewski’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, the Army job was far from a plum gig. The college basketball landscape was changing, and getting elite players to West Point was tough. “The program was 7-44 in the preceding two years. In my five years, we were 73-59 against really good competition,” he says. [Side note: Coach K is exactly the same age as my parents, and let me just say I was blown away by his memory of both anecdotes and numbers.—Ed.] “Part of it was the fact that I knew what it was to be recruited and be a cadet, what it was to be an officer. I was able to develop a bit of a culture as a result of being from there.”

The college-basketball community noticed, particularly a program with a great academic reputation and a legacy of success, albeit not championships. “It was challenging coming down here,” Coach K concedes. “There’s a learning curve from coaching at West Point to the ACC. You know, you’re coaching against North Carolina and Maryland and Virginia. You’re coaching against Ralph Sampson and Michael Jordan and James Worthy and, wow, you need to build a program. Thank goodness Duke gave me an opportunity to do that. We were 38-47 my first three years, so there was a level of commitment by Duke and since then obviously we’ve been off the charts.”

A big part of the success came from procuring players. Touting a great school and the chance to compete with the best, Krzyzewski and his staff cast a wide net, recruiting top players across the country. One of their early coups was Jay Bilas, a top-10 forward out of SoCal. “When Duke started recruiting me, I had honestly never heard of Coach K,” says Bilas, a SLAM favorite who makes his mark today at ESPN, serving as the bluntest (and best, IMO) college basketball analyst there is. “I was a West Coast kid and he was an East Coast guy. But I came to trust him really fast. He has a sense of timing in conversation that simplifies the most complicated stuff. I mean, I went to Duke because of him. I knew nothing about the school.”

Bilas’ class, which also included Mark Alarie, Johnny Dawkins and David Henderson, scored more points than any other single class of players in college-basketball history. They also reached the ’86 National Championship game, losing to Louisville in Coach K’s first appearance on that stage. Technically, Bilas’ time under Coach K’s watch ended with that game, but to hear the Young Jeezy fanatic tell it today, Krzyzewski’s influence on his life was just beginning. “The cool thing is that he’s been my coach for more than 30 years,” Bilas says. “I can call and ask him a question any time. I’m also still around the program. His effort and intensity as a coach are the same as they were when I played for him. His personality and values are the same. But he’s actually a much better coach now.”

Indeed, Bilas and Co.’s run portended a stretch of success that’s basically continued without interruption. Krzyzewski and Duke won their first two titles in ’91 and ’92, then copped a third in ’01. The ’01 team was led by an electrifying sophomore out of New Jersey, Jason Williams. Like Bilas, Williams (who goes by Jay now), was wowed by Coach K in the recruiting process, at school, and his post-Duke years, which have included highs, lows and a current stint as a great broadcaster for ESPN.

“The thing that stood out to me when he was recruiting me is the way he interacted with me,” Williams says. “A lot of coaches try to build with the parents, but his priority was building with me. It was kind of the first time I was spoken to like a man.”

Williams entered Duke with heavy expectations he carried with him throughout his three-year career in Durham. “Coach K is a fierce competitor with a relentless approach to success and winning that rubs off on you when you play there,” Williams says. “When you see how hard he works, how well he prepares, even at his age and after all he’s accomplished, how can you not work hard too? He cultivates an atmosphere with no excuses.”

If there’s a Jay Williams in high school now, one could make the case that it’s Tatum, the bright, all-everything senior from St. Louis who could, like Williams in his day, play for literally any college in the country. Having watched Coach K win two more titles (for a total of five) in the last five years, and go 75-1 with five straight titles as the boss of Team USA (honestly, Coach K’s work with the likes of Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Chris Paul calls for an entirely different feature), Tatum happily committed to Duke this past summer, before his senior year had even begun.

“It all started with the relationship Coach K and his staff built with myself and my parents,” Tatum told our high school editor Franklyn Calle recently. “He builds great relationships with his players. All the players I talked to had nothing but great things to say about him—about how much he loves and cares about his players.”

Bilas cites Duke’s ’14-15 Championship campaign as proof of Coach K’s improvement and timelessness as a great coach. “Last year’s team was not playing well defensively early on at all. He shifted back and forth from zone to man-to-man and taught-slash-forced his players to communicate via defense. By the last quarter of the season, they might have had the best defense in the country.

“And then, after they win the Championship, Coach K goes to the press conference and says it’s his ‘favorite year’ and ‘favorite team.’ I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever heard. So often, guys in their 50s and 60s lament what used to be. He doesn’t do that. The idea that you can have your favorite year toward the end of your career is really special.”

This season? With one-and-done talents like Tyus Jones, Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow off to the NBA and Tatum a year away from arriving in Durham, it’s gonna be tough for Duke to repeat, but whatever happens in the Spring of 2016 or as long as Coach K wants to stay as head coach, he has already won. Many times over.

“On the road to success or victory, you’re gonna get waylaid a little bit and whenever you get knocked back, don’t stay there—get up and get going,” Krzyzewski says passionately. “Thank goodness I had that team around me my first three years—the administration here at Duke and also the attitude that we were gonna win. You don’t graduate from the United States Military Academy believing you’re going to lose. You figure out ways to win.”

—

Ben Osborne served as Editor-In-Chief of SLAM from 2007-16, as well as Bleacher Report from 2016-20. You can follow him on Twitter @bosborne17

Top image by Jon Gardiner/Duke Photography; second image courtesy of Army West Point Athletics.

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In 1994, in Issue 2, SLAM presented its first-ever High School All-American Team. For the first nine editions, the players on said team were “honored” with a stock photo (or a “pick-up” from a recent photo shoot we’d done with them) and some words extolling how nice they were as players.

In 2003, we upped the ante, teaming with designer Nando di Biase of Athletes Basketball in Italy to create custom SLAM jerseys for the first time ever. Not coincidentally, LeBron James, whose Akron (OH) St. Vincent-St. Mary team rocked Nando joints, was on that ’03 team. Making the team meant you got an amazing, one-of-a-kind jersey and a special photo shoot just for our All-American feature. After a couple years like that, in ’07 we had the bright idea to shoot all the kids together; the five or six best high school players in America, in one room with a SLAM photographer, rocking custom jerseys by Nando. We did it like that in ’08, too. The next year presented headaches—Nando went AWOL, and Lance Stephenson wasn’t welcome in every room. In ’10 we were back in one room with our A-As, but Nando was seemingly done making the jerseys…

Then, early this past summer, I got a call from a number with mad digits in it. On the other end was that classic Italian voice of Mr. di Biase. He was back in the uniform game, and he wanted back in SLAM. Next year’s All-American team is still so far off, but Nando was anxious to do something now. And he had a great idea: Why not do a SLAM All-Summer Team? So we did. High school ace Franklyn Calle cooked up the team—Rawle Alkins, Harry Giles, Josh Jackson (pictured above), Jayson Tatum and Kassoum Yakwe. Nando cooked up the jerseys. And they are fly. We didn’t get the group shot like we do in March with this group, but the way summer hoops (see our recap of a dizzying circuit in the issue) is blowing up, and the way brands want to “partner” with SLAM to cover this burgeoning market, it may not be that far off.

In any event, as I—and SLAM—often do, the whole thing seemed like a nice, full circle when I looked over the issue as a whole. The guy who basically inspired custom SLAM jerseys is on the cover. The cover story is about the impact said guy has had on his native Northeast Ohio. A new iteration of SLAM jersey is featured on a kid who has some LeBron in his game. And Nando di Biase’s work is back in our pages. This is just how we do.

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

Josh Jackson portrait by Chad Griffith.

Cover image by Atiba Jefferson; digital art by Mike Campau.

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Part One: Coach K on His West Point Days, Becoming a Leader
Part Two: Coach K on Building a Team

The post Coach K on Leading Team USA (VIDEO) appeared first on SLAM.

TEAM EZ PASS

0 DeAndre Ayton

1 Justin Jackson

2 Troy Brown

3 Frank Jackson

4 Hamidou Diallo

5 Terrance Ferguson

10 Trevon Duval

11 Josh Jackson

21 Thon Maker

22 TJ Leaf

23 Seventh Woods

24 Dewan Huell

Coaches: Jeff McInnis, Keith Gatlin, Kenny Pretlow and Emmanuel Mudiay

TEAM DOO BE DOO

00 Udoka Azubuike

1 Mario Kegler

2 Kobi Simmons

3 Rawle Alkins

4 Shamorie Ponds

5 Jalek Felton

11 Markelle Fultz

21 Billy Preston

22 Wenyen Gabriel

23 MJ Walker

24 Bam Adebayo

32 Jarrett Allen

Coaches: LJ Goolsby, TJ Ford, Bud Pollard and Brandon Jennings

Stay locked to SLAMonline all week for much more on #E24X, and if you attend in person, be sure to pick up a copy of our special, limited-edition Game Program. 

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That tends to be so much fun. When we get “time” with NBA stars during the season, I mean, it’s a blessing for content purposes, but things are ALWAYS rushed during an NBA season. Eighty-two games and even more practices tends to wreak havoc with a guy’s schedule, you know?

But in the summer, when NBA/team commitments have slowed or stopped completely and it’s just a player and maybe a sponsor? Getting access like that is like the journalistic equivalent of a day-long hall pass. Mad freedom.

As ever, being the eternally player-friendly publication we are (You want negative coverage? There are plenty of places you can go find that.), it’s not like we use our time or access to dig into a subject or brand’s deepest secrets, or really, any secrets. When we got to spend the better part of eight hours with John Wall and the adidas team as they captured photos and videos surrounding his new shoe, the J Wall 2, we were completely respectful. Stayed out of the way (except me and Malcolm when we had time allotted for a sitdown Q+A with John, and Atiba when he was shooting John for us or adi), didn’t pry too much, didn’t bother anyone. But just being a fly on the wall (pun not really intended smh) for a day like that is informative.

Seeing John away from the court, away from the hyper-intense NBA world, let us see a side of him that his friends and family know, but that fans and media really don’t. What did I make of it all? Well, without spoiling the words myself and Abe wrote about John and his shoe, respectively, let’s just say I now think John may be the coolest cat in the NBA.

Thanks to Wall and adidas for letting us ride shotgun on a memorable day in the Nation’s Capital—the type of day that makes doing KICKS such a special process.

P.S. As always in this robust sneaker bible, it’s hardly just about one player or brand…at 116 pages strong, we’ve got all the basketball brands covered. You thought just because everyone is jocking our social media prowess we’d let the print product slip? Yeah, right.

ALSO! Last year we brought you an adidas-themed KICKS 2.0 in mini-mag form, binding 32 special pages right in the middle of KICKS. This year, we bring it to you as a “flip book,” which is something SLAM publisher Dennis Page has wanted to make happen for the longest.

What’s inside? An exclusive look at Derrick Rose’s new shoe. Coverage of adidas’ Uprising event in New York that spearheads the first-ever PUNKS section in an issue of KICKS. A review of the fan-friendly colorways Damian Lillard wears on the court. And a whole lot of John Wall, all delivered on premium paper.

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

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Part One: Coach K on His West Point Days, Becoming a Leader

The post Coach K on Building a Team (VIDEO) appeared first on SLAM.

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I have a really good friend, Joe, who listens to sports radio, watches tons of games on TV and is down to go to anything in person—provided he has a connect or tix are cheap. This means lots of baseball and the occasional meaningless Knick or Net game. NBA Playoffs or the Finals though? Not in his budget. He loves asking me about my experience at said games, though. Thankfully, I’ve had a lot, but for a variety of personal and work reasons, I didn’t get to a single Finals game in 2011-14 (the LeBron/Miami years). Even before this year’s schedule was set, I had my heart set on getting to at least one game. Firstly, because I knew Cavs-Warriors would be incredibly entertaining, and secondly, because the NBA did a neat thing that further drove interest in the Finals.

As you probably saw on any number of social media feeds, the League—specifically our man Barry Parasram—took the awesome Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy on a world tour of sorts, letting celebrities and lots of media outlets spend some quality time with the trophy that our NBA heroes devote so much blood, sweat and tears into chasing. We were one of the lucky outlets, and it was fun as hell. No, none of us will ever know the feeling of earning a touch with a 17-point fourth quarter like Stephen Curry, but we do know what the trophy feels like, how we look in its shiny reflection and more.

Once the Finals did kick off, we were all over the action. As you can read in the issue, we had people at every single game. I was the fortunate one who got to attend Game 5 in Oakland, when Curry had the aforementioned 17-point explosion as the Warriors overcame LeBron James’ absurd 40-point triple-double and took firm hold of the series for the first time. As for my buddy Joe, who wants to know, “What’s it like at a Finals game?!”…it’s awesome. There is an energy in the locker room and in the stands unlike any regular-season or Playoff game (in any sport). Even being part of the “social conversation,” as I/SLAM were throughout the Finals, is exhilarating when you’re at the game. All in all, let me offer a hearty “Job well done” to Barry, Jim Ice, Adam Silver and everyone at the NBA who makes the Finals so special.

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SLAM is happy to announce a one-day tournament, The Blue Chips Classic, that we will be sponsoring with giveaways, coverage, etc.

See below for details from our man Kwame Thompson:

The Blue Chips Classic will be held at “40th Park” on Foster Avenue in Brooklyn on Saturday, July 11.

 

4 team tournament (each team will play two games).

 

21 and under tournament. (With 10 player roster).

 

1st & 2nd half will be 20 minutes each. (No running time)

 

Team 1 will play Team 4 and Team 2 will play Team 3. Both losers will play a constellation game and the championship game will follow.

 

First game at 12 pm, second game at 2 pm, consolation game at 4 pm and the Championship game at 6.

 

30 minutes between each game.

 

Every team receives t-shirts with tournament name bearing on the front and player’s numbers on back. (Will be distributed on game day)

 

Every participant will receive sports book bag with gifts inside.

 

A 1st Place Team trophy and an MVP trophy will be given out. (Customized MVP trophy along with player’s stats engraved will be given).

 

The 1st Place Team will receive trophy, sports book bag with extra gifts and special offers inside.

 

Teams cost to participate is $300. Each team’s entry fee has to be paid in full by June 30th. (Fee covers referee fees for each team’s games).

 

A live DJ will be present for entertainment throughout the day.

 

A photographer will be present taking player and team pictures as well as live game photos.

 

For more info contact Mr. Thompson at (347) 219-0848

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Today Stance unveiled the newest socks in its MLB lineup – a collection of 10 styles that pay tribute to the most iconic stadiums where the game is played and baseball’s legends are made. This marks the first time that baseball’s most illustrious playing fields will officially appear on socks.

The Stance Stadium Series features 10 ballparks with a mix-match style that draws on each location’s historical imagery. The featured stadiums include Angel Stadium, AT&T Park, Busch Stadium, Camden Yards, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, PNC Park, Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, home to the former Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Stance Stadium Series is built on Stance’s signature athletic crew height design, offering optimal comfort and incorporating a pique weave, allowing for crystal clear graphics of some of baseball’s most hallowed grounds. Stance’s Stadium Series is now available across the country for $18.00 and can be found at Stance.com.

To stay on top of everything Stance Baseball, follow @stancebaseball on Twitter and Instagram. #stancebaseball

The post Stance Releases New Stadium Series Socks appeared first on SLAM.

Which, honestly, could not have made me prouder, even if he could have mentioned one other timeframe. You want nostalgia? Well, we’ve still got a print publication, for starters! One that kids still buy so that they can decorate their rooms with the amazing images inside. What’s more, each regular issue of SLAM includes an “Old School” story about a past great of the game, and for the second year in a row we’re doing this Throwback Issue, featuring guys who have been on the cover of SLAM in the past (in Kobe’s case, lots of SLAM covers).

You want present? The magazine—which in a typical issue has stories on the best current players in the NBA, WNBA, college and high school—is but one part of all the ways we bring you the game you love these days. SLAMonline has become a 24-7 operation (hopefully you noticed during the postseason) with great content tailored to web consumption (the LeBron James Vine piece, the Mike Scott emoji interview, etc), our social channels are booming (thanks to all of you who helped us surpass 300,000 followers on Instagram and 2 million in Facebook likes!) and now our younger editors are going Snapchat-mad (follow us there at slammagazine), so I’m sure we’ll rock that, too.

I guess the only descriptor the aforementioned business exec didn’t mention is that SLAM represents the future, too. The future of sports media, in the diverse, modern way we cover a game that is treated too dryly by too many people, and the future of the game itself. Like the kid you see at the top of this post. That’s DeAndre Ayton, considered the top player in the high school Class of 2017, whose compelling, from-the-Bahamas-to-San-Diego story Assistant Editor Franklyn Calle skillfully tells in our second-annual “New School” feature. Or Malik Newman, one of the best players in the Class of 2015, who wraps up his stint as our latest high school diarist this month, having successfully followed in the path of guys like LeBron, Kevin Love, Tyreke Evans and Harrison Barnes. Best believe that when DeAndre and Malik graduate to the NBA present, we’ll be right there with them.

SLAM 190 hits newsstands early next week!

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

DeAndre Ayton portrait by Atiba Jefferson. Kobe Bryant portrait by Piotr Sikora.

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For the second game in a row, the Warriors pulled away in the fourth quarter of a previously tight game, winning this one, 104-91.

The first quarter was an ugly affair, with Draymond Green the best Warrior and LeBron (of course) the best Cav. The second quarter saw JR Smith play his only good period of the Finals to keep Cleveland close. Still, Curry’s 15 first-half points helped the Warriors lead, 51-50.

As LeBron went into superhuman mode in the third quarter, it felt like maybe the Cavs could steal a game like they did in Game 2, but he simply got no backup. Timofey Mozgov barely played as David Blatt tried to out-small Steve Kerr. Matthew Dellavedova looked every bit the journeyman he once was seen as. JR re-disappeared. I don’t have the time or space to list all of the statistical anomalies 1-5 man LeBron James posted, but Twitter was filled with them.

And while the Cavs struggled to mount a TEAM effort in the end of the third quarter and the entire fourth, the Warriors looked every bit the NBA’s best team. Andre Iguodala continued his unlikely push for MVP with flying plays and key threes. Klay Thompson hit a huge shot. Draymond Green did Draymond Green things. Harrison Barnes had people @ messaging us like crazy about Slamadamonth.

And, oh yeah, Stephen Curry went nuts. Treating Dellavedova the way Allen Iverson once treated Tyronn Lue, Steph was at his swashbuckling best in the decisive fourth quarter, scoring 17 points on all manner of crazy shots to finish with a sick line of 37 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals.

To my untrained eyes, the Warriors seemed the far more confident team at yesterday’s practice session and pre-game, but it’s obviously a mistake to EVER question LeBron’s confidence. But watching it unfold in person, I don’t know if psychology had much to do with it. As has been evident since before the series started, and doubly so since Kyrie Irving got hurt…as long as the Warriors do what they’re capable of, they are the better team.

Photo via Getty Images

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“As a hoop fan, I am ecstatic to work with the best league in the world,” ISlide President Justin Kittredge—a long-time friend of SLAM, dating back to his days at Reebok—told us exclusively last night. “As an entrepreneur and business owner, it is surreal that less than two years in we have an opportunity like this. We couldn’t be more excited to showcase NBA footwear like no one has ever seen.”

Scroll through the photos above for a closer look at what the soon-to-come official NBA slides will look like.

The official press release, which will go out in the next hour, can be read here:

ISlide, known for its innovative, high quality, customizable slide sandals, announced today that it has entered into a two year licensing agreement with the National Basketball Association. This agreement grants ISlide the rights to all 30 team logos, as well as Hardwood Classic logos.

 

“Slides have been, and will always be a staple of basketball players and fans alike,” said Justin Kittredge, Founder and CEO of ISlide. “We are proud to have teamed up with the NBA to give basketball players and fans the opportunity to represent their favorite NBA teams in the coolest, most comfortable and customized way.”

 

Bridging the gap between leisurely comfort and NBA fan-hood, NBA-licensed ISlides allow customers to design ISlides featuring their favorite team’s logo on the top straps of the shoe. Customers will also have the opportunity to personalize the sides with their name, number, a phrase, or photo. ISlides feature the brand’s signature “RPL” footbed technology, adjustable straps, ultra-soft lycra lining, and it all comes together on a durable EVA outsole. Whether you wear these around the house, to and from the gym, or to game 7 at a rival team’s arena, NBA ISlides are guaranteed to make you stand out, even when you’re sitting down.

 

ISlide is kicking off their NBA license program with the launch of all NBA teams immediately available for customization at ISlideUSA.com. A special NBA launch price of $49.99 will be in effect for the month of June.

 

To learn more about ISlide, follow @ISlideUSA on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You can customize your own ISlides now at ISlideUSA.com

The post Breaking: NBA Grants Licensing Rights For All Teams To ISlide appeared first on SLAM.

Join the club, Nic. Andrew’s potential has been obvious since the now-20-year-old Canadian became a YouTube sensation in the ninth grade. I saw Wiggins play in the Jordan Brand Classic the week before Batum caught him at the Hoop Summit, and the way he flew along the baseline had visions of Tracy McGrady dancing in my head.

But good hops and a smooth gait do not a superstar make. It takes skill, intensity, dedication and a whole lot more. That’s where people wondered if Wiggins, who carries himself with a shyness radically different than the swagger most NBA stars walk around with, would have what it takes.

“There was really just one question about Andrew,” says a Timberwolves staffer who asked not to be identified. “Is he hungry enough? The answer is yes. We can see it in the big games, against the best players. Look what he did against Cleveland.”

In December, in Wiggins’ first matchup with the franchise that picked him first overall in last year’s Draft but then traded him to Minnesota for Kevin Love, the 6-8, 200-pound wing went for 27 points. A little more than a month later, as Love made his much-hyped return to the Twin Cities, Wiggins notched a season-high 33 points on 14-25 shooting, and also snagged 4 steals. Game, raised.

Batum, the seventh-year pro who not only saw Wiggins in high school but also has almost the exact same build as him, guarded him head-to-head four times this year. “It’s amazing—I played against him four times this year, and he got better each time. For real. We played him a couple times in December [November 30 and December 10] and then last month and then tonight, and each time he’s been better. I’m surprised he got better so quick.”

What’s interesting to see in person is the grown-up nature of Wiggins’ game on offense, which tonight includes and-ones out of halfcourt sets and turnaround 15-footers that hit nothing but net. During a rollicking high school career spent primarily at Huntington (WV) Prep and then his one season at Kansas, Wiggins usually made his mark in transition. He could make a steal himself, leak out on a miss or just out-run opponents to create a one-man fast break that often ended in a crowd-pleasing dunk (think of his jam over age-appropriate rival Jabari Parker and Duke in his national-television debut in November of 2013 as the perfect example). The other place he stood out was in isolations on the wing, where he could face up a smaller, less-athletic defender and go around, through or over them for a bucket and/or a trip to the free-throw line.

It’s a package that yielded 23 ppg as a senior in high school and 17 ppg at Kansas. The numbers, height and wingspan all translated well to the pros, but without a dead-eye jumper (which he still doesn’t have), how would it work in the big, bad NBA?

Well, as you see in person (or by watching on TV, which couldn’t have happened all that often for non-Minnesotans), he’s working out just fine, albeit in an unexpected way. What the Wolves do tonight, on almost every halfcourt possession with Wiggins, is let him establish position in the post, throw the ball in, and let him go to work. And he can. Going up against Batum, who has a good reputation for isolation defense, Wiggins has the skill and power to control the ball, score in a variety of ways, or pass the ball out to the perimeter or hit cutters. It’s reminiscent of the way some of the game’s greatest scorers operate. “Melo, Paul George, LeBron, they all have a post-up game, and he’s getting one too,” Batum says. “He’s gonna get there.”

Says Wiggins’ teammate Kevin Martin, an 11-year pro, “Andrew has all the tools to be a special player. Tonight is a prime example of how he can hold his own against bigger, older players. I don’t think even he understands just how good he can be.”

For now, of course, Wiggins and his promise reside in Minnesota, where the TWolves just wrapped up a League-worst, 16-66 campaign, and head coach and President of Basketball Operations Flip Saunders, derided in many corners as a dinosaur with no grasp of how modern basketball works, has as much control over the franchise as anyone in the NBA.

When Saunders drops soundbites about not liking three-pointers, and not wanting Wiggins to take too many of them, stat-friendly observers—including local fans and media scarred by the longest Playoff drought in the NBA (2004!!!)— shudder. In the long-term, those observers are right. Three pointers are more valuable if deployed correctly, and Wiggins will be a better player if he is a consistent threat from downtown. But Wiggins, with or without encouragement from Saunders, can take his game outside as time goes on. He’s got the form and athleticism already, he just needs to work on his shot. And having just turned 20, with the first of many off seasons in front of him, he’s got time. Given all that, getting the tougher, inside part of the game down first is not a bad idea.

Wiggins says he’s happy with how he’s used and feels like where things go from here is largely up to him. “Coach gives me the freedom to do whatever. He just doesn’t want me to settle,” Wiggins says during our post-season cover shoot, held largely at the First Avenue Club, made famous by Prince. “I can take three-pointers or any other shot, but I need to be aggressive. There was a time in the season when I was taking more threes, but as my legs got tired I was losing the bounce on my jumpshot a little, so I started taking less and just trying to attack the rim more. That also helps me get to the line a lot, which is a strength of mine.”

Wiggins went to the stripe almost 6 times a game this season, hitting 76 percent there, as part of a year-end stat line that read 16.9 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 2.1 apg and 1 spg, with 44 percent shooting from the field and a “mere” 41 made three-pointers total. After the All-Star Break, he took a lot less threes and a lot more free throws, and his scoring average rose to 20 ppg.

None of the individual numbers, which led to Wiggins being named Rookie of the Year, had much effect on Minnesota’s record. To an outsider, it seems like the Wolves were in Sixers-level tank mode from the day the season started, content to let Wiggins develop while the losses and ping-pong balls piled up. Wiggins points out, however, that the original plan was much different. “We were set up to have a good season this year,” he says. “We were young, sure, but it was the injuries that really hurt. We had guys go down all season, and that makes things tough.”

A lineup featuring Kevin Martin, Shabazz Muhammad, Nikola Pekovic and Ricky Rubio alongside rookies Wiggins and Zach LaVine might have won 35 games and been competitive every night. Instead, the vets lost substantial time to injury, the Wolves traded power forward Thaddeus Young to Brooklyn in February, and the team got blown out regularly.

Turned loose, Wiggins started all 82 games and played the most minutes in the NBA from December 1 until the end of the season. LaVine got valuable time, too. And the ping-pong balls did pile up, giving the Wolves a better chance than anyone at landing another transformative talent.

“It’s never fun to lose, but we got a lot of experience and we will only get better,” Wiggins says. “I didn’t think I’d play this much, definitely not be leading the NBA in minutes or anything, but I think it was a positive. Flip let the young guys like me and Zach get all those minutes and use them as a chance to get better. The best way to get better is to play, and we got to do that.”

LaVine and Wiggins at least also entertained. The rookie from UCLA flew to the Slam Dunk Title even easier than the rookie from Kansas won ROY. And along the way, the high-

flyers became fan favorites. “Guys like me and Zach, when we get out on a break, the fans go crazy,” Wiggins says about life as a Bounce Brother. “I mean, we go crazy ourselves, just watching or on the bench or whatever, because we love to see it. So I know how the fans feel.”

The place Wiggins felt the most love of all this season was in Toronto, where the Wolves played in mid-March. “The game in Toronto was the highlight of my season,” says Wiggins, who grew up in Vaughan, Ontario, just north of Canada’s biggest city. “All of my family was able to see me play. I had at least 50 people there and it was all love. Even the regular fans I didn’t know showed love and cheered when I scored. That was a great feeling.”

To get more great feelings, Wiggins knows he needs to create wins. And with the franchise focused on youth and letting him do pretty much what he wants, wins or losses are going to be on his shoulders. “[Being the leader] is not extra pressure for me,” Wiggins promises. “As the season went on I got a little more comfortable with everything—shooting, scoring and leading. There is still a lot of stuff I need to work on, too. Ballhandling, shooting, attacking the rim. I’m going to watch tape of myself, I’m going to practice my skills, all of that. I definitely don’t want to be the same player next season that I was this season.”

Back in Portland after the late-season Blazer loss, Saunders is lamenting the lineup he trotted out. “Playing the Blazers with all our injuries, it’s like men against boys,” he says. “We’re playing four guys who played in the NBDL this year.”

Of course, that means more minutes and shots for Wiggins. What does the coach think of how he’s developed? “Andrew just keeps getting stronger,” Flip says. “There were stretches when we got him the ball in the post and he just went to work.”

Just like the recipient of that work was saying. “All he needs is a jumper and to develop his court vision,” Batum says. “He had 4 assists tonight, which isn’t bad, but I think he’ll average 5 or 6 in the future.”

Fully dressed now, Batum pauses and looks me right in the eye.

“He’s going to be a 22-6-5 guy for a long time. Believe me.”

—

Ben Osborne is a former Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on twitter @bosborne17.

Portraits by Ahmed Klink

The post Andrew Wiggins: Sign O’ The Times appeared first on SLAM.

Andrew Wiggins is a nice reminder that there is no one way to superstardom. I know he’s not all the way there yet, but best believe he’s on his way…and he’s doing it a little different than Kobe, LeBron and KD did. Maybe it’s growing up in Canada. Maybe it’s reticence imposed by his father, Mitchell, who saw the ugly side of NBA life. Maybe he’s just naturally shy. Whatever the case, Andrew’s high school career, college “career,” media interactions and a rookie season that was much, much better than I think people realized (lots more on that in my feature on Andrew, which will be on SLAMonline soon) have taken place without much of the bombast that accompanied the breakouts of his predecessors. And if you doubt that’s where he’s headed, well, I’d argue that’s because of the coverage of his exploits, not the exploits. Just you watch.

As for where Andrew was, well, it was two short years ago that he was posing alongside Aaron Gordon, the Harrison twins, Julius Randle and Jabari Parker as a SLAM High School All-American. In a nice bit of symmetry, AW is now on the cover of the issue featuring the 2015 All-Americans. The vagaries of high school basketball (and high school students themselves) prevented us from getting all of this year’s team in the same room at the same time, but between our determination to shoot all the kids (and said kids determination to be shot by SLAM) means we once again executed a beautiful-looking All-American spread. You can enjoy that in the issue and place your bets on who—if anyone—is the next Andrew Wiggins.

Sticking with the theme of the future, we’ve also got lists of other All-Americans, both boys and girls, recaps of all the big high school All-American games (save for BallisLife, which takes place too late to make it into this issue), our usual monthly Punks coverage, the big news straight from Malik’s mouth, and a great short feature on one of high school basketball’s least likely powerhouses. I know a lot of eyes are on the NBA Playoffs, and our website and social channels are all about that, but the timing of print and the chance to be the one outlet you can always count on to look ahead as well as we look back, makes this issue a great time to do just that. Thank us later.

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It’s an early season off day, and Tony Parker’s Spurs are in New York to play the Brooklyn Nets. For the more culturally curious members of the team, this might mean visiting a museum or other site. For others, catching up with Big Apple-based fam. For Coach Pop, a wine shop. For Tony Parker, though, coming through NYC means one thing: business.

At the moment, I and a handful of other media members are gathered at the hip Standard Hotel in New York’s Meatpacking District to listen to Tony speak on his partnership with Bollé Eyewear. From here, he’ll go to an event with Tissot Watches, who he also endorses.

In between his pseudo press conferences, the 32-year-old Frenchman, whose career already includes four NBA Championships and six All-Star appearances, sat with SLAM for a few.

***

SLAM: A big part of your partnership with Bollé is producing protective eyewear for young basketball players. How much exposure do you have to kids?

Tony Parker: I do camps every summer in France. I go back for three weeks and I do my camps. We have, like, 700-750 kids every summer, and I’ve been doing that for a lot of years. That’s why I was saying earlier, that I had no idea about the positive impact protective glasses can have on kids and that’s what made me want to do it. Obviously I had a big injury in my eye, and from there I started working with the Bollé team to try and create the best product that we can for kids.

SLAM: Do you like your trips to New York maybe more than other NBA cities because of all the companies and media that are based here?

TP: Yeah, I love it. It’s a great city, a lot of fun. A lot of French people here, too, so I can catch up with friends. Hopefully I will be an All-Star so I can come back and catch up with everybody again.

SLAM: Lots of NBA players have endorsement deals, but you may have the most interesting, worldly mix of deals of anyone in the League. You have this deal with Bollé. Your shoe deal is with the Chinese brand, PEAK. You have a special watch with Tissot. You’re backing that Earl Lloyd documentary [The First To Do It]. Can you speak on all this stuff?

TP: I just like to diversify. We only live once and I just try to do stuff that affects me. The glasses, they affect me. I like wearing watches, so when the Tissot brand came to me, it was an unbelievable opportunity to have my own watch, my own line, and it’s been going great with them. I have four watches with them now and we just did an extension. And then the project with the movie, that came to  me from Michael Finley, my teammate who I won the Championship with in 2007. He knows I’m a big fan of the history of the NBA, the history of basketball. So I was kind of surprised that it didn’t happen before, that a documentary like that didn’t exist. I was like, ‘Really?’ I thought it was weird. So I was like, ‘Of course I’ll be part of it, it’s a great project.’ Then there’s PEAK, of course, and I have a deal with the car company Renault, where I’m an ambassador for them. For both of those deals we do a lot of stuff in China.

SLAM: Does most of this come from you and your team at CAA, or is this brands pitching to you?

TP: Half and half. People are coming to me, and then sometimes they pitch stuff and so, me, I’m always open to do stuff. Like I said, you only live once…

SLAM: Some people like to stereotype San Antonio as a place where “no one cares about players from there.” Has that ever been a challenge or do you think because you’re so international, that it doesn’t matter what market you’re in?

TP: It doesn’t matter that San  Antonio is a small market for me. I’m international, I’m with the national team, I play in the Olympics. It really doesn’t matter.

SLAM: OK, and how do you balance all of this stuff with your basketball? Tim Duncan may have a few deals, but he, Kawhi, most of your teammates really stay out of the limelight, so I think it’s fair to say you’re the biggest celebrity and most-endorser friendly athlete on the Spurs. What’s Pop or Timmy’s attitude to you having more off-court commitments than everyone else?

TP: They don’t mind, they don’t mind. They trust my judgment and they know that playing well for the Spurs will always be my priority and then whatever I do off the court, they just trust me to find that right balance.

SLAM: Speaking of the Spurs, what’s your motivation this season? You guys have won so much, you took care of the revenge angle last season…

TP: Well, we never did a back-to-back and that’s a great challenge for us. Obviously we understand we have a big target on our backs and everybody wants to beat us because we’re the champions and we have to defend it, but I think for us, it’s a great challenge because we never did back-to-back. Yes, we won five Championships, but we never did back-to-back. Everybody, including Pop, is very motivated by that.

***

It’s mid-March now, and the Spurs are back in New York for the first time since the visit detailed above. At the time of the last visit, they were 13-4 and looking every bit like title favorites. From mid-December til late-February, however, the Spurs were barely looking like a Playoff team, and honestly, an injured Parker was a big reason why. He missed 13 games thanks to a sore left hamstring, and the Spurs struggled in his absence (Kawhi Leonard’s injury issues didn’t help either). Needless to say, the All-Star Weekend trip Tony was looking forward to never materialized.

Today, however, with San  Antonio in town to play the Knicks and spring on the horizon, things are almost back to normal in Spurs land. In a recent five-game stretch, Parker went for 19, 24, 32, 23 and 31 points, looking as spry as ever. More importantly, the Spurs won four of the five games, with the one loss being an overtime thriller against the Cavs that looked a lot like a) the best game of the regular season and b) a lot like what the Finals may look like.

From a relatively mediocre statline a couple months ago, Parker is up to almost-familiar per-game averages of 14.4 points and 4.9 assists, with his typically solid percentages (48.6 percent from the field, 78.3 percent from the line).

Everyone knows that when Parker plays well, the Spurs are a different team. “If he’s not the Tony Parker of past years, we’re not going anywhere,” Popovich told the San Antonio Express-News recently. “But he’s serious about it and that’s good. He’s the main part of our game as far as pace and scoring. He makes a lot happen when he’s getting 18, 20, 26 points. There are not many nights when Timmy [Duncan] or Manu [Ginobili] are going to get 26 or 28, but the teams we are playing have a lot of those guys. Tony is our guy and we need that.”

With homecourt advantage secured through the first two rounds of the Playoffs and Tony, Kawhi and the rest of the Spurs finally feeling healthy, you’d really bet against them? Sounds like bad business to us.

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

Images via Getty

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What I am digging, though, is the offense on display in the League these days, especially following March Madness, when games end in the 50s like they were being played in the ’50s. Some of these NBA offenses, though? These cats can fill it up.

Look at our three main cover subjects this month. You’ve got James Harden, notching 27 points a game on seemingly nothing more than drives, threes and free throws like some sort of Daryl Morey Frankenstein, optimally built to score in 2015. You’ve got the Splash Hermanos, living up to my man Mark Jackson’s lofty predictions with two of the sweetest jumpers the game has ever seen. And lastly, the long-boring Hawks, rejuvenated by coach Mike Budenholzer and skillfully spreading around their 103 ppg to a broad cast of “stars” in the best team-first system we’ve seen this side of the Alamo. And I didn’t even get to this month’s lead feature subject, Russell Westbrook, kept off the cover only by our fear that the snake-bit Thunder are too injured to do much in the Playoffs. But he’s scoring at a greater—and more explosive—pace than any of these other guys.

The end result is a modern NBA product that puts up some duds once in a while, and occasionally seems to lack the intense passion of a generation ago, but can be hella fun to watch. And now that we’re entering the Playoffs, maybe it will all coalesce. Think about it: The shitty teams will be gone for the summer, and even the offense-first teams will have to put forth maximum effort on the defensive end as well. Who knows? Maybe this occasionally grumpy old man will be singing a whole new song next month.

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Here we go again. Coach John Calipari and Kentucky have another batch of future NBA stars. Another chance for a chip. And another SLAM cover. Honestly, we didn’t plan this year’s like we did the classic 2010 joint you see here (or outside Cal’s office!). For one thing, that team had John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins on it, both all but guaranteed to be future NBA All-Stars. For another, we started the process early enough to shoot all the guys in the same room at the same time, and get our man Atiba Jefferson to Lexington to do so. Lastly, the buzz around UK that year started earlier and had more intensity—at least in January.

This season’s Wildcats are a smidge different. I don’t see a Cousins or Wall this year (Karl-Anthony Towns sure looks like a future All-Star, though). The wonderment this year is depth. Until Alex Poythress got hurt, UK was running out 10 high school All-Americans every game. It was unprecedented, but maybe not as sexy as previous rosters (besides Wall/Cousins’ crew, the Ant Davis/MKG/Terrence Jones group that we watched win in New Orleans in 2012 was sick, too). And the consensus opinion is that college hoops is down in general this year, with so many young players in the League and control-freak coaches turning too many games into 50-point slugfests. SLAM 187 was always going to be our “March Madness” issue, but at first we were thinking AD on the cover and Kentucky and some other college stuff inside.

What happened? Well, AD got hurt, Kentucky helped us with some great photos of their top nine players, and most of all, the Cats just kept winning. As of this writing, they are 31-0, and unlike other undefeated-late-in-the-season-teams where the coach may have “wanted” a loss to teach his team a lesson, I think Cal is all in on going undefeated. Do that (*knocks on wood* *preemptively curses the SLAM jinx*), and this year’s Kentucky cover will stand as a classic.

This is also the time of year when women’s hoops gets some shine, with the Women’s Tourney tipping off and the WNBA season coming soon. To mark the occasion, we’ve got a nice 10-page package in this issue with a special, 32-page Women of Nike Basketball edition hitting select events next month. Check for it!

Ben Osborne is the Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.

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For every person who now views Air Jordans as a commodity to buy or sell just like a common stock, there are still people out there who straight-up just love the product. People who loved Mike as a player, love the craftsmanship and look of the shoes, and collect and study them for nothing more than the love.

Of all the fans, players and sneakerheads I’ve met over the years, no one embodies the above more than Puneet Singh, aka Sole Supreme. Much like last year in our first version of this special “bookazine,” Puneet (who owns at least one of every OG Jordan ever released) blessed us with OGs of the VIIs-XIs for us to shoot. This time around, he also lent us a dope retro of each shoe, and did some copyediting/fact-checking. I’m telling you, this guy, whose collection fittingly started with a pair of XIs that he bought in Jamacia, Queens, in ’95, is a one-man Jordan Vault.

Just as refreshing as Puneet’s collection and knowledge is the fact that it comes with none of the attitude that some experts cop, whether their field is sneakers, stocks or anything else. Puneet is super humble and loves talking shoes, especially Jordans, simply for the pleasure of it all. If you want a little taste of his kicks and wisdom, follow him on Instagram @solesupreme23. To learn more about him (and JORDANS, Vol. 1), check the video we did with him a year ago. And Puneet, in case I haven’t said it enough, thank you!

Besides Puneet, this special issue was built by the same usual characters that pump out SLAM every month. And while it may be our job, the truth is we get a little extra kick out of working on this project, too. Think about it: scrolling through action shots of Stephen Curry or LeBron James is fun; scrolling through action shots of Michael Jordan is better. Reading about the new KD or Kobe shoes is interesting; reading about how the Jordan VIII came to be is far more so. We love today’s NBA, and the state of basketball footwear is higher than it’s ever been. But none of it would be at the level it is if it wasn’t for MJ and the team of designers he had working for him at Nike. So when we work on this issue, it’s like working on the building block for all of what we do at SLAM. I can only hope that passion we have for the subject matter shows through to you, the reader.

P.S. Puneet didn’t just walk through our office door one day in 2013 with a bag of old Js. I was on the hunt for the ultimate collector of Jordans, and I hit up my man Calvan Fowler, confident he’d have a lead. Calvan is the producer and director of Jordan Heads: The Movie, which we all hope makes its debut in 2015, as well as the owner of the new, Jordan-only consignment shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jordan Heads Brooklyn. Calvan met Puneet while filming the movie, and, much to SLAM’s benefit, they’ve stayed in touch. Thank you again for the intro, Calvan!

P.P.S. Making a product this nice ain’t cheap. My final thank you is to Foot Locker for the sponsorship. Much love.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY OF JORDANS VOL. 2!

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In a way, we at SLAM are about to put this theory of modern media production to a test. Because, in my opinion, SLAM has very much been a product of where it was produced: The back corner of the Harris Publications office space, on the 8th floor of 1115 Broadway, at the corner of 25th Street. The SLAM Dome, as we like to call it. The physical space itself is nothing special: After walking down a hall filled with the staffers of other magazines (as well as some SLAM folks), you reach the Dome, a carpeted, 15 x 15 space with two big windows, four workspaces and the largest collection of SLAM back issues (which sadly isn’t all that large) on Earth. There’s also SLAM tees when we have ’em, more random basketball books than any of us will ever read, and all types of hoop-related goodies we’ve picked up over the years: Michael Jordan posters, SHAQ shoes, autographed balls, bobbleheads, nesting dolls, etc. There’s also some classic, deadstock Nike Air Jordan 1s, left forever by our “EIC emeritus,” Russ Bengtson.

Which brings me to the second thing about this space: The people who have spent time here. Tony Gervino, Scoop Jackson, Tzvi Twersky and Lang Whitaker actually had desks just down the hall, but close enough. Russ and Ryan Jones worked right in here, as did Khalid Salaam. Past interns from Ben Collins to Spero Dedes to Adam Fleischer to Vanessa Satten to Bonsu Thompson sat here for meetings. Just look any of these people up in case you’re wondering about the type of talent SLAM has nourished. And then there’s the visitors. Kevin Love, LeBron James and Stephon Marbury, to name three SLAM favorites. Plus NBA role players, college ballers in town over break and entire NYC public high school teams.

At the end of this week, the Dome is moving a few blocks north and east. I’m bringing most of the crap, and the current staff is staying intact, but I think we’ll all miss this place.

All photos by Tom Medvedich

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One of the biggest things that distinguishes those of us at SLAM from most other media outlets that cover basketball is how much we are still fans of the sport. And certainly specific players. We’ve all got our favorites, and to be honest, few big-time NBA ballers have a better fan club amongst the SLAM Fam than John Wall.

Long-time SLAM Contributor Aggrey Sam put me on to John back in ’07, when he was a little-known high school kid who made noise at a Reebok camp and was buzzing a bit in his native North Carolina. I loved John’s style as soon as I caught highlights of him on the internet, and we first put him on our cover in ’09, when he was still in high school. I loved him at UK, too, where we made him the centerpiece to our classic 2010 Kentucky cover, and his play had me guaranteeing NBA stardom for him and promising that he’d be “better than Kyrie” to anyone who asked (and usually disagreed with me…and I mean no disrespect to Mr. Irving, btw). Any support John had inside the SLAMDome only grew when he joined the Wizards and newly crowned Associate Editor Abe Schwadron joined the SLAM Squad as an intern a couple years back. Abe, who wrote this month’s peach of a cover story, is the biggest Wall backer of all of us here at SLAM, primarily because he grew up just outside DC as a rabid Wizards fan and knows that John represents that cursed franchise’s best hope for relevance and success. Abe’s frenetic game also has a little Wall in it, on the real.

Besides Abe, there’s one other core member of the SLAM crew that I’d describe as a JW fan—Tzvi Twersky. Generally speaking, Tzvi likes any ballers who are willing to be themselves on and off the court, like John. Just like Tzvi is always willing to do what he thinks is right, regardless of what anyone else has to say. Tzvi’s confident, bold approach helped land him at SLAM when he was still in college, and served him well as he grew to become our Senior Editor, excellent with words and even better at forging connections to pretty much every NBA player and player agent. Now he’s off to Stance Socks, where he’ll run the basketball division out of Cali while still writing for SLAM. Thanks and good luck, dude.

READ OUR SLAM 184 COVER STORY ON JOHN WALL

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EASTERN CONFERENCE

1. Cavaliers, 58-24
We know all about LeBron, and we’re pretty sure we know about Kyrie, Kevin Love and Coach Blatt, too. Even the bench is stocked with relatively known quantities from past Championship teams. Dion Waiters is a mega question mark at the 2, and how the whole franchise handles the attention/pressure surrounding LeBron’s return will be interesting to watch, but you can be sure this team catch a lot of Ws.

2. Bulls, 52-30
I loved the Pau pickup—he and Joakim could be the sweetest-passing big man duo ever. And I love Coach Thibs as much as ever. Jimmy Butler’s just gotta get back on track and obviously Derrick needs to stay healthy. All that happens, and Bulls fans will have the team they’ve been hoping for the last three seasons. It’s too bad they won’t have Aggrey Sam around to report on it for them.

3. Raptors, 48-34
DeMar DeRozan just keeps getting better and better and Kyle Lowry is easily the best point guard you’ve barely seen play. Throw in a solid coach, a tremendous GM and an excellent—if occasionally unrealistic—fan base, and this is a franchise heading in a very positive direction.

4. Wizards, 47-35
I’m as enamored with John Wall as I was when I righty predicted “80 games and sick across-the-board numbers” before last season, and Bradley Beal is legit, too, so all the props the DC backcourt is getting are warranted. Nice, big 4-5 combo, too. But depth is an issue unless you buy into Paul Pierce’s viability (I don’t), and I think their coach and GM stink. The whole package certainly adds up to a very solid Playoff team, but I don’t see the super-high ceiling for the Wiz that some do.

5. Hornets, 46-36
It would be awesome to see this super-fun roster go deep into the Playoffs, as such a run would vindicate the great Michael Jordan as an owner, mean Michael Kidd-Gilchrist had learned to shoot, put the spotlight on great coaches like Steves Clifford and Silas, and, best of all from the perspective of this New York City-based publication, let the performance by the Big Apple-bred backcourt of Kemba Walker and Lance Stephenson serve as a middle finger to all those who have tried to write off basketball in this city.

6. Heat, 45-37
Coach Spo is going to do his thing on the sidelines, and Chris Bosh may well put up some turn-back-the-clock numbers, but how the hell do you replace the best player in the world? The Dwyane Wade of five years ago might have been able to, but he’s not that valuable anymore, especially because of his unwillingness to work on his three-point shot.

7. Hawks, 43-39
Sadly for Lang Whitaker, still the OG of SLAM pre-season previews, “#ATLshawty” has come to mean “boring franchise” in NBA speak. Or worse, “racist front office.” Al Horford, Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap and Jeff Teague are all nice players, but until the Hawks make a deep Playoff run or acquire a must-watch talent, they are destined to be known for off-court shenanigans, if anything.

8. Knicks, 41-41
Pretty much throwing a dart blindfolded with this prediction. In some circles, 41-41 is probably seen as generous, but it’s the true definition of uncertainty on the part of a prognosticator. I do think Phil has a little magic left in him, and I’m firmly in Melo’s camp as one of the five best players in the League. With some of the shitty teams in this conference, that, combined with a legit PG in Jose Calderon and the three-headed monster of JR Shumpaway, should be enough to eek into the postseason.

 9. Pacers, 38-44
Anyone remember who I picked to win it all last year? It coulda’ happened, I promise, were it not for some meltdowns of the mental variety. The talent was there to win it all last season. This year, with Lance gone and Paul George hurt, it’s not. And I don’t see the Pacers’ mental toughness being any more pronounced in their absence, either.

10. Nets, 38-44
Hope the Nets’ unrealistic front office and all their hardcore “fans” enjoyed that one-year run at the title. *Snickers*.This group is one year older and even sure-to-be-solid coaching from Lionel Hollins can’t make them a factor again. On the other hand, and this is written in complete seriousness, the franchise’s value has ballooned, and Mikhail Prokhorov is going to make out like the business genius he is when he jumps off this sinking ship.

11. Pistons, 37-45
My vote for best coaching/front-office hire of the offseason goes to the Pistons, who brought in the bright, creative and tough Stan Van Gundy to clean things up. Guys like  Brandon Jennings and Josh Smith will have the emotional SVG pulling his hair out at times, but there is some compelling talent here and he’ll get the most out of it at some point.

12. Magic, 32-50
The slow slog back to respectability continues for the Magic, who add young, exciting Elfrid Payton to young, exciting Victor Oladipo in their backcourt this year, but continue to lack the scorer or center to really be in the Playoff mix.

13. Bucks, 30-52
Jason Kidd has always been an impressive back-room schemer, so his sneaky diss of the Nets really wasn’t all that shocking. Especially because moving to the Bucks gives Kidd a pressure-free atmosphere and young, malleable players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker whom he can grow with. I see some fun-to-watch games from this bunch, and a future that will only get brighter from here.

14. Celtics, 29-53
The lack of talent on last year’s Celtics team means we don’t really know what type of NBA coach Brad Stevens will turn out to be. And honestly, we probably won’t learn much this year, either. The Celtics promised their fans a lengthy rebuild when they broke up their Big Three, and that’s exactly what they’re getting.

15. 76ers, 16-66
Meet the franchise that is single-handedly turning off an entire generation’s love of basketball in one of the nation’s greatest hoop cities! Look: the cold-blooded cynic in me understands what the Sixers are trying to do, but with so many question marks and a fan base that could  afford to support less egregious tanking, I wish they’d put forth a better effort. Exhibit A why the NBA needs to overhaul its lottery system pronto.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

(This preview was written before KD was declared out for at least six weeks with a broken foot. While the Thunder’s win-loss record might be a bit different, sticking behind my prediction that they’ll win the West.—Ed.)

1. Thunder, 61-21
It took a whole conference worth of teams for me before I mentioned fantasy basketball, but the truth is I’m a rabid player of it and I can’t ignore that when I get to this team. According to my beloved Yahoo! pre-Draft rankings, the Thunder have the 1st-, 9th- and 14th-best fantasy players in the League. Or, using the metric of the #SLAMTop50, the 2nd-, 6th- and 31st-best players in the League. In a game where winning is driven by talent, how can Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka not win it all one of these years? Just don’t make me discuss their coach for the time being.

2. Spurs, 57-25
Why not, right? The Spurs put on a clinic in last year’s Finals and all the key actors are back for another go-round, arguably even more motivated because they are chasing a repeat, which is about the only thing the Pop/Duncan/Tony/Manu crew hasn’t accomplished yet. That said, one of these years the teams’ collective age is going to catch up with them, and Kawhi Leonard will only be able to do so much to stop the slight slide.

3. Clippers, 56-26
Not sure what to say about this group. Blake Griffin keeps getting better and better, and the records of Doc Rivers and Chris Paul speak for themselves. Maybe the elimination of Donald Sterling from the picture will provide a little emotional boost, too. But when you really stack up rosters and matchups, do you see this team as better than the Thunder and/or Spurs? That makes one of us.

4. Mavericks, 50-32
The Mavs aren’t quite back to full title-contending status, but they have made a lot of savvy moves. Monta Ellis worked out better than I ever imagined and Tyson Chandler Parsons is a great off-season acquistion. As for Rick Carlisle and Dirk  Nowitzki, well, these guys remain among the best in the biz.

5. Rockets, 47-35
Maybe I’ll be wrong about whom finishes ahead of whom in the Mavs-Rockets race, but don’t they have to end up as the 4-5 Playoff matchup? The talent levels are equal in my opinion, the regional beef is obvious, and the war of words between Mark Cuban and Daryl Morey insures that a best-of-seven between these two teams would be tremendous theater. In case you keeping score, by the way, we’re Team Cuban when forced to choose between these two blowhards.

6. Trail Blazers, 44-38
Wes Matthews’ health? Mo Williams’ departure? LaMarcus Aldridge’s unsigned contract extension? The delusional fans? Something makes me nervous about this team. Then again, the 54 wins they had  last year bested my pre-season prediction by 18 games, so maybe I should just skip Portland. Or at least stop reading The Oregonian when I’m out there on business.

7. Warriors, 43-39
As the original Markjaxfan, I’m simply too biased to render a proper judgment on this team. I see basically the same roster as a year ago, with the transcendant Stephen Curry oddly being given less responsibility  than last season and a coach who won’t connect as well to the players as Mark did. That said, if the perpetually injured Andrew Bogut plays a full season for the first time since his ’05-06 rookie campaign and is healthy for the Playoffs, I could coach the Warriors and we’d scare the heck out of most teams.

8. Pelicans, 42-40
This seemed high to me when I penciled these picks out, but I love love love Anthony Davis and I wanted to look cool by predicting the Playoffs for the Pels. Then my man Leo Sepkowitz (more from him below) chimes in and says I’m underestimating New Orleans. Bottom line: Whether you’re an opponent or a League Pass subscriber, you should not  sleep on these guys.

9. Grizzlies, 41-41
Marc Gasol is the best (not literally, but he sure is good at both ends of the floor) and Z-Bo and Mike Conley are consumate pros, but the Grizz lack a scorer and eventually, #gritngrind is just gonna grind them down.

10. Suns, 40-42
While by no means trying to diminish Phoenix’ 48-win season a year ago, what, in the end, was it good for? Due to the brutal competition in the Western Conference last season, the Suns’ year ended when all the other non-Playoff teams’ did, and that was that. Their backcourt gets even more explosive with the addition of Isaiah Thomas, but the Suns are very small and they aren’t sneaking up on anybody this time around.

11. Lakers, 39-43
Kobe’s back! Kobe’s back? Kobe’s back. What exactly will a rehabbed, 36-year-old Kobe mean on the court? And while Jeremy Lin will sell lots of jerseys and be good for some scoring outbursts, he and Steve Nash aren’t stopping anyone on defense. I guess the variable that could make this team anywhere from 15 games below .500 to 5 games above .500 is their supremely talented rookie, Julius Randle. There was a time when he was in high school that some had him pegged as the better pro than Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker. That time was less than two years ago.

12. Nuggets, 38-44
Is anyone still reading? Did anyone notice what I did with the records here? I PREDICTED TEAMS 6-12 TO BE WITHIN SIX GAMES OF EACH OTHER. Why? Because I think you could throw their names in a hat and pick their finish. Any of the six could make the Playoffs. Any of the six could miss ’em. With non-Title or last-place teams like these, small injuries or surprising roadtrips will make the difference. In Denver’s case, the roster is decent but don’t expect to see Kenneth Faried duplicate his FIBA World Cup beasting when he goes against NBA comp.

13. Kings, 26-56
Sac-Town is still home to a bunch of guys who like to launch jumpers—and hopefully can make a decent percentage of them. And Boogie just keeps on keeping on. But in this conference, that’s still not enough.

14. Jazz, 25-57
Where have you gone, Karl Malone and John Stockton? The Jazz have slid deep into irrelevance, and as intriguing as Gordon Hayward and even Alec Burks may be as talents, neither one of them are delivering the Jazz back to their glory days. Dante Exum? Just maybe.

15. Timberwolves, 21-61
The Ricky Rubio assists to Andrew Wiggins are going to be awesome, but we just can’t rock with this new era of all-powerful Flip Saunders.

After several years in which the Heat were the prohibitive favorites, the relatively wide-open nature of this year’s regular season should make it extremely fun to watch. Once the pretenders have been eliminated, I see LeBron and the Cavs outlasting their division-rival Bulls in a grueling Eastern Conference finals. Out west, I think the perfectly primed Thunder will hold off the Spurs to advance to Nike’s dream Finals. Cleveland vs Oklahoma City; LeBron vs Kevin. And, unlike 2012, I see Kevin’s team getting the upper hand this time.

Just like I did in this space a year ago, I picked every team’s record off the top of my head, then turned my guesses over to SLAM Editorial Assistant Leo Sepkowitz, who is much better at math than I am. Leo balanced out my wins and losses and chimes in with his own thoughts on how the season will play out below.

Leo Sepkowitz: I agree with the teams you pegged to make a leap in the East, but I think you underrated a few up-and-comers out West. If we’re picking teams with all O and no D, I like the Blazers and Dubs over the Mavs and Rockets. Meanwhile, Anthony Davis is my sleeper for MVP as the star on a Pelicans squad ready to take off. On opening night, New Orleans will feature three stars that they didn’t have down the stretch last season—Ryan Anderson, Jrue Holiday and newcomer Omer Asik. And let’s not forget about Tyreke Evans, who rediscovered himself to the tune of 17, 6.5 and 5.5 after the break last season. Don’t overlook the young and balanced Pelicans!

As for the top dogs, the Spurs were just so damn good in the Finals that it’s hard to bet against them (the average score in that series was 106-92!). Neither OKC nor the Clippers made a big improvement this summer, so I’ll keep taking San Antonio to come out of the West until I see it fail to do so. The Cavs, on the other hand…well, call me a believer that LeBron will bounce back for ring No. 3 in June.

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As any of you with your own busy schedules—kids juggling practices and homework, coaches balancing games with family life, editors doubling as publishers (*winks*)—know, the only way to manage such time crunches is to make choices. For LeBron, the media asks alone probably equal all the other requests on his time. Given that he has to talk after every game by the collectively bargained League rules, and that there’s enough action photos of him to satisfy the thirstiest print or web outlets’ needs, the King could shoot down every last one of the requests he gets and he’d still be arguably the most visible athlete in the world.

And yet…when SLAM asks for time, as we did on the eve of this year’s training camp, LeBron often says yes (tell me how many other exclusive photo shoots of him from this preseason you see before shrugging at his willingness to pose for us). This gift of his time says something about LeBron—the man is undyingly loyal, as evidenced by the way he still rolls with his friends from high school, or even the way he keeps giving Lee Jenkins at Sports Illustrated  great interviews. The fact that the gift of time is given to SLAM also says something about us—from the pre-fame portion of his high school career to the Cavs to one of his first post-Decision interviews, we have always been willing to give LeBron’s side of the story. And we—as you can see in the byline for the write up in which we rank LeBron as the best player in the NBA—still includes Ryan Jones, who has been SLAM’s main connect to LeBron for all this time. It’s been a busy month for the Ryan-LeBron business, as he complements his No. 1 piece with a masterful cover story in the mag. This issue also features a classic pic of young Ryan with young LeBron, not to mention our NBA Preview (written before a certain player got hurt), the print version of the #SLAMTop50 for all you junkies out there and features on guys such as crafty veteran Andre Iguodala and fun-loving youngster Victor Oladipo.

It’s no coincidence that guys like Andre and Vic are as happy to give us time as LeBron is. We treat just about all players with fairness and respect. There is undoubtedly a place in this media landscape for hard-hitting journalism that covers basketball like the multi-billion dollar industry it is, but I’d argue there is also still a huge place for doing things the way we’ve done them forever—celebrating the game we love and the players who make it great. Seems like LeBron feels the same way.

RELATED: LEBRON RANKS NO. 1 IN THE #SLAMTOP50

portraits by Tom Medvedich

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Let’s start with the scoring: Melo averaged 27.4 ppg last year, after 28.7 the year before, and his career average is a robust 25.3 ppg. You get the point. In a sport where the goal is to out-score the opponent, Carmelo Anthony has been one of the best in his business for 11 straight seasons.

Continue with some “advanced” stats: Melo’s PER was 24.5 last year, good for ninth in the NBA. (His true shooting percentage ranked a much less-impressive 101st, but those numbers are crunched tight and everyone knows he takes about two or three horrible shots every single game; probably his biggest drawback as a player).

His defense and rebounding skills aren’t terribly respected, but Melo quietly averaged a career-high 8.1 rpg last season, and even if he’s not going to stop LeBron or KD one-on-one, who can? He plays good team defense and knows how to get in the best position to rebound because he knows the game extremely well. You don’t want to look at either of these as positives to Carmelo’s game? Well I’m not going to call them negatives.

He can—and should, in my opinion—pass a little more. He gets to have the ball in his hands a ton, and with defenses as keyed on him in those situations as they are, Melo should be able to get close to 5 apg. But, like with his relative lack of winning, Melo has rarely had the type of teammates any superstar would want to pass to.

As for that relative lack of winning, it ain’t like this guy’s been in the Lottery every year. On the contrary, last season was the first time ever he did not make the Playoffs. And he’s been the best player on his team every single one of those seasons. In 2009, Melo’s Nuggets coalesced at the right time and he and Chauncey Billups pushed them all the way to the Western Conference finals. In 2013, when he was at the peak of his scoring powers, he was the leader of a fun-to-watch Mike Woodson bunch that won 54 games and lost a closer-than-it-sounds second-round playoff series, 4-2, to the very tough Pacers. Other than that, he’s lost a lot of first-round series. Impressive? Not exactly. But again, it’s not like this guy’s mailing it in for 82 games; he’s grinding every night to insure that his team (which, so far, has always been one with middling NBA talent), at least advances to the postseason.

He also won a National Championship in his one year and college and stood toe-to-toe with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James as a go-to scorer on the US Olympic teams in 2008 and 2012. So calling this guy a loser is patently stupid.

Could he do more to make averagely talented teammates better? Probably, especially if it just meant looking for them on offense a little more. Could he present a public persona that paints him as harder-working? Perhaps, but here in the hyper glare of NY, I think his nonchalance is kind of smart. Give off too much intensity and you’re just asking for more press to hound you.

Look at his Jordan Brand and fellow New York athlete Derek Jeter. Jeets has always been boring as shit with the press; maybe his hustle show through on the field a little more than Melo’s, but the biggest difference is that Jeter won five rings, largely thanks to the incredible teammates he had.

What’s cool and intriguing about the Carmelo story, particularly this season, is that we may yet see a slightly refined player. Oh, the Knicks roster is pretty mediocre (in our season preview issue, which drops next week, I peg them for the ultimate mediocrity with a 41-41 record), but the Phil Jackson-Derek Fisher braintrust will be pushing a new brand of basketball on Carmelo. Phil’s the guy that got the best out of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant; why won’t he get the best out of Melo?

Lastly, since even if our rankings our collective, each write-up is decidedly personal. I wrote the cover story on Melo when he met us on a nearby rooftop and posed with his Gold medals with the Empire State Building in the background. He was cool as shit that day. He’s been good to SLAM as long as he’s been playing basketball. I was at the 62-point game. Only the most points any player ever scored at MSG—and they’ve all played there. I’m a human being. So, he snubbed you for an autograph or you hate the Knicks, and these biases make you think he’s the ninth-best player in the League? I like the guy so I think he’s the fifth? As a whole, we split the difference and placed him at seventh. This is nothing to sneeze at, people.

 
Rankings are based on expected contribution in ’14-15—to players’ team, the NBA and the game.

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Any requests the team here at SLAM and KICKS made to speak with Jordan in 2013 were shot down, so we can’t speak first-hand about what the State of Mike at 50 was, but we got the unprovoked offer to sit with him in the Spring of 2014 and, well, maybe it was the writers and commentators who had grown bored and rudderless.

Sitting with Michael behind the temporary stage Jordan Brand erected inside the Ballroom-turned-court known to lucky NY-area players as #Terminal23 for the media launch of the Jordan XX9, I find Michael personable, funny and bordering on giddy. It’s springtime in New York, his wife of a year (Yvette Prieto) has recently given birth to twins, his Bobcats are in the Playoffs and business at Jordan Brand is booming.

“It’s been great,” Jordan says. “I’ve been blessed. I don’t know where [the negative coverage] came from. I’m happy that now, because of my current lifestyle, I can enjoy some of the things that I missed early on. Having kids the first time, I wasn’t able to spend as much time with them. Fortunately, my life now is a lot different than when my other three kids were being raised. My ex-wife did a good job, and now I get the chance to be a part of it and do it all again.”

He also gets to push shoes again, and this one—which will be released to the public on September 6, the first shoe in the flagship Air Jordan line to come out since February of 2013—is a doozy.

“I think it’s a great product,” Jordan says. “Obviously, we put a lot of hard work into this, it’s not just something that you just throw your name on. I think when you look at this, it’s a product of [designer Tinker Hatfield and I’s] communication and interpretation of each other’s thought process. It’s a creative, good looking, stylish product.”

On one hand, by the time you read this, the Jordan XX9 will be old news. It’s received breathless coverage all over the internet ever since the aforementioned launch event, which took place on April 17. But it’s not actually out yet.

In fact, besides the ill tech aspects of the XX9—improvements to the Flight Plate that garnered rave reviews in the Jordan XX8, as well as a performance-woven upper—it’s the release date itself that is the $225 shoe’s most noteworthy feature. “By shifting to a fall launch, we ensure players around the world will have the very best in performance and style available as they prepare for the season,” says Jordan Brand President Larry Miller.

It’s a logical move; the traditional All-Star Weekend-timed Jordan release dates of the past were great theater and gave retailers a late-winter bump, but for most ball-playing consumers, the tail end of a season is not when you want to try out new shoes. “This year we shifted the launch of the game shoe to September to better serve performance basketball players, who are at the center of everything we do,” adds Brian O’Connor, VP of Global Brand Jordan Marketing.

As a player, Jordan was withering in his critiques of teammates, and to some degree, that was understandable; becoming the greatest player of all time never lessened his work ethic or passion, and he could not understand why less-accomplished players cared so much less than he did. As the centerpiece of a footwear and apparel brand, however, Michael is much more trusting.

Oh, he cares about how Jordan product looks and feels (especially each year’s signature release), and he spends time with the Brand’s staff throughout the year, but he’s more laid-back about shoes than he ever was about basketball. The Jordan team is rich in talent in areas that Mike is still an amateur in, and he smartly gives them the space to do their thing.

No one has earned this trust more than Hatfield, who saved MJ’s relationship with Nike back in 1987 when the designer wowed Mike (whose initial contract with the Swoosh was almost over) with the former’s innovative design for the Air Jordan III, which put the Jumpman front and center and boasted a mid-cut and elephant print that gave the shoes a look unlike any basketball shoe ever had. That little bit of Nike lore is too humble to be part of a splashy media launch, but even the scaled-down Hatfield bio is remarkable. To quote directly from how he’s introduced at the launch, Hatfield “is a 35-year Nike veteran and is responsible for some of the most iconic sneakers ever created. He has worked on more Air Jordans than any other designer. He created all six shoes that Michael wore while earning those amazing six rings. And he is the lead designer on the revolutionary Air Jordan XX9.”

Says MJ, “In terms of being able to understand the things that I like, Tinker is up there. He’s not my wife, but he’s close.”

Hatfield, now 62, elaborates: “When I design a Jordan game shoe, Michael is who I have in mind. I still think of Michael as being the best player in the world. I still think of him as being the person I need to talk to the most, to give us the most feedback and exchange ideas with. 

“We’ve been working hard on this for well over two years, because it’s such a new technological advance in footwear,” Tinker continues. “Not only design, but construction. This shoe is actually made in a special weaving machine, which does create a web of fibers. And it all comes together, sorta in one seamless construction process. What’s great about this shoe is that there are no layers. In previous shoes, way back when, we would, in order to make a shoe stronger, we would have to add another layer of something else and then that might create a hotspot. You could feel it. But this is completely smooth. It’s very, very different than any shoe that’s ever really been made.”

And if at the end of the construction process a shoe looks good enough for Hatfield, that’s good enough for Jordan. “We stay in our arena,” MJ says of their relationship. “We like to talk a lot about our different fields, but we do stay in our arena. It’s part of the relationship.”

A couple weeks after the media launch, Thunder guard and signature Jordan athlete Russell Westbrook became the first player to wear the XX9s in public, rocking a sweet, Thunder-hued colorway throughout Oklahoma City’s three-round stay in the NBA Playoffs.

A couple months after that, Westbrook is still feeling the shoe. “My first reaction was, this feels like a nice, soft pillow,” Russ says. “I like a real soft, soothing, comfortable shoe and the [XX9] felt like that from the first time I put it on. From then on, it’s just been extremely good.”

Adds the explosive, three-time All-Star, “It’s how the shoe is made. It has a woven upper. It’s very, very light. And it kinda fits around your foot, which makes it so comfortable. It’s a good mixture for balance. I always felt balance with the shoe makes me feel good wearing it.”

As Hatfield says, “I think people love the shoes partly because of how they perform. When people buy an Air Jordan, they’re wearing part of his DNA.”

Personally, I’ve never felt the DNA sensation, and I’ve yet to strap on a pair of XX9s, but I’ve played in the XX8s and the five or six editions before that, and it’s true: Jordans perform. My favorite to play in of late has actually been the Air Jordan 2012, which many of you may not even remember. But the point is that regardless of what an insanely popular retro looks like, feels like or sells like today, when these guys set out to make a new basketball shoe, they’re still going to do it as well or better than anyone else in the game.

Indeed, says Jordan, “We want to continue to innovate for the game of basketball. This whole process started with the focus on basketball. For us to lose sight of that would almost be a discredit to all the years we’ve been in the business. Our focus will always be on the performance aspect of the Jordan product.”

Thirty years in, the Air Jordan line has become the ultimate win-win; throw out a dope retro and count the money, then re-invest that bread into making the best new shoe you can. Watch people achieve success in the new shoe, and then, in a few years, they’ll be retroing the later shoes and winning with them all over again. “We look to expand on our retro business as much as possible,” MJ says. “The consumer is asking for that, and we’re going to do that. You know, everybody wants the first 13 shoes, because those are the shoes I actually played in, and they’ve been elevated to that lifestyle position. But we do have consumers that feel like the next eight shoes in the line are just as hot and they want to see them released, maybe in a different colorway, maybe with the innovation of technology.”

In a reasoned and understandably satisfied tone, Jordan reflects on the cycle of success he’s helped create. “The fortunate aspect of things is that our retro business has elevated the brand in a lot of different ways,” he says. “It has become a lifestyle product, it’s part of the style consciousness and it connects us to multiple generations, be it granddad, mom and dad, kids and hopefully someday to their kids. That’s the basis of where the brand stands. Over the years, we have established that defining identity to the brand. If you want lifestyle, we’ve got lifestyle. If you want innovation, we’ve got innovation. You want basketball, we got basketball. You want new stuff, golf shoes? We got golf shoes. We got running, we got fitness stuff. We’re able to touch our consumer base in a lot of different ways, and that’s the beauty of the brand right now.”

Many of us sneakerheads have our own Jordan stories. Our first Jordan purchase (for me it was the 1s, within a month of them dropping in ’85), our favorite original Jordans (the IVs), our favorite retros (the IIs, since I wasn’t able to get them as OGs). It’s this history that has created a retro Jordan market unlike anything the sneaker industry has ever seen…and that shows no sign of slowing down.

Mike was as focused a professional athlete as there’s ever been, but he still kicked it with his kids when he could, still drove nice cars, still listened to music and still observed pop culture. Knowing this, I ask him what his Air Jordan story is? When did this whole phenomenon hit him?

“You know when it happened for me,” Jordan repeats the question. “It was the XIs, which is probably my favorite shoe. Because that shoe went from the basketball court to off-court activities. The night that Boyz II Men wore them at the Grammys (in 1996) with their tuxedos, to me, said something that I had predicted to Tinker. I said, ‘Watch, someone is gonna wear these patent leathers with a tuxedo and make a whole big statement about the shoe itself.’ Well, when it happened I think that started that off-court, lifestyle trend that fans adapted to. And that shoe—the XI—as well as the IIIs, the 1s, the XIIs, those are our most successful retros. And now, our retro business is probably the golden goose of the Jordan Brand itself. So we protect that. For people who never saw me play in those shoes, it has become a sense of style for this generation.”

“This generation” includes kids who have never played a game of basketball in their lives but love rocking loosely laced Jordan IIIs ’cause they look dope, as well as the best young ballplayers in the world, who’ll rock old and new Jordans because of what they mean.

“I know when I put Jordans on, they have a special meaning,” says high school All-American Emmanuel Mudiay. “You can wear LeBrons or KDs, but they don’t have the same meaning. Wearing Jordans brings out extra competitiveness for me. He represents the best as a player, plus he’s the model for players who want their own brand.”

Comments like these make Jordan beam; they complete the cycle he started as a high-flying, fashion-forward athlete who became synonymous with winning.

“That means I’m still able to connect to this generation,” MJ says. “You never know how that’s going to play over a period of time, but so far, because of my relationship with Nike, because of my relationship with this brand and how we’ve been able to create and initiate our style, it’s transcended generations. You know, that’s hard to do.”

“Very hard to do,” I reply.

“I guess there are a lot of components that you can put into it,” Jordan says with a smile. “Whatever we’re doing, it’s working, and we want to continue that.” K

Additional reporting by Abe Schwadron

—

Ben Osborne is a former Editor-in-Chief of SLAM. Follow him on twitter @bosborne17.

Photos by Tom Medvedich

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What a thrill, then, when our friends at Jordan Brand reached out with an offer to sit down with the man himself. We know a few people who were privy to the conversations, and apparently Mike chose us as the American outlet he wanted to give an interview to around the launch of the Air Jordan XX9. Man, did we Jump at that (I’ll be here all year, thank you very much). Obviously any right-minded media outlet would take advantage of that opportunity whenever it was presented, but the timing for us, and for KICKS specifically, was extra special.

Mike’s been on more than 10 SLAM covers, which included memorable interviews with Scoop Jackson and Ryan Jones. He’s been the subject of multiple special issues we’ve produced, the first of which featured a lengthy chat with Russ Bengtson and Tony Gervino. This is MJ’s second KICKS cover (this year’s image is obviously the shoe, but Mike’s the star of the story), but the first time he’s granted us an interview. From our side of things, this historic moment speaks to how essential KICKS has become to the sneaker world; we’re not only the preferred outlet for sneaker fans and industry heads, but for the GOAT, too. And at the risk of being immodest, the moment speaks to how big Jordan still is as well. I mean, lots of players, agents and sneaker companies want their face or shoe or whatever to be on the cover of KICKS every year…and with this opportunity we didn’t think twice. A ground-breaking performance brand in the ’80s grew into a retro behemoth that dominates retail sales charts every month, and yet the people there (unquestionably led by Michael) haven’t lost their hunger for performance innovation one bit. That’s the story: how MJ balances the success and pressures of a legacy brand with the challenge of still making the best new basketball shoe on the market.

By the way, and as ever, this is not a one-brand show. We’ve got edit on every basketball shoe brand that matters—including a 32-page insert that focuses on adidas athletes and their new Boost technology—along with the pictures to match. Enjoy!

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Basketball in the Barrio is like none of the above, or really any camp I’ve ever heard of. Basketball in the Barrio is a rare gem, a three-day event at the Armijo Center in El Paso, TX, that costs attendees—boys and girls, ages 6-10, who hail primarily from the immigrant-heavy Segundo Barrio in which the camp is held—all of $1. And perhaps most uniquely, the camp is not really about basketball.

Through working at SLAM, I’d heard about the camp from the documentary about it (Doug Harris and Athletes United for Peace’s Basketball in the Barrio) and from past guests of the camp like SLAM Fam Bobbito Garcia and Dave Zirin, and most of all from the man who makes the camp happen, Rus Bradburd. A former assistant coach at UTEP and New Mexico State who was renowned for recruiting players out of his native Chicago, Bradburd now teaches English at New Mexico State and spends his summers back in the Chi, writing (once in a while for us here at SLAM; just check your old issues or his online archive for some poignant work).

Bradburd left UTEP in 1991 and stopped coaching altogether in 2000, but he always had a soft spot for the people of El Paso. Having worked at typical for-profit basketball camps at UTEP and elsewhere, about 20 years ago Bradburd teamed up with former UTEP guard Steve Yellen, a New Yorker who’d stayed in El Paso after he graduated and had success working locally for JP Morgan, to offer a camp to the many local kids who couldn’t afford to pay “$200 a week for basketball camp.”

In 1997, after inspirational El Paso athletic hero Joe “Rocky” Galarza died, Bradburd and Yellen teamed up with the non-profit Athletes United for Peace to formally start Basketball in the Barrio and install it at the Armijo Center. The cost was $1, open to the first 100 kids from Segundo Barrio who signed up, and the camp was held in June. Nothing’s really changed since. “This year, $1 gets the kids a book, peace poster, basketball, shirt, lunch and some Price’s Ice Cream,” Bradburd says.

Rus had explained the camp to me many times over the last couple of years, but with his generous invitation, this was the year I could see it for myself.

***

My daughter and I arrive at the El Paso Parks and Recreation Department’s Armijo Center on Friday morning, June 13, and it’s immediately clear we’re in for a treat. Outside the facility, a bunch of this year’s volunteers who Bradburd knows from Chicago—many of whom play or teach music—are playing traditional Mexican music.

Once inside the Center, a typical community building with basketball court, pool, lunchroom and classrooms, campers and coaches sign in, pick up their t-shirts and head to the table their “team” has been allotted.

I get Team 7, which is comprised of a shy group of boys (and one girl) who aren’t that passionate about basketball but are eager to have an activity- filled day. And they get it. Once introductions have been made and the bulk of campers have arrived, the 12 coaches break off to their stations to start teaching. Anyone who’s been to basketball camp knows about stations. A typical camp might have one for the Mikan Drill, one for defensive slides, one for free throws and so on.

Basketball in the Barrio has a few of those, too (I’m in charge of the “low-dribbling” station, an appropriate assignment from Rus since ballhandling is the only basketball skill I’ve ever been good at), but there’s also a music station, a percussion station and a couple “education stations,” which feature reading, writing, drawing and more.

The morning portion of the camp includes seven minutes at each station, followed by lunch (prepared in the Center’s kitchen by members of the Galarza family) and a long break for activities that have little to do with hoops.

The middle of the day is when the cultural component of the camp really hits home, as the kids are treated to a mini-concert by some members of the El Paso High orchestra and a dance performance by the brilliantly outfitted local troupe, Ballet Folklorico of El Paso. Mid-day entertainment on the subsequent two days will include visits from famous bilingual storyteller Joe Hayes, a magic show and more. There’s also time dedicated to an art project, with each team working together to build a basketball-themed sculpture out of plastic wrap. After long stints of music and art, the afternoon stations run for five minutes each, right up until about 3 p.m., when the kids are given ice cream provided by Price’s (the local creamery is a long-time supporter of the camp) and let out for the day.

As Bobby Byrd, publisher of El Paso-based Cinco Puntos Press, which supports Basketball in the Barrio, says in the movie about the camp, “calling it basketball is a scam; it’s really about culture.”

Byrd is one of many locally connected folks who stop by the camp to lend a hand. The modesty of Rus, Steve and all the volunteers is such that there’s no program or list of bios or anything like that, but people I come in contact with in my time at Basketball in the Barrio include former Texas-Arlington player Chris DeSimone, former UTEP star Johnny “Smooth” Melvin and Los Angeles D-Fenders coach Casey Owens, all of whom share the experience with their own children, who all help coach, too. There are also volunteers from the organizations PeacePlayers International and Full Court Peace. Over the years, many other notable guests have come through to donate their time to the camp, from favorite son Nolan Richardson (before playing at UTEP and embarking on a Hall of Fame coaching career at Arkansas, Richardson grew up as one of the few black kids in this Mexican-dominated neighborhood) to former UTEP center and long-time NBA player Greg Foster.

These are just the basketball-themed names I could fact check; other volunteers come from all walks of life.

What draws such a diverse and relatively accomplished list of people to this money-losing camp at the very edge of the country? Maybe it’s this unique location, for starters. The sprawling city of Juarez is visible from just about everywhere in El Paso. Mexicans spill into El Paso every day to shop. Many return home, while many others stay. The combination of these two large cities—known as the “Borderplex” or “Borderland”—is one of the largest binational border regions in the world. It’s a place where ignoring local culture—of miners, Mexican revolutionaries, mountain men and more—is ignoring reality.

It’s also a place where basketball has a storied history, from Galarza’s Bowie High School to UTEP, the large university in the heart of the city. Formerly known as Texas Western, UTEP is where Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins won 719 games, including the historic 1966 National Championship. These days, the Miners play in the Don Haskins Center, which is located on Glory Road. The program, now coached by former Haskins assistant and NBA head coach Tim Floyd, is still the biggest sports team in town.

So maybe the volunteers all come for the El Paso experience, or to feel the hoop history here. But most of all, it’s for the children of Segundo Barrio, local kids who can’t afford to attend the camp at UTEP.

Summarizes Bradburd, whose been pushing this point since he started Basketball in the Barrio: “At the bottom of all this is that NCAA coaches make hundreds of thousands off of rich children. Poor kids make up a lot of the players on NCAA rosters, but about one percent of college camp attendees. It’s an obscenity, in my view, and one that never gets talked about.”
And why do the kids come? Everyone that I ask gives the same answer. “It’s fun!”

Basketball in the Barrio does not have a website, but you can learn more about it in the eponymous, award-winning documentary at www.athletesunitedforpeace.org/p-barrio.html. Bradburd is not looking for more campers, but even capping attendance at 100 makes for an expensive endeavor. If you’re interested in helping to sponsor Basketball in the Barrio in the future, contact him at coachrus@hotmail.com.

Photos by Michael James

The post Welcome To The Neighborhood appeared first on SLAM.

After scores of texts and an inability to schedule a face-to-face interview in New York, current Houston resident Rafer Alston and I are talking on the phone. And, as ever, the born leader out of South Jamaica, Queens who got his first dose of national fame after appearing on the cover of SLAM in 1997, has a lot to say.

Between the SLAM cover, which proclaimed the incoming Fresno State junior “the best point guard in the world (you’ve never heard of),” the AND 1 Mixtapes and Tours and the NBA career that lasted from 1999-2010, Alston’s story was oft-told. But with the demise of streetball as a crowd- and television audience-drawing branch of the sport, and Alston’s somewhat-rushed disappearance from the League, it’s a story that has already been forgotten by many. And, given the fast-paced media world of today and the millions of new young fans basketball gains each year, Rafer’s is a story many may not know at all.

So, with the help of the 37-year-old Alston and a couple of the folks he impressed along the way, we’ll re-tell it.

“The handles and the passing that I became known for, that developed from playing a lot. And also watching a lot,” he says. “Bouncing around the city, going to different playgrounds, different parks and noticing all the stuff that gets fans out of their seats. I watched local guys that made it big like Pearl Washington, Rod Strickland, Mark Jackson and Kenny Anderson. Plus local guys that didn’t make it out, like ‘Master Rob’ [Robert Hockett] and ‘Dancing Doogie’ [Gerald Thomas]. Doogie was tough. There were so many kids who were so gifted that never made it to college or the NBA.”

Continues Alston, “I played most of my pick-up games in South Jamaica, but I played in tournaments all over the city. I was known in every borough by the time I was 11 or 12 years old.”

Long-time Queens (NY) Cardozo coach Ron Naclerio, who was also teaching and coaching at local middle school IS8 when he met the 10-year-old budding baller, remembers what he was like. “Rafer came to me and said I should watch out for him when he got to IS8 in 6th grade,” Naclerio says. “And sure enough, he showed up and we’d work out every morning for all three of his years there. He was a really good young player and a knowledgable kid.”

Between Alston’s willingness to go anywhere for a run, and Naclerio having a team that played in the EBC at Rucker Park in Harlem, a logical next step for young Rafer appeared. “He was 12, but they let him play after I told them he and Stephon Marbury were the two best young guards in the city,” remembers Naclerio. “His nickname at first was ‘Shorty,’ because he was small. By the time he was 14 he was playing 20 minutes a game there, and that’s when all the ‘Skip to my Lou’ stuff started.”

Ah, yes. The “Skip to my Lou stuff.” The nickname (often shortened to just “Skip”), bequeathed on him by one of Rucker’s ubiquitous announcers after the flashy ballhandler had skipped his way up the court while dribbling, started to travel throughout the five boroughs.

“He picked the ballhandling stuff up so easily,” says Naclerio. “When I was working him out, I kept coming up with new moves and dribbles for him to try. He loved all that and took it 100 levels beyond. He found all that stuff intriguing, and some of it just came natural, but he also practiced it a lot.”

It was a recipe for crowd-pleasing, and by 17 years old, Skip was considered a must-watch sensation. As Bronx product and 16-year NBAer Rod Strickland explained to SLAM back in the day, “One of my partners kept telling me about him, so I went over to Rucker to see him play. And right away I knew he was something special. You know how they play over on 155th, a little clownish at times with all the tricks? But Skip just had incredible instincts. His passing ability, his dribbling ability, and then, he was really playing defense, too.”

Says Alston today, “Playing at Rucker Park was very special. I always felt comfortable on that court, and the crowd always made me feel good.”

While he’d become a sensation in the unsanctioned hoops world, a messy home life and erratic school performance kept his name under the radar in the more organized sector. But poor grades and limited appearances for the Cardozo varsity did not mean Rafer didn’t care about making it to college or beyond. “Not at all,” he professes. “I didn’t do great in school at all, but I did enough to get into JuCo and then DI because I wanted to help my family. I understood that there was life outside of the inner-city. A lot of us that grew up playing basketball in the Chicagos, Detroits, New Yorks…we had it rough. Basketball and school were a way for us to get out of that.

“The era before me, sometimes becoming famous and making money in the streets was enough for guys,” Alston continues. “I mean, they could make more on the streets than they could in the NBA. Some did have shots at the pros but just didn’t develop the skills they needed. Some didn’t even try. But becoming famous on the city playgrounds was never enough for me; I always dreamed of making the NBA. Even if I played what they used to call ‘the city game,’ I was a student of the game, and I always knew how to run a team. A lot of stuff that playground guys struggled with when they got to a college or pro team, I didn’t have those problems. Coaches were always surprised by how well I knew the game.”

Says Naclerio, “There was just something about the kid. For one thing, even though his academic transcript wouldn’t indicate it, Rafer is very smart. He did what he had to do to play in college, and I always wanted to help him as much as I could.”

What Alston “had to do” was earn a GED, stay out of serious legal trouble, move to California and spend one year at Ventura College and two at Fresno City College, where he redshirted one year and then averaged 17.3 points and 8.6 assists per game while also earning his Junior College degree the next. The three-year odyssey in Cali was enough to earn Alston a DI scholarship from Jerry Tarkanian and Fresno State…and enough for SLAM’s primarily New York-bred staff to run by far its craziest cover up until that point (and maybe til today, even with Chamique Holdsclaw and a burning ball in our more recent past).

Ronnie Zeidel, then SLAM’s Advertising and Promotions Director and now the CMO at Prolater, was a Cardozo grad who saw an opportunity for SLAM to make a statement. “I wanted Rafer on the cover and I remember talking about it with Tony [then-Ed. Gervino, who is now running the show at Billboard] who was beyond open minded and gave it real thought,” remembers Zeidel. “We brought it to publisher Dennis Page, but we thought he wouldn’t be into it because he was always very careful with who we had on the cover from a sales perspective. But Dennis was hip to Skip and we all went and saw him at Rucker and followed him closely through JuCo, and eventually we were all into the cover idea. I remember that Naclerio freaked out when he saw it, and Skip was always so appreciative of the cover.”

“I just know the timing was perfect and that I was really entering the spotlight,” says Alston of the cover. “I was already a playground legend, and I was going to play for a legendary coach in Jerry Tarkanian who was really just getting back into coaching with Fresno State. And then the SLAM cover came along. I was asked to sign that cover a lot, and well into my NBA career, like, usually on the road at hotels. And I still have it at my mother’s house. Whenever I look at it I laugh because of how young I was, and how strong—I was really working out that summer [laughs].”

On a Fresno State team with too much talent and not enough basketballs to go around, Alston showed that his handle and passing ability were high-major caliber, but his jumpshot and ability to get along with others (even if it was the others’ fault) were considered question marks. Technically Rafer had a year of eligibility left, but it wasn’t clear that Fresno would let him use it, and the roster was a mess, so at the 11th hour, he declared for the ’98 Draft. “You had to put your name in the Draft by mail, and the letter had to be mailed by midnight on a certain date,” explains Naclerio. “I remember we finally decided he was going in the Draft on the last day, and me mailing the letter from the big post office on 34th Street (in Manhattan) at 11:51 pm.”

Still a bit of an unknown to the basketball establishment, Alston slipped into the second round, where the Bucks selected him 39th overall. He actually spent the ’98-99 season in the CBA, and then the better part of ’99-02 buried on the Bucks bench. Not exactly a hero’s welcome to the League for a player who was simultaneously becoming a streetball celebrity thanks to the ’99 release of the AND 1 Mixtape, Vol. I, which was effectively a loop of sick moves concocted by a young Skip.

“Not being in the rotation in Milwaukee was discouraging, but I was around players like Sam Cassell, Haywoode Workman, Vinnie Del Negro and coach George Karl. I really learned about the game, and how to be a professional. People probably stereotyped me as a ‘playground player,’ but I always tried to show I could run a team,” Alston says. “And then, the rolling out of those tapes kind of caught me by surprise, but the Tour that came about after was amazing. We were giving performances all over the country that people had never seen. We were rock stars, doing something that had never been done before.

“The fact that fans in the NBA knew me more as ‘Skip to my Lou’ was fun. Only naïve people look down on players who played on the playground. Coaches and GMs, they need that style of play on their team. Where did Isiah Thomas learn to play? The tough streets of Chicago. They can say this, that and the third about playground basketball, but I don’t think fans would even watch as much if not for that style of play.”

Says Naclerio, “What’s great about Rafer is that most guys become ‘legends’ at the end of their careers. Rafer was a legend at 17…and then he made the NBA. It’s like, Superman was Skip to my Lou, who could do anything on the playgrounds. Clark Kent was the Rafer Alston who got the job done in the NBA.”

Sure enough, once Alston got a job, he got it done. A successful 10-day contract with the Raptors in ’03 begat an extension til the end of that season, and then, in ’03-04, a full-season stint with Stan Van Gundy and the Miami Heat. For the first time, the 6-2, 171-pound Alston played 82 games in a season, and he showed he could handle the load, averaging 31.5 minutes, 10.2 points, 4.5 assists and 1.4 steals a game.

The numbers only grew from there, as the Raptors were impressed enough to bring him back to Canada, to the tune of a long-term contract and a starting point guard position. A 14.2/6.4/1.5-per season in TO was followed by another trade, this time to Houston and another Van Gundy.

“We traded for Rafer to be our starting point guard,” remembers current ESPN NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy. “He had just had a good year in Toronto and my brother Stan had spoken highly of him after their time in Miami. You’re always looking for guys who love the game and have a high basketball IQ, and Rafer had those. We were building around [Tracy] McGrady and Yao [Ming] and we needed a point guard to set the tone on offense and defense. He played with a speed and quickness that we needed.”

Continues the always entertaining JVG, “I wasn’t really into that—What do you call it, the AND 1 Mixtape Tour?—until Mark Jackson’s brother [Escalade, RIP—Ed.] told me about it. Then I became a fan of his and that guy Grayson, ‘The Professor.’ I even went to one of their practices in Houston. But that was after Rafer. So I knew he’d played there, but I never saw him. I just knew I was happy with the job he did for us. And look, after I got fired, he started for Rick Adelman on a team that won 22 games in a row.”

Alston’s successful run in Houston ended with a trade-deadline deal to Orlando in ’09, where he provided essential depth to the Magic. Rafer took over the starting PG spot from injured All-Star Jameer Nelson and teamed up with Dwight Howard and coach Stan Van Gundy to lead the Magic to their second-ever Finals appearance. “That was an electric run we had in Orlando,” Alston says. “Me and Coach Van Gundy were a great match. I was grateful I got to make it to the NBA Finals.”

A couple days after those Finals, however, Alston was dealt to the New Jersey Nets, and by the spring of 2010 he was out of the NBA forever. “People want a storybook ending, but the right time is when the player thinks so,” Alston philosophizes. “That was the right time for me. Once you approach 33, 34 in this League, you’re looked at like you’re a dinosaur unless you’re a Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. And they’re the exception because they’re on the Spurs—with the perfect team and the perfect coach.”

There were stints in China and the D-League, but Rafer hasn’t been heard from in the States too much since he left the L. “Now I’m doing a lot of coaching,” he says. “I did some AAU in New York and I’m starting to develop a program in Houston. I bounce to China once in a while for clinics, exhibitions. Sometimes stuff with kids and fans, but sometimes to work with guys who actually play in the CBA.”

Says Jeff Van Gundy: “Rafer has a great passion and enthusiasm for the game. One or two times a year, that can lead to too much volatility, but for the most part it’s a great thing. My brother and I spoke about Rafer positively all the time. My brother even named his dog after him! Skip. I think he had a terrific career, and I think he’ll be back in the NBA as a coach in the next few years.”

Chuckling again about his unlikely appearance on our cover, Rafer says, “I may not have become a college All-American at Fresno State, but I played 11 years in the NBA, so I don’t feel like I let the SLAM cover down.”

Not at all, Skip. Not at all.

The post Never Skipped A Beat appeared first on SLAM.

I had joined the SLAM team with an encyclopedic knowledge of Mark Jackson’s life, Michael Jordan’s playing career and the ’90-97 Nets. I think I knew as much about New York City streetball as any Westchester-reared kid (who had just spent four years of college in Washington, DC, no less), but all that meant as far as Rafer “Skip to my Lou” Alston was a name. A rumor. At that point, I’d never seen him play in person. But my predecessors at SLAM, they knew all about this kid…his spotty high school career, his already legendary Rucker Park career. Best believe I studied up. By the time Scoop Jackson wrote the cover story to the first-ever STREETBALL issue in 2003, I’d seen Rafer play for the SLAM team at Rucker Park and I knew his story front to back. Learning it was like a rite of passage.

This spring, as we plotted out this very fun throwback issue, I just knew Rafer had to be part of it. And I knew, having done my SLAM homework over the years, that I was the one to write it.

While I haven’t spoken directly to the fresh-out-of college members of the SLAM staff about this, I’m pretty confident they’re going to follow a similar path, whether it be with Rafer or other subjects in this issue (did we really track down relatively reclusive former stars like Chamique Holdsclaw? Keith Van Horn?? DaJuan Wagner??? Yes, yes and yes.) We also got a great Darius Miles story despite his unwillingness to talk, and an absolute treasure of a Vince cover story by the one and only Russ Bengtson. These are names young SLAMmers know from growing up as fans of the game. But do they know the stories behind these players? They will now. And all of you will, too.

The only qualification for inclusion in our feature well this month was that the subject had to have appeared on a SLAM cover (except for the “New School” piece on Seventh Woods we blessed you with; no need for an “Old School” feature when the whole issue is filled with those). If y’all like how this Ish turned out, we’ll definitely bring it back next year; there are plenty more former cover subjects who are well worth catching up with.

The post SLAM 180 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

by Ben Osborne

Like most NBA fans, the majority of my first-round viewing was spent on the drama-filled series. Blazers-Rockets. Mavs-Spurs. Pacers-Hawks. You get the point. At 5 p.m. PST, on the last Monday in April, however, I found myself in a Portland hotel with no NBA TV. The only game on was the last of the Bobcats-Heat series. I actually like the (then-)Bobcats’ colors and uniforms, and the (now-)Hornets’ coaches and roster. And you should know how I feel about LeBron. There’d just been better things to watch, you know?

And then it hit me: if you like basketball played perfectly, there’s never anyone better to watch than LeBron. In about 20 minutes of real time, I saw him score in the post, score on a jumpshot, drop perfect dimes on such disparate players as Ray Allen, Chris Andersen and Norris Cole, and take a charge, punctuated by a happy point at charge-master Shane Battier on the Miami bench. The Bobcats were short-handed without Al Jefferson, and there was no doubt the Heat were taking the series, but it was clear they wanted to at least get one win—a singular Playoff victory in the Bobcat Era. But King James was having none of it. That game, and seemingly every game he plays in, was under his control. And that dictated a victory for the Heat. It was a lot like the 250-plus other Miami victories LeBron has authored since he arrived in South Beach to much pomp and circumstance (not to mention nation-wide hate) back in 2010. Believe it or not, that contract is about to be done. Will James stay in Miami? The bet here is yes, but no matter what, a chapter is winding down and we wanted to re-live it before it ended. Hence this month’s cover and photo-driven look back. Something tells me our readers are singing a different song about Bron than they were four years ago.

P.S. As ever, I’m leaving the heavy political discussion to Dave Zirin, but I can’t ignore Donald Sterling completely. My main emotions are sadness and guilt. Sad because of the hurt he caused people; guilt because like every other writer, executive, player and coach who makes their living off the NBA, I’d heard the stories about this monster, and yet hadn’t done anything substantial about it. We all should have done more to get rid of him a long time ago.

The post SLAM 179 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

by Ben Osborne 

Not only did I want my 2013-14 SLAM season preview to be accurate—I wanted it to be fast. I set a goal of spending no more than 30 seconds on any team in guessing their record. I had one of our Editorial Assistants, Leo Sepkowitz, double check my W-L numbers so that they added up properly, but basically, it was simple: think about each team’s strengths and weaknesses and put a number down. No advanced stats. No number overloads. Those things absolutely have a place in the game and it’s coverage, but I felt like they had become dominant…I wanted to just go from the gut and see what would happen. 

How’d it go? In general I’m giving myself a little pat on the back, but there were certainly some bricks, too. How do my results compare to some of the “smarter” previews out there? I don’t know, ’cause I didn’t read them :).

(My preseason predictions are in italics, with what actually took place beneath them.)

EASTERN CONFERENCE

1. Pacers, 58-24. It seems like people forget how close the Pacers were to dethroning the Heat last year. And now they added Luis Scola, get Danny Granger back, and should see Lance Stephenson and stud Paul George get even better. My only question with Indy is at point guard, where neither George Hill nor CJ Watson do much for me.

>>What happened? Pacers went 56-26. They were almost too good before the All-Star Break and then a malaise settled in during March. Great season, though, and great prediction by me.

2. Heat, 56-26. I really hope this is not interpreted as a slight of LeBron. He is easily the game’s best player, and I say he’s fully on track to be in the best-ever convos. But how much does DWade have left? Will Miami’s bench do anything? We’ve seen what happens when LeBron has to do it all on his own: His team loses in the Conference Finals.

>>What happened? The Heat went 54-28. Wade missed a ton of games and motivation was occasionally a question. LeBron is still best player on earth and no one will be surprised if they win it all, but Miami showed pretty much the exact flaws I expected, and the Heat are certainly beatable.

3. Bulls, 54-28. There should be zero questions about this team’s motivation (high) or coaching (the best), and by the time you read this, any D Rose doubts will probably have been assuaged. A title by the Bulls seems only slightly less likely than the preceding two teams; Indy and Miami just happen to be a smidge better.

>>What happened? Derrick Rose went down, Luol Deng got dumped and the Bulls STILL won 48 games. I knew Thibs was incredible; now I know Joakim Noah is, too. In fact, I respect each of them even more because I know their personalities are not a natural fit and that they have worked hard to make each other better. Much respect.

4. Knicks, 52-30. Something tells me this might be the most-beefed-with prediction. Yes, the griminess of the Knicks’ front office may portend a return to lower-division status as soon as next season, but this season’s games will be won and lost on the court. And, frankly, I like the players the Knicks will be trotting out there. Melo is still in his prime, and players two-eight all strike me as above average. I think this team will score, be fun to watch and be a very tough out in the Playoffs.

>>What happened? Absolute trainwreck of a prediction by me and trainwreck of a season by the Knicks, who finished 37-45. The team where my lack of statistical analysis hurt me the most; Andrea Bargnani was an awful fit for this team, and I missed that fact.

5. Nets, 43-39. Another pick that may go against conventional wisdom. If BK gets off to a 20-6 start and smells the chance to win a title, I will sing a whole different tune. But if they take time to gel and are clearly not in the upper echelon of the League, what will KG and Paul Pierce be playing for, exactly? And who’s the leader of this team? The old Celtics? The young coach? The occasionally passive-aggressive Deron Williams? The six-time All-Star Joe Johnson? That’s a lot of questions…

>>What happened? Pretty much nailed this one, as the Nets finished 44-38. Got a lot of buzz for playing well in March, but the one-game tank to end season was pretty shameful and I still don’t think they get out of first round. At least they’re built for the future.

6. Hawks, 42-40. Sadly for Lang Whitaker, the OG of SLAM pre-season previews, “#ATLshawty” has come to mean “boring franchise” in NBA speak. Signing Paul Millsap and re-signing Jeff Teague keep the Hawks firmly in the Playoff mix, but it’s hard to see them doing much once they get there.

>>What happened? A late-season swoon knocked the Hawks record down to 38-44, but otherwise my prediction was spot on. They were solid, boring and made the Playoffs, and they won’t do much now that they got there. Lang’s #Barves look good though.

 7. Pistons, 42-40. Accuse me of having no respect for proper shot selection if you must, but I will be watching a LOT more of the Pistons’ 42-40 campaign than I will be of the Hawks’. Look, I like watching Brandon Jennings and Josh Smith play. And if that’s a guilty pleasure with little upside beyond entertainment value, well, the Andre Drummond-Greg Monroe duo is one that has real-life upside. I think in 12 months we’ll be projecting these guys to finish a lot higher.

>>What happened? Yuck. 29-53, and the coach and GM lost their jobs. Josh Smith is not fun at all anymore. Terrible coaching, terrible shooting, and a frontcourt that needs a better backcourt to thrive. I still think they can be good next season but they need a lobotomy of sorts. 

8. Cavaliers, 40-42. Yes, the city seems cursed and the last couple of seasons have been dreadful, but this is a franchise back on the right track. New coach Mike Brown should straighten out some of the defensive issues while Kyrie Irving and the young talent around him will take care of the O. A Playoff berth would be a nice accomplishment for this group.

>>What happened? The Cavs went 33-49. Kyrie misses too many games and there are some serious personality conflicts out there. A better No. 1 pick might have helped, too. 

9. Bucks, 37-45. Oh, Milwaukee. The BJ Era came and went without a whole lot happening, and the Monta Era won’t even be remembered. Now OJ Mayo is in town to help deliver more mediocrity. Larry Sanders is fun to watch but this is just a team in purgatory. Meanwhile, Tobias Harris—oh, nevermind.

>>What happened? I way underestimated how bad this team would be. 15-67, yikes! Alphabet City is a good time, though.

10. Magic, 36-46. While I hope for their sake that Bucks’ fans don’t read this entry, supporters in O-Town are only too happy to study up on Tobias. The versatile forward from Long Island teams up with another versatile forward from Long Island (technically speaking), Maurice Harkless, to give the Magic one of the more intriguing young starting lineups in the L. Our Advertising Director, Dave Schnur, doubles as the president of the Tobias Fan Club and even thinks this will be a Playoff team.

>>What happened? Shows what I get for listening to Dave Schnur. This team went 23-59 and is not ready at all. 

11. Wizards, 34-48. I may be John Wall’s biggest supporter in the media. I love his speed and skill set, and I think 80 games and sick across-the-board numbers are in the offing this year. So he’s not the problem. It’s the rest of the roster that does little to inspire, hence, the 34 wins. How long does Ernie Grunfeld get to turn this thing around?

>>What happened? Oh, how people laughed when I said John Wall was better than Kyrie Irving. He actually played all 82 games, and at an elite level. Teamed with some solid role players and Randy Wittman at least staying out of the way, the Wiz won 44 games and were gifted the fifth seed by the Nets. 

12. Raptors, 33-49. I actually like Andrea Bargnani for the Knicks, but I’m sure the Raptors and their devoted fans are happy not to have the specter of “failed No. 1 pick” around any longer. A new foreign big man, Jonas Valanciunas, should ultimately be better than Bargnani was and, with promising GM Masai Ujiri on board, will get the Raps back in the Playoff picture before long.

>>What happened? Another team where I misunderstood the effect of Bargnani; in the Raptors’ case, losing him was great for the team. Bouncing Rudy Gay didn’t hurt either, as the Raps went 42-22 after trading him (h/t John Schuhmann) and finished with 48 wins overall. Kyle Lowry is tough as hell and Ujiri is looking like the best young GM in the game. 

13. Bobcats, 28-54. Defensive snobs can hate on Al Jefferson all they want. For an outside-in team like the Cats have been, getting one of the game’s best offensive low-post weapons was a no brainer. Kemba Walker, who went from most-known college player to little-known NBA player, is quietly becoming a top-shelf point guard, and MKG and Cody Zeller give Charlotte some nice young forwards. I wouldn’t be shocked if MJ cajoled 30 Ws out of this team.

>>What happened? I was on the money about Big Al’s effect and Kemba’s continued growth, but I underestimated what a difference new coach Steve Clifford would make. 43 wins and a 7th seed for the soon-to-be-Hornets. Well done, MJ.

14. Celtics, 27-55. No one knows if Brad Stevens will turn out to be a great NBA coach, but I absolutely loved the hire. This rebuilding team wasn’t going to the Playoffs if Red Auerbach was coaching them, so why not let the former Butler wunderkind see how his approach translates in the League? Jeff Green will provide steady numbers, Rajon will be Rajon once he’s healthy, and the rest of the squad will be on a year-long audition.

>>What happened? Celts went 25-57 and season went pretty much exactly as I projected.

15. 76ers, 16-66. As a firm believer that Nerlens Noel should have been the first pick in the Draft, I have no choice but to give the Sixers some props for their long-term outlook. This season, however, will be for Fantasy NBA junkies only. Someone has to get stats, right? Fantasy and the Noel watch aside, the biggest thing to look for in Philly is how Michael Carter-Williams plays. If he proves to be a responsible enough ballhandler, the Sixers have a really nice weapon in their backcourt. If not, this team may be headed for less than 20 wins in 2014-15 as well.

>>What happened? Playing decent for the first two weeks of the season got the Sixers three more wins than I projected and cost them a few ping-pong balls, but in general, they tanked their asses off.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

1. Clippers, 58-24. Totally bored by last season’s overhyped Clipper team that got stomped by the tougher Grizzlies in the first round of the Playoffs, I was slow to get on their ’13-14 bandwagon. But as Russell Westbrook got hurt again and I looked closer at the off-season moves they made, the more I realized that L.A.’s second team has never had a better chance to finish first. You know about Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, and you know that new coach Doc Rivers won’t stand for any bullshit. That’s 50 wins right there. The extra eight dubs come from one of the L’s deepest rosters and a sense of urgency this franchise has rarely taken into a season.

>>What happened? The Clips went 57-25, were fun to watch, and have absolutely matured into title contenders. Nice pick by me.

2. Thunder, 56-26. If James Harden was still here (no, I’m not quite over that terrible trade) and Russell Westbrook was 100 percent, this team would have an outside shot at 70 wins. Instead, it has a roster as thin as its leader, the remarkable Kevin Durant. KD, Serge Ibaka and a rejuvenated Westbrook will still give the OKC faithful a good regular season and a deep Playoff run, but I feel like there will always be a sense of what might have been for this group.

>>What happened? The on-and-off health of Russell Westbrook meant the great Kevin Durant had to shoulder an even bigger load. And he did it, likely locking up his first MVP award. Fifty-nine wins in this conference is nothing to sneeze at.

3. Warriors, 55-27. These are heady times for the long-suffering fans in Oakland, who finally have a team worthy of all their sellouts. I think a top-six of Andre Iguodala, David Lee, Andrew Bogut, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes is the best  in the NBA, and if you know me at all, you know how I feel about their head coach. The problem is, that same top six is also the most injury-prone in the League. *Knocks on wood.*

>>What happened? Only psycho Warriors fans could view the 51 wins the team finished with a disappointment. My man Mark Jax has changed the culture in Oakland, and if the Clips aren’t careful, Golden State could knock them off in a tense first-round series.

4. Spurs, 51-31. I’m actually quite confident that San Antonio will be right in the mix of title contenders come Playoff time, getting through at least one round and threatening to go much further. What I don’t have any sense of is how they’ll approach the regular season. Sometimes Pop has gone all-out in the first 82, while other years he’s been all about resting his aging stars for the postseason. Assuming he goes with the latter, guessing a win total is no easy feat. The one guy who could make them a top team regardless of how many minutes Tim Duncan plays is Kawhi Leonard, who could be a future All-Star as easy as a future seventh-man.

>>What happened? Wow. Not that I’m shocked this team is still a contender, but I didn’t foresee 62 wins out of this group. Much respect, Pop.

5. Rockets, 49-33. I’m entirely over the off-court sagas of Dwight Howard and my hunch is that his best days on the floor are behind him, but I also think the Rockets were wise to spend their available free-agent kitty on him. What other route did they have out of the middle of the pack? Still, the Lin-Beverley situation at point guard is pretty dicey and question marks abound at forward, so it says here that 47-51 wins is their fate.

>>What happened? I pegged 51 wins as the Rockets high-water mark, and they blew past that by three. Not enough to eat my words about the team’s over-hyped General Manager, but if they reach the WC Finals I may have some apologizing to do.

6. Grizzlies, 48-34. The statheads got their wish when Rudy Gay was jettisoned to Canada last season, and I have a hunch that getting rid of Lionel Hollins was a dream fulfilled for them as well. Where will all this get the Grizz? The sublime abilities of Marc Gasol notwithstanding, not as far as last year. Incidentally, I was flabbergasted that anyone who gets paid to cover this industry would deem Memphis the “best franchise”  in North America.

>>What happened? Great play down the stretch got the Grizz to 50 wins, with my prediction generally proving spot on.

7. Nuggets, 45-37. From trendy status as a darkhorse title contender last spring to saying goodbye to their GM, head coach and highest-profile player, it’s not just the altitude that is making Denver fans dizzy. Confusion aside, there are still some really nice pieces here (Ty Lawson for All-Star, anyone?), and all indications are that Brian Shaw will be a solid coach.

>>What happened? I still like the pieces and coach Shaw, but this team never really clicked. Thirty-six wins and no real sniff of the Playoffs. Bad pick by me, pretty bad season by the Nuggs.

8. Lakers, 43-39. Just ’cause. Mike D’Antoni inspires zero confidence in this writer, and the roster is equal parts thin and bizarre, but is a team with accomplished warhorses Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash finishing under .500 and missing the Playoffs?

>>What happened? Age, injuries and my least favorite coach in the L added up to 27 wins and a real crisis of confidence for the Laker faithful. MASSIVE offseason coming for L.A.

9. Mavericks, 41-41. I’ve long felt Mark Cuban was good for the game because of how much he cared about his players and about keeping an authoritarian League office on its toes. But why don’t free agents want to sign there? The Mavs’ 2011 title remains on LeBron as much as anyone, and since that time, Dallas has seen talented players leave and more talented ones choose not to go there. Dirk deserves a better swan song than this.

>>What happened? Monta Ellis absolutely shattered my expectations this season, smartly teaming with the still-great Nowitzki to push the Mavs to 49 wins and the eighth-seed in the Playoffs. Kudos to coach Rick Carlisle and the crafty vets that populate his roster.

10. Timberwolves, 38-44. I’ll watch this team even more than I watch the Pistons, just because of Ricky Rubio. Literally, he plays the way I wish I could. But will there be one-handed, between-the-leg alley-oops delivered in the Playoffs? Not unless Kevin Martin reaches a level he has stubbornly been unable to so far in his career.

>>What happened? Pretty much nailed this prediction, as the Wolves put together a perfectly mediocre 40-42 season. I’m a little stumped by all the props Rick Adelman is getting on the way out of Minny; he literally accomplished nothing there!

11. Trail Blazers, 36-46. Spend a week in Blazer-mad PDX and you start thinking this team could go places. Get back to New York and reality sets in. Their coach has never accomplished much and we don’t even know if their “star,” LaMarcus Aldridge, wants to be there.

>>What happened? LaMarcus Aldridge quickly showed he did want to be there, and the mad bombers on the Portland perimeter hit threes all season long. The result was 54 wins that neither I nor anyone outside of PDX (that I know of) expected.

12. Jazz, 31-51. I will never understand Utah holding on to Jefferson and Millsap at the trade deadline, only to let them walk for nothing in free agency. Were the Jazz ever run well, or did they just get lucky to have Karl Malone and John Stockton all those years? Trey Burke will be nice, though.

>>What happened? Gordon Hayward is super-legit but otherwise this team, which finished 25-57, was about as Jazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzy as I expected. 

13. Pelicans, 31-51. The “Thin Towers” seemed like a good idea to me. Oh, well. Anthony Davis will still be an All-Star before long, and Jrue Holiday was one already (before Steph Curry somehow), but this team is going nowhere of consequence in 2014. At least they get to live in New Orleans. See you cats for ASW!

>>What happened? The Pels won 34 games. Weather kept me from All-Star Weekend. Next.

14. Kings, 29-53. Shoutout to whatever Twitter genius first called these guys the “NBA’s first AAU team,” or something to that effect. An entirely apt description for a team with this many gunners. Give Chris Mullin a couple years, though, and he and Boogie can turn this thing around.

>>What happened? On second thought, “Kings” even sounds like an AAU name. This squad won 28 games that unfolded just as I predicted.

15. Suns, 21-61. Remember when this franchise mattered? Yikes! It took 30 entries before I had to do this, but I literally just Googled ”Suns head coach.” Horny?! Fans that pay good money to see the likes of Gerald Green and the Morris twins play huge minutes sure won’t be.

>>What happened? Whoops! This team actually did arouse fans of fun basketball. They won 48 games and made me look dumb. No disrespect, guys!

My NBA title prediction is on page two…

The post 2013-14 NBA REview appeared first on SLAM.

Originally published in SLAM 46

by Ben Osborne / portrait by Benoit Peverelli

The search for Lloyd Daniels, a product of New York City’s uniquely unforgiving concrete, has led, unpredictably, to a land of lush greens. Allenwood, NJ, may be only miles from New York City, but it feels like a million. Just off the Garden State Parkway, only miles from the beach, open land is plentiful. Cows and horses roam freely, produce stands sell fruit so sweet it should be served as dessert. Rising from the fields is a big, white church. The Shore Christian Church is not old—there aren’t enough long time residents there to be an “old” church right here—but it’s still got a traditional feel to it, with a shiny spire reaching towards the heavens. 

Next to the church is an even newer building; a flat, white, year-old structure that houses a gorgeous gym, and, for the fifth and final day this summer, the Lloyd Daniels Basketball Camp. To some, the name of this camp would elicit a shrug. From others, however, a genuine look of shock. For as far as many basketball fans know, a Lloyd Daniels Basketball Camp—at a church, no less—is the ultimate oxymoron.

Walk inside, and on one level, things start to come together. This is definitely a full-fledged basketball camp, with 25 fresh-faced youngsters pounding balls and running through drills. At the center of the court, a fit, light-skinned fellow with an asymmetrical bald dome is working the kids pretty hard. It’s obvious this guy knows what he’s doing. And to a knowing eye, it’s obvious the guy is the Lloyd Daniels, a 32-year-old basketball lifer who was once considered the best high school player in the entire country, who was supposed to be the next Magic Johnson or first Lamar Odom, whose mishaps at UNLV helped Jerry Tarkanian lose his job, whose life was ravaged by periods of drug addiction sandwiched around a near-fatal gun wound to the chest, who rose from the living dead and actually played 212 games (including playoffs) in the NBA, some as a starter for the San Antonio Spurs, who—

“If you’re from SLAM, why are you here?!” Inquisitive minds—and are any minds more inquisitive than those inside 12-year-olds?—want to know. Telling them it was to speak with, and photograph, the Lloyd that is running their camp doesn’t shut ’em up. “Yeah? Why do you want to talk to Lloyd?”

Well, the growing group of nosy lads is told, before he made the NBA, Lloyd was perhaps the best high school player in the country. That sends the kids right to the source.

“Llloooyyyyyyyyddd, is it true?” they whine doubtfully at a man they obviously like, but think of only as a really good basketball instructor. “These guys from SLAM say you were one of the best players in the country.”

Lloyd replies firmly: “Nah, that ain’t true.” But when he meets the eyes of those who know it is, he relents. “Okay, it is true. But who cares?

“Get back to your drills.”

Lloyd Daniels doesn’t need accolades or attention based on what he did, or could have done. At this point in his life, even with a still-healthy overseas career and an outside shot at making the Pacers this upcoming season, “making” it as a player isn’t all that important to him. If Daniels wants any props at all, he’ll take them for what he’s doing at this camp. “If I never make the NBA again, this is a big thrill for me, knowing that I got a program with kids that’s about to shoot off,” he says while the kids are eating lunch. “I did one week of camp this year, next year, it’ll be three, and I’m gonna start an AAU program with these kids, too. And look at this lovely facility, the Shore Christian Academy. A great facility, a great church, great people. People who don’t give a damn if Lloyd Daniels never plays in the NBA again. My wife, my three kids, and the members of this church all love me and that’s all that matters. This is not phony, this is real life.”

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”—Step One of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step Recovery Program

The early life of Lloyd “Swee’pea” Daniels was all about hustling, a tale of sex, drugs and violence. A 6-7 point forward with a cherubic face and quick smile (he got the nickname Swee’pea from the baby on Popeye) Daniels combined never-before-seen instincts on the court with an equally unlikely mixture of tragedy and foolishness off it. His life was so dangerous, so sordid and so damn intriguing that it spurred a book, Swee’pea and Other Playground Legends by Newsday writer John Valenti and Cardozo HS (Queens) coach Ron Naclerio. The book chronicles the occasional ups and many downs of Lloyd’s life through ’90, and concludes that after years of second chances, he’s not going to amount to much of anything.

Some pro athletes have walked—and still walk—that fine line; can still get high and chill with their boys, and end up with a life that should be called “Big Pimpin’, the pro athlete remix.” But Lloyd didn’t survive to  live that song. No, his life is much more defined by “Keep it Simple,” an inspirational tome of sayings, referenced often by individuals in 12-step recovery programs (for drug and alcohol addiction). As the 12-step model of recovery encourages, Daniels has turned to a higher power to help keep himself away from the substances that “should have” ended his life. “I’m a guy that should have been dead,” he says. “I did drugs, alcohol, was shot three times, and I’m still livin’ because I finally realized that my way of life was not working. ‘Keep it Simple’ is like the Bible. AA is like the Bible. Recovery goes hand in hand with religion, with turning your life over to God.”

Lloyd’s current life has him smiling today (from all accounts, actually, Lloyd is always smiling). And he’s not the only one. Not only are the kids scrimmaging on the court mixing hard work with huge smiles, but the parents strolling into watch their sons learn from a master—mostly white, upper-class parents who Lloyd himself says “would have been scared of him” years before—are blissfully unaware of who Lloyd Daniels was. “I know a little bit about Lloyd, but I don’t think anyone could guess the problems he had,” says Terry Mahoney, a father watching from the bleachers. “I just know that he’s been working these kids really hard, and they’ve loved it. He has the perfect combination for a coach; he’s a good person, a good motivator, and he has a very good knowledge of the game.”

“I don’t think these kids really care what Lloyd’s background is,” says Doug Kamm, another proud parent. “All they see is a guy who loves working with them, and these kids respect that.”

Due to a distrust of a media that has written many “Lloyd Daniels is a failure” stories, Lloyd has been slow to allow interviews for the past few years, as as such, the good word about what he’s up to now has been slow to spread. Now people can start to learn. Reached on his cell phone, the last four digits of which spell T-A-R-K (classic), Tarkanian is overjoyed to hear about his former UNLV recruit and player in San Antonio [where Tark coached for the first 20 games of the ’92-93 season]. “That’s wonderful,” the Shark exclaims. “Lloyd was always such a sweet guy, and so good with people, ‘Please just sit and talk to the guy and you’ll see he’s good.'”

As camp finishes, the children create a half-moon around Lloyd and listen intently to his parting words. “Always play hard, guys,” Lloyd says as seriously as an always-smiling guy can. “This game is not just about talent, because a coach will always find room for a guy who plays hard, too. If you’re out there cheating yourself and cheating your teammates by not playing hard…that will not work. And remember that this game is not just about shooting and scoring, it’s about playing basketball.

“I love y’all.”

“Lloyd Daniels had an almost mystical feel for the game. I don’t know how else to put it,” says old-time New York-based recruiting guru Tom Konchalski, who saw young Lloyd play many times. “Here’s a kid who didn’t even watch the game all that much, but he learned how to play it. He had enough ability that he could have—that he should have—gone down as one oft he best players in New York City history, and the fact that he didn’t is a shame. Getting clean, having a family and making the NBA are accomplishments, but he should have been a 10-time All-Star. 

“The fact is that he aborted his manifest destiny.”

Daniels, who one-ups Konchalski’s religious overtones by saying that he’s actually been “blessed,” that his life has followed exactly the path it was destined for, has no regrets about a career that came up short of expectations. But that doesn’t make those outside expectations any less real.

He was born on September 4, ’67, to Lloyd and Judy Daniels, but any excitement he brought the family quickly dissipated. Lloyd’s mother contracted uterine cancer shortly after the birth, and she died when he was three. After the loss of his wife, Lloyd, Sr. turned to alcohol and disappeared from his son’s life. These losses left Lloyd to the care of two overwhelmed grandmothers, one in Hollis, Queens, the other in East New York, Brooklyn.

The personal losses also left him in the care of the game.

Suffering from then-undiagnosed dyslexia [a learning disability that affects the ability to read and speak properly], surrounded by drug and alcohol abusers in and around his family, and living in two of NYC’s more neglected communities, Lloyd sought his solace in basketball, sneaking out well after dark to play, dangers be damned. “I practiced by myself,” Lloyd tells Valenti in Swee’pea. “Shootin’, dribblin’, passin’ off the gate or the fence. Twelve, one o’clock in the mornin’, I’d be out playin’ ball down the block.”

The hard work (and the hand of God, according to Lloyd) made for an especially knowledgeable player. “The way I know the game, that’s a gift from God,” he says today. “God knew I was gonna come from a family where my mother was gonna die when I was three, knew my father would be an alcoholic, knew I was gonna have to run from house to house and so he blessed me; ‘Give this kid talent, and hopefully he’ll be able to make it out and one day not want to use drugs and alcohol,’ And I did.”

The blessings, the lack of working on anything other than finding a game and finding his next meal (Lloyd did eighth grade twice, making it to school only 94 out of the 364 possible days over those two years, according to Swee’pea), and the tough comp on New York’s playgrounds were the building blocks for a teen career that had talent scouts drooling. As a 17-year-old junior to be, even having played little actual prep ball because of academic troubles, an ankle injury, and multiple school transfers, Daniels became a national name in the summer of ’85, when he earned Most Outstanding Player honors at storied Five-Star Camp. “The first time I saw him, I nearly fell out of my seat,” Howie Garfinkel, the long-time director of Five-Star, told Valenti. “He was just incredible. I remember one time where he was on a three-on-two break and as he came down I thought,  ‘Is he going to shoot, going to pass?’ He went to shoot, drew the defender. No one was free. At least I didn’t see anyone. Then, all of a sudden—Bingo!—while in mid-air he hit someone for an easy layup. I was like, how did he find that man?”

Blown away by the maturity of his game—Lloyd was a decent athlete, for sure, but no one wanted him for his hops—Garfinkel told former Marquette coach Al Maguire: “He’s the best junior alive, dead, or yet unborn.”

The next winter, Daniels stayed out of trouble long enough to play an entire season for Andrew Jackson HS in Queens, and he killed, earning Parade All-American honors with per-game averages of 31.2 points, 12.3 rebounds and 10.3 assists. “Lloyd was as talented a high school player as I’ve ever seen,” Tarkanian says. “He could do everything, including finding guys open before they even knew they were. Even at his size, I thought he’d make a terrific point guard.”

As well as Lloyd could direct things on the court, he was a mess off it. He dropped out of school the day after his junior season ended, running with gangs and watching many of his former mentors give up on him. Tark, however, was still interested, eager to suit Lloyd up in the red and silver. The coach somehow got Daniels admitted to Mount San Antonio (CA) junior college, where he was faking his way towards graduating from the school and gaining NCAA eligibility. And you might have seen LLoyd throwing ‘oops to the likes of Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon were it not for a pitiful event that underscored Lloyd’s judgement problems. While on a weekend visit to Vegas in ’87, the Vegas signee was arrested in a LVPD sting operation at a crack house, a UNLV’d down. The bust was televised and Daniels’ D-1 career was over before it started.

Thus began a pro basketball career for Daniels, all 20 years of him. Just out of a court-ordered rehab stint, he signed with Topeka (KS) of the CBA and then played pro ball in New Zealand. In both places, mix-ups with drugs and alcohol ended his stays and briefly acknowledging that he had a problem, Daniels voluntarily entered a rehab program in Van Nuys, CA. There were a bunch of fallen hoops stars at Van Nuys, including Dwayne “Pearl” Washington, Quintin Dailey, Roy Tarpley, and 70’s superstar David Thompson. “How about that team,” Lloyd laughs today, “A bunch of crazies, right? But you know, I don’t know how much different we were than people from all walks of life. There’s probably people worser than we were in the White House and the FBI, but we were basketball players, so people wrote about us.”

Regardless, the rehab still didn’t work. Months after getting out he was back on the streets of Hollis, and early in the morning of May 11, ’89, Daniels took three shots in the chest from point-blank range, allegedly after a mix-up with some local dealers. Had he died, which doctors originally thought he would, Daniels would have passed away a broke 21-year-old with nothing to show for gifts that few humans had ever possessed. Today, when Lloyd removes his shirt you can’t help but notice the scars that rake across his stomachs like clawmarks. In calm, measured tones, however, Daniels explains why it doesn’t pain him to see the scars, every day for the rest of his life. “Every day, somebody in this world has a reminder of something, something they have to think about,” he says. “Even a pastor has things to think about that keep him on the straight path.”

Unfortunately, the clarity with which Daniels speaks today wasn’t around in the wake of his shooting. That book about him ends in early ’90, and things don’t look good, Daniels has survived the shooting, but he’s just bouncing from friend’s house to friend’s house, ballin’ a bit and still messing around. Chillingly, a quote from Lloyd’s grandmother, Lulia Daniels, effectively ends the book about Lloyd Daniels’ life. “I think he’s lost in the midst now,” she said. “…Sooner or later, he’ll kill hisself with drugs or booze or get killed hangin’ out in the wrong place. He’ll die a young man.”

“Take One Day at a Time.” —Oft-repeated advice in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step recovery program.

It’s mid-August now, a couple weeks after the first-ever Lloyd Daniels Basketball Camp concluded, and Daniels is on the phone from poolside in Puerto Rico. If Lloyd knows anything, it’s that the day he’s having is a good one. “It’s great down here,” he says. “This team down here, Poncé, needed a guy for the stretch run, so I came down here. I got my wife with me, my kids. It’s great!”

Daniels’ family is his wife of 10 years, Kendra, and their three young children, Aubrey, Shaina and Lloyd, Jr. Their permanent residence is a 4,000-sqaure foot house in Colts Neck, NJ, minutes from the Shore Christian Academy. Daniels owns a ’96 Mercedes and a new Lexus truck. As everyone from church members to his two agents point out repeatedly, “Lloyd has done all right for himself.” He didn’t get rich the way Konchalski might say he was “destined” to, but he’s made an awful nice life for himself, riding love, faith, and a Pippen-esque bank shot to contentment.

Reviewing Lloyd’s post-addiction professional basketball career is anti-climactic, since it more closely follows the lines of guys like Willie Burton and David Rivers that those of Magic and Bird, the players who teenage Lloyd was most often compared to.

Within two years of the shooting and the unhappy book ending it created, Daniels surfaced with John Lucas’ Miami Tropics team in the USBL, a team that doubled as an aftercare program for abusers. “Luke is a drug addict and alcoholic just like me, and I was getting to be around this guy every day,” Daniels says warmly. “He was a good advisor to me, picking me up, taking me to meetings, working me out, just being around. Luke was there for me.”

Whether it was Lucas’ influence, his wife’s, a more committed approach in AA, or simply that God decreed that Daniels would no longer do drugs or alcohol, he kicked the stuff and stated climbing back up. After the Tropics and one more successful stint in the USBL, as well as one in the Global Basketball Association, Daniels was invited to Spurs camp in the fall of ’92 by new coach Tarkanian. Daniels made the team and was an instant contributor, appearing in 77 games, mostly at two-guard, and averaging 9 ppg, 3 rpg and 2 apg. He played 65 games the next year, when Lucas was the coach and the Spurs had guys like Sean Elliott, David Robinson and Dennis Rodman. It was the only two years Daniels ever had a guaranteed contract, and the memories Lloyd has are mad positive. “Tark gave me a chance, and I took advantage of it,” Lloyd recalls. “Guys on the team liked me because they knew what I’d overcome…On the court, my greatest moment was when we played against Michael Jordan live on NBC [Jan. 24, ’93]. I was just amazed to be playing against Michael! I’d seen this guy on TV, and I’d had people tell me, ‘Lloyd, you’re never going to make it to play against him,’ but there I was. And I ain’t gonna lie—I got the game on tape to prove it—one time I came off a screen and flicked a little jumper over Mike. I was hyped.”

The great NBA moments would be rare, however. Thinking he could get more than the Spurs offered heading into his third season, Daniels became a free agent, and from then on his only time in the L came on short-term deals. In the midst of logging major minutes in the USBL, CBA, IBL, and countries like France, Greece and Turkey, Daniels played in the NBA with the Sixers, Lakers, Kings, Nets and, most recently, six games with the Raptors in ’97-98. One game with TO, Lloyd was the leading scorer with 21 points, proving to many that he still had it. “He was a solid player for us,” then-Raptor John Wallace said days after Daniels’ release. “I’d always heard about him, and maybe people are still caught up in his past, but that guy can still play.”

Days after the Toronto stint, Atlanta signed Lloyd to a 10-day, where he logged two DNP-CDs and then was 20 minutes late for a practice. Goodbye, NBA. “People have long memories, and there’s not a lot of people willing to give Lloyd a chance in the NBA anymore,” says James Ryans, who coached Lloyd this past summer when Swee’pea suited up for eight games as member of the USBL’s Long Island Surf. “I wasn’t always a good guy in the NBA,” Lloyd admits. “Even totally clean. I was late for a practice or a game here and there. But you got guys making $10 million a year coming late all the time. Why Lloyd Daniels can’t get another shot then?”

While Ryans claims that Lloyd has mentioned many times that “he’s only 10 games from being eligible for the NBA pension plan” [the NBA confirms that Lloyd is close], Daniel swears he just wants one more shot at the Show because he knows he’s good enough to play in it. “That pension don’t mean crap—just get me a shot in an NBA Vet Camp,” Lloyd says. “The Pacers have some interest in me [Pacers’ President Donnie Walsh says he may invite Lloyd] and that would be great. Since people have been writing about the so-called ‘great Lloyd Daniels’ since I was 10 years old, they think I’m so old now. But I’m just 32, and I think I’m better than some of the 10th, 11th and 12th guys in the League. I just want a shot to make a team.”

If he doesn’t get one, the odyssey will continue from PR to probably Spain, and then maybe back to the CBA. “The legend of Lloyd Daniels has not been built on much of an actual basketball résumé,” says Konchalski. “What it’s been is some AAU games, not many high school games, no college games, a couple seasons in the NBA, and a lot of games overseas—so he has to be thought of as a playground legend.”

Well then, basketball-wise, let’s leave it at that—Lloyd Daniels is the latest inductee into the Playground Hall of Fame. And life-wise?

“Hey, this is Llooyydd Danniieeellls,” Swee’pea’s cell phone message says with noticeable cheer. “I can’t come to the phone right now because my kids are icing down my ankles—so I can stay in shape.” For the next 30 seconds you hear nothing but infectious giggling, from Lloyd and his kids.

Does that sounds like an unfortunate destiny?

The post Born Again appeared first on SLAM.

The PGA Tour is rife with big NBA fans, none as serious as New England native Keegan Bradley, a devoted Celtics fan well before he blew up by winning the PGA Championship in 2011. A St. John’s grad who can talk college hoops as well as the pro game, Bradley also boasts serious kicks cred, thanks to his wearing signature Jordan Brand golf shoes on the course. 

SLAM: Tell us about your love for the NBA as well as the Celtics.

Keegan Bradley: I absolutely love the NBA. It’s the only sport where I can watch two teams I don’t care about at all and get into it. I will watch Golden State play Memphis. That said, I am a big fan of all the Boston teams, and I have to say that I care a little bit more about the Celtics than I do the Patriots, Red Sox or Bruins. I grew up in Vermont, and from ages 13-15, a friend and I would take the bus down to Boston for games a few times a year. We’d buy the $18 upper-deck tickets and sneak into the best seats, get kicked out, go back upstairs, then try it again. I also watched close to 80 games a year on TV some of those seasons. Now I have League Pass so I can watch the Celtics or any other team.

SLAM: What Celtic teams?

KB: Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker, Kenny Anderson, those guys. They had some good teams that couldn’t get past the Nets in the Playoffs. 

SLAM: How about when the Pierce/Garnett/Ray Allen group came together and won the Finals. What do you remember about that group?

KB: Very special. I just love Kevin and Pierce. I think they both fit the mold of what it takes to be a great Boston athlete. 

SLAM: You went to St John’s for college; they weren’t very good then but obviously it’s a great program. Did you follow them? Do you follow them now?

KB: Yeah, I went to as many games on campus or at Madison Square Garden as I could. The golf team would be traveling for tournaments sometimes but as long as I was around, I was going to their games. The most special thing for me with St John’s basketball was getting to develop a good relationship with Lou Carnesecca. Such a nice man. I haven’t met Coach [Steve] Lavin yet but I think he’s doing a good job and they’re definitely making a comeback. 

SLAM: The thing that really put you on our radar was when you wore those Jordan Brand cleats at the President’s Cup last fall. Do you have a formal relationship with them?

KB: Yes, I’m an official Jordan athlete and I’m very proud of that. I’m the first golfer to be with them. It’s funny, nothing I’ve ever done in my career, on or off the golf course, has caused as much of a stir as me being with Jordan Brand. It speaks to how much people care about him and the shoes.

SLAM: I wouldn’t say golf was seen as a “cool sport,” particularly before Tiger started playing. But I do remember always being aware of MJ’s interest in the game. It’s like, even before he went to play baseball, any story on him usually mentioned that if he wasn’t playing basketball, he’d be playing golf. You were a young sports fan who was showing promise as a golfer; did knowing that a guy like that loved golf make it seem cooler to you?

KB: Definitely. I think it’s really Michael and Tiger that made golf cool. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who liked golf more than Michael Jordan.

SLAM: That’s a pretty strong statement. Anyone?

KB: Nope. He is a golf fanatic. He only plays 36 holes at a time. When we’re both in Florida at the same time I play with him every day. It’s an incredible thrill to have become friends with him and to get to play with him.

SLAM: I know what it means to “play with Michael Jordan.” Is he playing with a vanity handicap that makes him sound better but makes him easier to beat, or does he play to a real number?

KB: When I play him, I give him 11 shots, and we have great matches. He wins sometimes, and I win sometimes. I have to say, there is no better feeling than to beat Michael Jordan in anything, golf included.

The post Shot Maker appeared first on SLAM.

The sneaker collecting game of today has blown up beyond anything I ever imagined, and trust me when I say that even the most optimistic Jordan Brand employees never expected all this either.

There are basically three paths for someone like me, a dude in his late-30s who cared about basketball shoes before he cared about girls (and I was hardly late to the latter): I could be a grumpy old man and bemoan the occasional inauthenticity of today’s “sneakerheads”; I could go whole hog, spending any disposable income on kicks, posting every last freebie on Instagram and travel the tri-state area for sneakercons; or I could play the middle, taking advantage of how my job puts me in the center of this world without letting it run my life. I choose C.

SLAM is now in its twenty-first year of covering the game with a hip-hop edge and a sense for fashion that has never been replicated. KICKS—our sneaker annual magazine that covers basketball shoes in all their proper glory—has now been published 16 times. The fact is: if people didn’t care about shoes so much, SLAM wouldn’t be as healthy as it is, and KICKS simply wouldn’t exist. But they do, and so we do; and the time felt right to mash it all up into a book that, quality-wise, far outstrips anything we’ve ever done.

We knew we wanted this project to tell the story of basketball shoes, but from a visual perspective. We talked about making it a list, like the top 20, 25, or even 50 basketball shoes of all time. After all, this is not a science. One man’s favorite sneaker might not make another’s top 100. So we threw out the concept of a number and homed in on ones that we felt had to be in a book that adopts the phrase “changed the game.” The result was a few antiques, a bunch from the ’70s–’90s that featured something original and/or are still popular today, and a couple more recent releases that we just know will be remembered a generation from now. As a basketball numerologist of sorts, I think it’s pretty sweet our final list matches the uniforms of Kareem, Bird, Ewing and Pippen, but that’s just a happy coincidence. Any fan of sneakers would have their own list, but we’re confident that the reader will enjoy ours plenty.

What makes leading this project special to me is that I was in love with all this stuff before SLAM or KICKS was even a concept. While in grammar school in suburban Westchester County, I rocked fat laces in the fourth grade. Fifth grade saw me fall in love with the Air Jordan I, as I wore, and wore out, three straight pairs over fifteen months. 

Sixth grade coincided with getting the Converse Weapon, which made me feel tough on the court, because for a brief moment it seemed like every star in the NBA besides Michael Jordan was wearing them.

Middle school brought the chance to start working a little (caddying in basketball shoes? Why not?) and making my own money. The local baseball-card store got some of it; basketball-shoe retailers got the rest. While still enamored with MJ and his growing line of shoes (I had all those Is, never got the $100 IIs, then had multiples of the IIIs, IVs and Vs), I also noticed how popular all of them were getting. And I wanted to be different. 

With a little scratch of my own, I would go to Fordham Road in the Bronx or Union Square in Manhattan, digging through the crates at VIM or Paragon for fresh colorways of Brooks (Dominique Wilkins’ shoe), Etonics (Hakeem the Dream’s) and Spot-Bilts (Xavier McDaniel’s). These unique joints were also usually pretty cheap, and allowed me to save up for the more expensive Nikes that came out at Foot Locker, particularly ones that my favorite player, Mark Jackson, was wearing.

Speaking of MarkJax, this basketball x sneaker obsession of mine was pretty encompassing. I played all the time (even if I might have been more concerned with making sure my teardop was just like Mark’s instead of properly improving my game). I watched the game whenever I could. My bedroom was a shrine to sports and sneakers, with my favorites were the beautiful posters Nike produced of Jackson and Jordan back then.

As I got into the latter stages of high school and college, girls, music, schoolwork and playing varsity sports all carved into the above interests, but it was a part of me forever. Then I graduated college, moved back home, and got a job as an intern at a three-year-old SLAM magazine? Where one of the best things I had to offer was an innate knowledge of hoops and shoes? Some things are just meant to be.

During the past decade and a half, the shoe game has become more of a shoe job. SLAM and I work directly with all the top brands, traveling to cover the big releases, collaborating on campaigns and trying to share all that with as many readers/potential consumers as we can.

In a way, this whole industry has never been easier. The smart brands get you release dates and high-res imagery with the click of a mouse. E-retailers and sneaker-centric websites give you historical data and pricing info. Flickr and Instagram burst with pictures of folks wearing or storing one sick pair after another.

I quickly learned how unofficial a lot of the sneaker art is while working on this project. Pictures might be blurry, but the average websurfer doesn’t care. Information about the shoe could be inaccurate one minute, and removed or corrected the next. Given how massive the basketball sneaker culture is, covering it still feels like exploring a new frontier. It’s a still-maturing business with no hierarchy that determines whose leaked photos and details are real, and whose aren’t.

Facts regarding release dates and the like were double- and triple-checked. Some may still be fuzzy since some brands can’t even declare with certainty when a particular shoe was released, but trust that we did our best. And since we can’t just repost with a new URL, obviously the words you’re reading are here to stay. 

Moreso than the words in this book, though, I’m most proud of the images we tracked down. George Gervin’s Iceman poster. Run-DMC in Superstars. MJ in the Dunk Contest. Classic shots you know and some gems you don’t, all in the same place for the first time ever. The winner in all this? You, the sneakerhead whose bookshelf will never be the same.

SLAM KICKS: Basketball Sneakers that Changed the Game, features sneaker write ups by myself, Abe Schwadron and Lee Gabay, and essays by Russ Bengtson, John Brilliant, Scoop Jackson and Lang Whitaker. It was published by Universe Publishing, a division of Rizzoli International Publications. Jessica Fuller and Charles Miers at Rizzoli ran the show, while Creative Director Melissa Brennan, Managing Editor Susan Price and myself took care of everything on the SLAM end of things. It is out today at bookstores everywhere, and can also be purchased online via links from Rizzoliusa.com.

The post Kicks that Changed the Game appeared first on SLAM.

Originally published in SLAM 175

by Ben Osborne / @bosborne17

mu·se·um  noun:

a building in which interesting and valuable things (such as paintings and sculptures or scientific or historical objects) are collected and shown to the public

*** 

If you read SLAM and KICKS with any regularity, in print or online, not to mention one of the countless sneaker blogs out there, you know that any major sneaker release these days is presented to the media with a whole host of bells and whistles. Sometimes there’s community interaction where local kids get to experience the new shoe first; sometimes there are elite training sessions where the media members get to see how the new shoe plays; sometimes there are fancy dinners where the shoe gets brought out like a trendy new dish. 

And, sometimes, you end up inside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Such was the setting on a gorgeous early December day when Nike and Kobe Bryant teamed up to present the Kobe 9 for the first time. To sneakerheads, the event promised more drama than the typical release. For one, the shoe hadn’t leaked yet; there were rumors and grainy pics implying Kobe would be rocking a mid- or high-top for the first time in five years, but no one knew for sure. For another, the shoe’s endorser hadn’t played since last year’s Playoffs. How would Kobe look up close? Would he break the news on when he was going to return from his torn Achilles tendon? 

Fittingly, given that Bryant is in his 18th year in the NBA and at the time of the release hadn’t played yet this season, the event opened with a look back. All in attendance were shown the “Prelude Pack,” made up of the first eight Nike Kobe shoes (remember: before Kobe joined Nike he wore adidas for a long time and was a sneaker free agent for a stretch). The eight shoes serve as the prelude to “the Masterpiece (the Kobe 9 Elite),” and each was presented with a name and a video of Kobe explaining what the particular shoe meant to him.

Being in a museum felt right for all of this. The shoes are valuable, and Kobe’s memories of what he accomplished in them are interesting. There were the four 50-point games in a row Kobe scored in the IIs, the “misery” he felt while losing the ’08 Finals to the Celtics in the IIIs, the industry shake-up he provided with the low-top IVs, the regular-season and Finals MVP awards he won in the Vs, the All-Star MVP he won at Staples Center in the VIs, the Olympic Gold medal in the VIIs.

For someone like me, who has the utmost respect for Kobe as a player but never felt the passion for him that I did for Michael Jordan, it was a helpful refresher course: Dude has accomplished a hell of a lot, in a massive NBA market, and the rabid support he gets from fans makes some sense when you see his achievements presented like this. The Museum of Contemporary Art was back to its regular programming by the day after the launch event, but it occurred to me that in this city, with this player, they could have charged admission to a Kobe Bryant shoe/career retrospective and simply counted the money.

Eventually, we got to see the 9, and the men behind it. Kobe, designer Eric Avar and Nike CEO Mark Parker presented the shoe. The Nike-run Q+A that transpired right away was, understandably, all about the shoe: the creativity, the inspiration, the materials (Flyknit!), the functionality. “We’re all geeks at heart,” Kobe said of the panelists. “This is all fun to us.”

Of course, only one of them is a legendary pro athlete, and when the shoe discussion ended and the media could interview Kobe, the topic quickly shifted to hoops. There was enthusiasm to play: “It’s gonna feel like being home when I’m back on the court. Like a fish being back in the water. The gills are there for a reason.” There was cockiness, like when he told former teammate and current FOX Sports talent Gary Payton that he is still the “best” scorer and all-around player in the NBA. There was resoluteness, like when he responded to a Chinese journalist who asked Kobe if he’d come off the bench when he returned to ease the adjustment. “Ohhh, I’m not coming off the bench. I’ll always start, but my minutes will be less.” 

There was also reflection and reaffirmation of purpose. “Not shooting from April to September was the longest break of my life. It was kind of a blessing in disguise because I got to think about my career and all I’ve accomplished,” Bryant said. “It also made me hungrier. There’s self-doubt, for sure. But I’m not going to play different. This is what we do. We play the game. We leave it all on the floor, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

The one thing Kobe did not do at the Museum of Contemporary Art was announce a return. That came a couple days later, via Facebook. 

And when the return came, on a Sunday night at Staples Center against the Raptors, I tuned in like millions of other basketball fans around the globe. And you know who I saw? Michael Jordan, Washington Wizard, circa 2001.

I realize I’m dating myself by remembering what MJ looked and played like in his second post-retirement stint—since many fans ignore that stretch and just think of the highlights and rings he piled up in Chicago—but some of us watched that Mike almost as closely as young Mike. And I kind of dug the old version. The dunks were few and far between, the wins were a lot harder to come by and his body clearly ached. But he was still—much moreso than when he was young and could jump over 6-11 Mel Turpin—a scientist on the floor. In the season he turned 40 years old, Michael Jordan played all 82 regular-season games (including 15 off the bench, Mr. Bryant), shot 45 percent from the floor and 82 percent from the line, and posted per-game averages of 20 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.5 steals. These numbers were achieved with guile. With knowledge. With possibly the greatest footwork a basketball player has ever possessed. 

On one hand, it might seem premature to put 35-year-old Kobe Bryant in that stage, but in basketball years, Kobe is actually older than Mike ever was. He has already played almost 200 more games than Mike did. And Achilles injuries are no joke. Just six games after he came back, of course, Kobe hurt his knee and was pronounced out again. The knee injury after the Achilles was likely no coincidence.

Kobe’s awareness of the game hasn’t left him, and he’s still a beautiful jump shooter with the ability to get shots off from all different angles, but in the Raptor game he looked, well, creaky. In the games that followed, there was an added issue in Lakerland that may or may not get solved by March: They lack healthy point guards, so for a stretch, Kobe became the Lakers’ de facto 1. There’s immense irony in this, given his occasional aversion to passing over the years. There are also a lot of physical demands at that position. Of course, Kobe is a basketball genius, so he can do what he has to do, but the results have been mixed. In the six games Kobe played between injuries, only two resulting in Laker wins, the career 26-ppg scorer averaged 13.8 points, 6.3 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game. As well as a mind-numbing 5.7 turnovers per game. On defense, let’s just say Kobe is not exactly getting two hands up to contest every shot his man takes. 

Kobe’s post-game comments have addressed the flexibility he expects to get back, the physical comfort he thinks will eventually return. If anyone could regain the fluidity of their younger self, it’s a maniacal rehabber with the means and motivation to travel to Germany for treatment the way some people walk around the corner.  To friends of mine who love Kobe, that’s the key issue: Will he regain the physical ability to play the game the way he once he did, or at least a close approximation of it?

And if he doesn’t, what kind of player do the Lakers have? Interestingly, if you ask Kobe’s current teammates about him, they don’t talk too much about his physical gifts. They talk about all the intangibles he brings. “What I’ve learned from him is the mental approach,” Jodie Meeks tells us. “On a game-by-game basis, no matter if he’s sick, hurt, anything that he’s going through, off the court or anything like that, he’s always focused. It’s amazing to see that. I fee like if he can do it, I can do it, or come pretty close to it.”

Jordan Farmar, who expects a return to greatness from his former and current teammate, says Kobe “doesn’t really take no for an answer. He’s going to will it to happen, whatever it is, come hell or high water. He prepares himself and works really hard. Just being around that kind of dedication and that willpower every day helps make you better in the long run.”

“He’s definitely a mentor to me, on and off the court,” says Laker forward Jordan Hill. “He knows all the positions and he’s always pulling people, like myself, to the side to talk to us and let us know what we’re doing wrong. He’s always got suggestions and adjustments for us that can make us better, not just for basketball but for everything. What sticks out most is probably his aggression in trying to get his point across. When he does this, he’s trying to embed it into you—your heart and your mind—so that you can understand. He doesn’t yell at you; he just makes sure that he’s giving you all the details. He’ll break down everything to you, and do it and try to get his point across to help you understand.”

“Watching how he prepares off the court shows you what you need to be doing,” Steve Blake says. “You see why he’s so successful so you try to emulate him as much as you can. He’ll point things out, pick-and-roll stuff and certain individual things throughout the game, so you listen and try to implement things he’s helped you out with. He’s just a really good teammate.”

We also spoke to Grant Hill, now an analyst after an 18-year NBA career that featured all sorts of athletic feats, not to mention debilitating injuries and the re-making of a game to combat them. “He may have lost a step athletically, but I still think he’ll have the ability to go out and dominate,” Hill says. “Maybe in a different way, but more with his skill and his intellect than his explosiveness. I think he’s too good, he’s too fundamentally sound, he’s too experienced. I’m excited like everyone else to see how he comes back and how he deals with the pace of the season.”

When you hear all about his work ethic and fundamentals, and you see Kobe gutting through games with an MJ-like guile at point guard, and you hear fans go absolutely bonkers for him at the Staples Center (“MVP! MVP! MVP!”), the fact that the Lakers just re-signed him to a mega-contract that will last through the ’15-16 season makes plenty of sense. 

It’s highly unlikely that L.A. will get its money’s worth in terms of on-court production, but if Bryant can indeed reshape his game and work as an emotional and mental leader and a smart-playing complement to whichever other high-talent players the Lakers bring in, maybe they can make one more run for glory in the Kobe Era and get him the sixth ring he so desperately craves.

A lot of the questions at the shoe release focused on Kobe’s place in the all-time NBA scoring race. He’s already fourth all-time, with MJ’s 32,292 reachable this season and Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at least within loud screaming distance. 

Kobe claims not to care about that, though. “Where I finish on the scoring list has never been a goal of mind. If it was, I would have gone to college, come in and played a lot of minutes and scored a lot of points from the beginning,” he says. “I don’t know the numbers I have or the numbers I need.

“I don’t play basketball to score. I play basketball to win Championships. Scoring is easy. Getting a group of guys to work together and win a Championship—that’s the challenge.”

And if it doesn’t happen? If Kobe can never dominate again, or if his contract takes up so much cap space that the Lakers can’t bring in enough other guys to share the load?

Both seasons that Michael Jordan played for the Wizards, the team went 37-45. I still enjoyed watching them though.

Additional reporting by Bill DiFilippo, Abe Schwadron and Yaron Weitzman

The post Crossroads appeared first on SLAM.

by Ben Osborne / cover image by Tom Medvedich

As brands become media companies and media companies become ad agencies, sales-speak buzzwords are thrown around like a gardener tossing seeds. No word is more popular than “authentic.” Ironically, of course, most of the people using it end up pitching ideas that couldn’t be less authentic (def: of undisputed origin; genuine) to basketball/sneaker/youth culture if they were delivered by Russian-speaking robots.

This issue, though, is as authentic as it gets. I speak for all of SLAM, from veteran publisher Dennis Page to our fresh-out-of-college editors, who have helped build a magazine that’s shared our love of the game for more than 20 years. I speak for the Original Sneaker Bible, our annual KICKS issue, which has been a back-to-school staple for shoe lovers for more than 16 years. I speak for Foot Locker, the sponsor of this issue and the sneaker retailer that has always been the best place to go for new Air Jordans.

But most of all, I speak for myself. I’ve loved hoops since I went to my first NBA game at age 4. I’ve loved MJ since I first saw highlights of his windmill jams at North Carolina. I’ve loved Jordans since the day they came out, wearing through three straight pairs of original Is during their almost two years on the market. And I’ve loved magazines as soon as I could read them, ripping my father’s Sports Illustrated out of the mailbox every Thursday before he got home from work and poring over it from cover to cover before I did a second of homework.

So when Mike burst on the NBA scene and promptly got his first SI cover as a Bull in December of 1984, with a long feature by the great Alexander Wolff, chock full of off-court scenery such as the first picture in the gallery above and scoops on the fervor surrounding Mike’s loud new kicks, I was in some kind of heaven.

Obviously, so much has transpired since then, and if SLAM and Foot Locker never teamed up to make an issue dedicated to the first six Air Jordans, and if I never got to edit such an issue, I think we’d all survive just fine.

But we did team up. And we did get in touch with Puneet Singh, aka Sole Supreme, who let us take pictures of his collection of I-VI, in all their OG glory. And our Creative Director Melissa Brennan and photographer Tom Medvedich did shoot said shoes like the treasures they are. And our young sneakerheads Adam Figman, Abe Schwadron and Tzvi Twersky did combine their research and writing skills to deliver you the real story behind each of the shoes, both on and off the court. Throw in some great photo research and the best paper we’ve ever printed a “magazine” on, and the result is a product that feels 30 years in the making.

Whether your interest lies in Jordan or Jordans, photography or magazines, basketball or sneakers, or, like me, all of the above, I hope you’ll enjoy looking through this issue as much as we all enjoyed making it.

The post JORDANS Vol 1 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Sixteen years ago this month, we gave Kobe Bryant his first solo SLAM cover. Or maybe, he gave us his first SLAM cover. The wording really depends on the two parties’ status in the game.

When Kobe was in his second season, slowly establishing himself in the League and coping with his crushing air-ball fest in the ’97 Playoffs against the Jazz, he welcomed SLAM’s attention. We were in just our fifth year, but we’d already become a fixture in high school basketball players’ bedrooms and NBA teams’ locker rooms. 

Kobe gave us a lengthy photo shoot (as depicted at right) by Piotr Sikora (now the Sr. Director of Photography for VH1). With the Lakers’ help, Kobe gave us all sorts of behind-the-scenes access, letting writer Cheo Hodari Coker (now better known for writing Notorious) chill with him in the training room and drive around with him. It was the type of story Esquire or SI would produce, but with SLAM’s flavor sprinkled on it. 

We still get time like this with NBA guys, to some degree, as I think the recent Stephen Curry and Paul George covers/stories show. But not from Kobe. Now, he holds the power. He’s a 14-time All-Star, a five-time Champion, a megamillionaire serving as a centerpiece of a shoe company’s basketball line for the second time. And, as you might have heard, he’s had some injuries to rehab from lately. So when he and Nike team up to release a new shoe and offer the chance to “speak” with Kobe, the basketball and sneaker worlds line up.

Lengthy one-on-one interviews? Exclusive, time-consuming photo shoots? Driving around with a writer?! Not happening. If you’re SLAM, feeling like it’s past time to give your readers’ first/second/third (pick one) favorite player one more solo cover, what do you do with these modern circumstances?

Here’s what: You graciously accept Nike’s invite to the Kobe 9 launch, you make yourself a part of every interview session and you send Kobe’s boy, photographer Atiba Jefferson, to a Laker game with strobe lights and the orders to shoot no one but KB all night long.

Then, when Kobe suffers another injury just as he looks like he’s getting over the first one, you resolutely stick with him on the cover because he’s the only active player that has achieved such iconic status. And then, finally, you sit back and hope your cover and story are as well-received as they were in 1998.

And just in case Kobe’s haters don’t want to support him, you pack the issue with the usual greatness to make sure everyone cops one. Please do your part.

The post SLAM 175 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

Then, in November, I heard from a student of David’s named Kevin Dowd. Kevin had interviewed David for a brief blog post on The Seattle Times’ website focusing on his interactions with race and sports, and they covered a lot more ground than was able to run on the blog. Together, Kevin and David agreed that SLAMonline might be a good home for the rest of the interview. I, of course, agreed. They made some tweaks, we formatted it into SLAMonline style, and the result is below. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.—Ben Osborne

by Kevin Dowd / @kevindowd

SLAM: You were born in L.A., raised in San Francisco, and lived for about 20 years on the East Coast. In Black Planet, you joke a lot about not wanting to become a Seattleite. Are you still holding out?

DS: There are parts of Seattle that still drive me crazy. There are a number of characters in the book. There’s me, my daughter, my wife, Gary Payton, George Karl, and Seattle is definitely one of the main characters in the book. In a later book I wrote called The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, I take one part of my father and really emphasize his physical vitality. That’s only one part of him. In Black Planet, I take that part of Seattle that is un-Sonics-like. Basically, I tried to create a contrast between the rudeness of the Sonics that year and create tension between Seattle and the Sonics. The Sonics were so perfectly anti-Seattle, the Seattle of that time. Or better said, the Sonics expressed an undertow to Seattle which is there but is often disguised.

SLAM: Did that rudeness draw you to the Sonics, coming from the East Coast, where that whole ethos is kind of different?

DS: I think that’s really true, that I just loved the Sonics so much. It’s not like I’m some person who grew up in Harlem or something. But it did strike me on coming back here. It felt like Sweden to me, it just felt vey different. I felt really Jewish. I grew up in a very Jewish, if very secular, family in L.A. and San Francisco, and Seattle either felt very Asian to me, or very Nordic. I remember living in Ballard for a couple years, and I just felt like I was going crazy. I felt like I was tweaked too high, that I sort of wear my nerve endings on my sleeve. And Gary Payton was speaking for me. I loved him so much. The main point of scoring an incredible basket was to create a verbal tattoo on the other player. It was almost like the game mattered less than the verbal pyrotechnics that followed. He would score an incredible basket, and then he would run down the sideline and start yelling at the reporters who thought he couldn’t make a shot; he just seemed to live through language so powerfully. Which I think in the book I connect to stuttering. Basically, I grew up with a stutter, and still have glimmers of it, and at the time I was worried that my daughter might inherit my disorder. But anyway, I was relatively recently married, I was a new father of a very young daughter, and I was living in Wallingford. I felt very Jewish in relationship to my WASP-y wife, who seemed in a way to fit more with Seattle. She’s from a suburb of Chicago. Her cultural style is closer to Seattle’s, in a way. Somewhat undemonstrative. She doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve the way I do, certainly. I was processing a lot of issues, and I think all that was a bit of the background to why I cartoonize Seattle, I think. How does Seattle play in the book to you?

SLAM: It seems extremely accurate.

DS: As I was walking here and you saw me coming across, I jaywalked. I wasn’t consciously doing it; it’s just the way I walk; I’m really impatient. I don’t pretend to be some incredibly urban person, but it’s just how people walk in big cities. And yet, people in Seattle sometimes come to a screeching halt and imply, “Well, if you’re going to violate the law that much, you must be a kind of quasi-criminal and so I’m going to insist that you walk in front of me.” I’m not aware of any other cities in which people obey the stoplights as much as they do here. To me, it’s sort of like obeying nature: Seattle worships nature more than I do.

SLAM: Sports radio is another big part of Black Planet. Do you still listen much to it?

DS: I do again, mainly because I’m hugely into the Seahawks right now. During baseball season, because the Mariners are so awful, I don’t watch the Mariners. And there’s no basketball team, alas, though I hope they come back. But sports radio is to me an amazing anchor that that you drop into the ocean of the American id: pure American male, largely white, id. Part of me is listening as a fan, because I’m just hugely wired into the Seahawks right now, and part of me is listening as a pith-helmeted anthropologist who is listening for cultural revelations.

SLAM: What was the reception for Black Planet?

DS: I was driving around in the car one day, maybe six months after the book came out, and I was listening to ESPN radio, nationally: they were talking about the book. And they were really putting a lot of distance between themselves and the book. They were basically mocking it: Oh, isn’t this pathetic, this white guy who thinks he’s Gary Payton in bed with his wife, chuckle chuckle chortle chortle. My response was: You are telling me way too much about yourself on ESPN radio. All those shows—they live through this vicariousness, this voyeurism, this homosexual panic. I just owned it, that’s all. I named what is there but what no one is willing to talk about.

SLAM: What’s changed since you wrote the book?

DS: I’m different now. I’m 57 now, whereas when I wrote the book I was in my late 30s. Part of me now frankly loves Seattle, and part of me has a huge amount of distance toward the New York cultural style. I do think people who have only lived in one city tend to have different views. Right now, I just feel like people are people, that there are smart people and stupid people and aggressive people and passive people. I think it’s a very easy cartoon of different parts of the country. It still drives me nuts that people on the East Coast always say, ‘Out west.’ If you’re listening to ESPN on the radio, they’ll say, ‘And in scores out west.’ To me, it’s all just one country. It’s basically saying the East Coast is the absolute center, and everything else is quote ‘out west,’ do you know what I mean? If Black Planet is any good, it’s not really about race, per se, but it’s about how all human beings, including me, including you, have a tendency to not tolerate within themselves their own demons, and so they project those demons onto other people. Jews and WASPs, east and west, black and white, parent and child, spectator and athlete, coach and player. Some people who don’t understand the book say, “I don’t get it, why’s he talking about some discussion he had with somebody at Bartell’s? Why didn’t he focus in on the Sonics?” But that’s not the book, and the book isn’t even about race to me, per se. There will be a tiny moment between me and my wife that’s just as important as a blowup between George Karl and Gary Payton. And so to me, if the book works, it really opens up this interesting space between people, and you start to ask yourself, Why is it that you tend to demonize someone else? Isn’t it probably because there’s something about yourself that you either love or loathe, and that you’re projecting it onto someone else? That, to me, is the core of the book.

SLAM: One part of the book that really sticks out is when you talk about going running in Wallingford, and when you pass a black guy you start running faster, as if you want to impress him. Or you won’t hold the door open for white people, but you always do for black people. I do the same things. I had always kind of thought that was because I haven’t spent much time in the company of black people, but that doesn’t sound like it was the case for you. How much do you think familiarity matters with that sort of thing?

DS: Both of my parents were very politically involved. Growing up in San Francisco, they were hugely involved in desegregation of the schools and civil rights, things like that. My father worked for the poverty program, trying to help black people find housing or jobs. And sometimes we would have people who would live in our house for a whole year; they would live and sleep in our living room. That was a common thing for us. I grew up in a pretty white suburb of San Francisco, a little bit south. The kids on my basketball team were black. I feel like even though both of my parents were involved with that and perhaps I was around people of different ethnic backgrounds perhaps a little bit more than you were, I still grew up in a relatively white suburb. I do think that background is interesting, because I’m very interested in this thing: sort of a paradox I’m drawn to—that my parents were very devoted to love and truth and justice and all these things in the abstract, but in our actual lives we had trouble getting along; my parents weren’t very happily married and I feel there was a lot of tension between the parents and children in our family. I feel like my parents, and my mom in particular, were really good at loving strangers, giving them the living room for a year, but they really had trouble loving people in our actual family. I was really interested in the gap. There’s this great line of T.S. Eliot’s, which is, “Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.” They were very good at the idea, because it’s really easy to love a stranger, in a way, because you’re sort of loving an abstraction, someone sleeps on your couch for three months and you get to give yourself 10 brownie points for being a good person. But it’s really hard to love a person who’s actually in your life permanently and who’s a very flawed human being. I was also sort of hugely aware of the Lady Bountiful aspect of it, you know, what was my parents’ true motivation? I think they were trying to do good in the world, and I think they did do good, but I think there was a huge amount of competition to see who could be the most righteous person. I remember at one point my mom was going to sell our house and we were going to move into the ghetto in order to just sort of be down with the people. It just seemed like a funny gesture to me. Someone had told her that the revolution begins when white people sell their houses in the suburbs, and so my mom sort of marched home and said we were selling our house. The book is both an ode to my parents’ politics and a critique of it. There’s this line of Montaigne, who says, “Every man contains within him the entire human condition.” I’m really interested in making myself complicit—basically to acknowledge that I’m capable of racism, too. The parts of the book I found hardest to write are the parts of the book that have got the most positive reaction from black readers, who say, “Thank you for writing this, because I hate it when white people pretend not to do that.” I gave a reading once in Chicago to a predominantly black audience, and I basically thought, what the hell, I’m going to read the parts of the book that are the most provocative. So I sort of chose the most uncomfortable passages, and people just loved it, because instead of trying to be some enlightened liberal, I was just owning it, trying to understand my own confusion. And I think people just thought, it’s so liberating to hear a white person acknowledge their own baffling, baffled guilt. And I just feel like the discussion begins there. I think there’s a pretense that we live in a so-called post-racial America, and that’s just nonsense. I’ve read many times and I’ve heard that Obama is largely the same person [both in private and public]. Unlike Bill Clinton, who in private is strikingly different from how he is in public;  in private apparently Clinton is unbelievably unhinged and angry, he yells at his underlings, has temper tantrums. I’m sure he’s mellowed with age, but he was apparently brutal in private. And Obama is just—supposedly, I’ve read many places and heard sort of tenth-hand—that he’s largely the same in private as he is in public, with one big exception: Obama is hugely aware of the ways in which race plays a part in the right’s hatred of him, and even I would say the left’s embrace of him. All of this he more or less refuses to acknowledge in public.

SLAM: Have you seen the clip of Obama greeting the Olympic basketball team? He goes up to the white assistant coach and gives him a real standard handshake, and then when he gets to Kevin Durant, Obama gives him this big, stylized, complicated high-five.

DS: I’m fascinated by stuff like that. That’s so loaded. At some point I was thinking about writing a book, and may still, about the infinite gradations and calculations of Obama’s body language, which fascinates me. And that clip is relatively recent. I just feel like Obama is constantly and fascinatingly calculating, almost to the nth degree, how much blackness to show. Do you feel that, too?

The post Planet Rock appeared first on SLAM.

Originally published in SLAM 173

by Ben Osborne / images courtesy of NBA 2K14

EASTERN CONFERENCE

1. Pacers, 58-24

It seems like people forget how close the Pacers were to dethroning the Heat last year. And now they added Luis Scola, get Danny Granger back, and should see Lance Stephenson and stud Paul George get even better. My only question with Indy is at point guard, where neither George Hill nor CJ Watson do much for me.

2. Heat, 56-26

I really hope this is not interpreted as a slight of LeBron. He is easily the game’s best player, and I say he’s fully on track to be in the best-ever convos. But how much does DWade have left? Will Miami’s bench do anything? We’ve seen what happens when LeBron has to do it all on his own: His team loses in the Conference Finals.

3. Bulls, 54-28

There should be zero questions about this team’s motivation (high) or coaching (the best), and by the time you read this, any D Rose doubts will probably have been assuaged. A title by the Bulls seems only slightly less likely than the preceding two teams; Indy and Miami just happen to be a smidge better.

4. Knicks, 52-30

Something tells me this might be the most-beefed-with prediction. Yes, the griminess of the Knicks’ front office may portend a return to lower-division status as soon as next season, but this season’s games will be won and lost on the court. And, frankly, I like the players the Knicks will be trotting out there. Melo is still in his prime, and players two-eight all strike me as above average. I think this team will score, be fun to watch and be a very tough out in the Playoffs.

5. Nets, 43-39

Another pick that may go against conventional wisdom. If BK gets off to a 20-6 start and smells the chance to win a title, I will sing a whole different tune. But if they take time to gel and are clearly not in the upper echelon of the League, what will KG and Paul Pierce be playing for, exactly? And who’s the leader of this team? The old Celtics? The young coach? The occasionally passive-aggressive Deron Williams? The six-time All-Star Joe Johnson? That’s a lot of questions…

6. Hawks, 42-40

Sadly for Lang Whitaker, the OG of SLAM pre-season previews, “#ATLshawty” has come to mean “boring franchise” in NBA speak. Signing Paul Millsap and re-signing Jeff Teague keep the Hawks firmly in the Playoff mix, but it’s hard to see them doing much once they get there.

7. Pistons, 42-40

Accuse me of having no respect for proper shot selection if you must, but I will be watching a LOT more of the Pistons’ 42-40 campaign than I will be of the Hawks’. Look, I like watching Brandon Jennings and Josh Smith play. And if that’s a guilty pleasure with little upside beyond entertainment value, well, the Andre Drummond-Greg Monroe duo is one that has real-life upside. I think in 12 months we’ll be projecting these guys to finish a lot higher.

8. Cavaliers, 40-42

Yes, the city seems cursed and the last couple of seasons have been dreadful, but this is a franchise back on the right track. New coach Mike Brown should straighten out some of the defensive issues while Kyrie Irving and the young talent around him will take care of the O. A Playoff berth would be a nice accomplishment for this group.

9. Bucks, 37-45

Oh, Milwaukee. The BJ Era came and went without a whole lot happening, and the Monta Era won’t even be remembered. Now OJ Mayo is in town to help deliver more mediocrity. Larry Sanders is fun to watch but this is just a team in purgatory. Meanwhile, Tobias Harris—oh, nevermind.

10. Magic, 36-46

While I hope for their sake that Bucks’ fans don’t read this entry, supporters in O-Town are only too happy to study up on Tobias. The versatile forward from Long Island teams up with another versatile forward from Long Island (technically speaking), Maurice Harkless, to give the Magic one of the more intriguing young starting lineups in the L. Our Advertising Director, Dave Schnur, doubles as the president of the Tobias Fan Club and even thinks this will be a Playoff team.

11. Wizards, 34-48

I may be John Wall’s biggest supporter in the media. I love his speed and skill set, and I think 80 games and sick across-the-board numbers are in the offing this year. So he’s not the problem. It’s the rest of the roster that does little to inspire, hence, the 34 wins. How long does Ernie Grunfeld get to turn this thing around?

12. Raptors, 33-49

I actually like Andrea Bargnani for the Knicks, but I’m sure the Raptors and their devoted fans are happy not to have the specter of “failed No. 1 pick” around any longer. A new foreign big man, Jonas Valanciunas, should ultimately be better than Bargnani was and, with promising GM Masai Ujiri on board, will get the Raps back in the Playoff picture before long.

13. Bobcats, 28-54

Defensive snobs can hate on Al Jefferson all they want. For an outside-in team like the Cats have been, getting one of the game’s best offensive low-post weapons was a no brainer. Kemba Walker, who went from most-known college player to little-known NBA player, is quietly becoming a top-shelf point guard, and MKG and Cody Zeller give Charlotte some nice young forwards. I wouldn’t be shocked if MJ cajoled 30 Ws out of this team.

14. Celtics, 27-55

No one knows if Brad Stevens will turn out to be a great NBA coach, but I absolutely loved the hire. This rebuilding team wasn’t going to the Playoffs if Red Auerbach was coaching them, so why not let the former Butler wunderkind see how his approach translates in the League? Jeff Green will provide steady numbers, Rajon will be Rajon once he’s healthy, and the rest of the squad will be on a year-long audition.

15. 76ers, 16-66

As a firm believer that Nerlens Noel should have been the first pick in the Draft, I have no choice but to give the Sixers some props for their long-term outlook. This season, however, will be for Fantasy NBA junkies only. Someone has to get stats, right? Fantasy and the Noel watch aside, the biggest thing to look for in Philly is how Michael Carter-Williams plays. If he proves to be a responsible enough ballhandler, the Sixers have a really nice weapon in their backcourt. If not, this team may be headed for less than 20 wins in 2014-15 as well.

The post 2013-14 NBA Preview appeared first on SLAM.

by Ben Osborne / @bosborne17

cover shot by Ahmed Klink / video by Kellen Dengler

SLAM has had fun with little-know guys like Rafer Alston on our cover when no one knew who they were, or been ahead of the curve on future standouts like LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Andrew Wiggins. We’ve also done breakout NBA players, groups of rookies, etc. Because of all this, a player with the NBA lineage, near-legendary college career and Lottery-pick status that Stephen Curry boasts has usually been on a SLAM cover well before they start their fifth season.

But for one reason or another, whether it was ill-timed injuries, struggling Warriors teams, a fear on our business end that Stephen wouldn’t move copies for us or low shoe company support, young Mr. Curry has never had that moment. Until now.

The barriers to this moment fell, one-by-one, ’til his march towards superstardom and big press exposure seemed inevitable. The right-ankle issues that cost Curry 40 games in the lockout-shortened ’11-12 campaign dissipated to the point that he missed only four games last season. *knocks on wood*

Underrated GM Bob Myers made some shrewd moves, surrounding Curry with the best talent in his career and teaming him with gifted players’ coach Mark Jackson to give the Warriors an exciting, up-and-coming roster that harnessed its enthusiasm and became a legit Playoff team last year. And now they’ve added former All-Star and Olympian Andre Iguodala. This is no news flash, but the Dubs are a team on the rise.

Meanwhile, aided by insane, social-media friendly scoring outbursts like he had at MSG against the Knicks or in the Playoffs against the Nuggets, Steph’s popularity skyrocketed. Our small staff isn’t tracking this stuff in an official way, but our everyday exposure to Trash Talk letters and emails as well as all the @ messages we get on Instagram and Twitter told us something very clear: The people wanted a Stephen Curry cover!

All of the above was more than enough for me to start the ball rolling on this as far back as July, reaching out to Stephen’s people and discussing what a SLAM cover shoot involves. Stephen was as interested in being on our cover as we were in having him on it, so it quickly became clear we’d get it done no matter what sneaker company he signed with when his Nike contract expired. The fact that the brand turned out to be Under Armour was just a last little bonus to the whole thing. Not that we like Curry more or less as a player now, but UA was so excited that a shoot was in the works that they teamed our idea up with one of their shoots, and gave us some special access to an entire day with Stephen. This is how we created the dope video that leads off this post.

As for the photos and words we generated on that very special day, not to mention a print version of our #SLAMTop50, revealing feature stories on Kawhi Leonard and Dirk Nowitzki and my first-ever stab at a full-blown NBA Preview (written in about 32 minutes to try and prove a point, but still), well, I hope you’ll pick up the print edition asap to enjoy it all.

The post SLAM 173 is On Sale Now! appeared first on SLAM.

I was lucky enough to be in a meeting Monday afternoon with Rick Telander, Fly Williams and some folks from Nike and Barclays Center. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what we’re all trying to get done, but it sure doesn’t have to do with the SLAM Top 50.

What does have to do with our esteemed list is that the only two current players the great Fly (if you don’t know who he is, ask your friend Google, find your copy of SLAM 25, or see what we’ve done on/with him here on the site over the years) had any interest in talking about: LeBron James and Kevin Durant.

And, guess what? He feels the same way most of us do. LeBron James is “a freak of nature. It is really unbelievable that God built someone that big, and that fast, that can handle the ball the way he can. Plus, his knowledge of the game and respect for the history of it? And fearlessness on the big stage? I was lucky enough to spend 10, 11 days with LeBron working on his very first Nike commercial, and I think about that time whenever I see him play now. There has never been anyone like him.”

As for Kevin Durant, Fly says, “I’ve talked to him a lot, too. He’s a baaad man. I like how that dude plays.”

As a stick-skinny assassin who could score from anywhere inside the halfcourt line, Fly was in many ways KD before KD, albeit in a much sketchier era.

Since I committed to turn a decent writeup in to Ryne, I need to do a lot more than quote Fly Williams, but his unprovoked comments do kind of sum things up.

Look, I have zero complaints with Kevin Durant’s game. A 6-9 2-guard? Handles? Better and better defense? And, as Kirk Goldsberry made extra extra clear in this neat piece on how we should best gauge NBA scorers, KD is the second-best “Shot-Scorer” in the League (take a wild guess who was number one).

Kevin has also evolved as a leader, navigating a franchise with a head coach I still argue is overmatched and an insanely skilled point guard who does not always represent, shall we say, traditional point guard values.

When I first started thinking about this write-up, I was almost going to write it negative. Like on some “I’m sick of Kevin’s narrative” shit. He was the second-best two seasons ago. He was the second-best last year. He’s gonna be the second-best this year. He’s fun to watch. He’s nice. He’s not nice. He shows out in the winter. He shows out in the summer. It’s all good, but none of it is new.

But being “bored” with that? That’s my problem. Or the problem of the copy writers who need to think of new and inventive ways to use Kevin to move product, when the greatest help any of us who have to tell KD’s story could be given is for him to surpass LeBron James, either in popular opinion or at least by winning his first NBA title.

Alas, I don’t think either of those is going to happen this year. LeBron is too solid to give up his crown as the game’s top player, and the Thunder are too thin to take the crown as the NBA’s best team. Ironically, I don’t think either team will win this season’s title, but you can read my picks here next week.

LeBron’s literally unparalleled package of physique, skill and mental approach made him the unanimous pick for No. 1 one on this list. Kevin Durant’s incredible package of skills and scoring mentality made him the unanimous pick for No. 2 on this list. Per Ryne, this is actually the second straight year that these two guys were the only unanimous picks.

When I got over my brief/dumb idea, to write this in a negative, challenging way that would accomplish nothing other than making me sound like a jerk, I briefly went the other way and considered calling KD “1A.” But that’s not true either. Kevin Durant is awesome. He’s the second-best basketball player on the planet. He’s not LeBron James.

If only the age-old song my daughter recently learned in kindergarten actually had a real-life meaning.

“First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one…”

You know, there may be an ad campaign in there somewhere.

[poll id=”623″]

Rankings are based on expected contribution in ’13-14—to players’ team, the League and the game.

The post Top 50: Kevin Durant, no. 2 appeared first on SLAM.

Originally published in KICKS 16

by Ben Osborne / @bosborne17

portraits by Atiba Jefferson / sneaker shot by Tom Medvedich

Striding through Under Armour’s ever-expanding corporate campus in Baltimore on a recent Saturday, Brandon Jennings and Raymond Felton are laughing and talking about other NBA players like my friends and I would. Team X “gets all the calls.” Player Y “always cheatin’.” Proper names were dropped and the language was saltier, but you get the point.

Steps later, BJ and Ray, along with their fellow UA endorsers Greivis Vasquez and Kemba Walker, stroll on to the three-quarter court plopped into the middle of one of the office buildings. All four guys—along with assorted UA staff and the KICKS crew—have been on campus for more than three hours at this point. There have been print and video interviews conducted, minor makeup and grooming, three different photo set-ups and double-digit outfit changes. As far as I’m concerned, this shoot has been a success—and is done. The guys can go back to their hotel, in other words. But, says Ray, “You can’t bring four basketball players through a gym and think we’re not gonna shoot.”

Greivis can’t do much because of an ankle injury he’s recovering from, but the others are drawn to the three-point line like kids to an ice-cream truck, launching threes, talking shit, having a good old time.

The jovial, basketball-obsessed atmosphere is reminiscent of the wind-down time at an NBA practice or shootaround before a game. With one noticeable difference: The guys aren’t liable to be traded from this team any time soon—and it doesn’t take much prompting to get the NBA players present to speak on this incredibly timely contradiction.

Vasquez, a day removed from being introduced as a Sacramento King and just months after completing a breakout season with the New Orleans Hornets, certainly gets it. “I was surprised by the trade, yeah,” says the 26-year-old GV, who averaged a career-high 14 ppg and 9 apg last season. “After the year I had, and the good relationships I’d built with the coach and the front office. I was watching the Draft and I saw we got a big guy [Nerlens Noel]. I was excited. Then I saw we had traded for Jrue [Holiday]. I was, like, Guess I’m getting traded. But it’s not bad. Sacramento has a new coach, a new GM and excited fans. Under Armour, though? I’ve been with them since college. [CEO] Kevin Plank, everyone here, has been good to me. I identify with this company and I love being part of this family.”

Jennings, the 23-year-old near-All-Star with career averages of 17 points and 6 assists per over his four NBA seasons, is looking at a completely uncertain future as of this morning. “Part of me will be very sad if I’m done with the Bucks,” BJ says. “I had a 55-point game there. Made it to the Playoffs twice. There’s a lot of memories, and some unfinished business. But change isn’t bad. I think it could be good for me to go somewhere else. I’ve learned in my four-to-five years in this League that the NBA is just a business. Under Armour has treated me a lot differently than that.”

[Sure enough, the very day this issue went to press, Jennings was moved to the Pistons in a sign-and-trade.—Ed.]

The 29-year-old Felton, eight years into an extremely steady career (been a starting PG since day one, usually averaging around 14 and 7) that always saw him in adidas, is beginning just his second season with Under Armour, but he knows all about how fleeting NBA “families” can be. After all, the Knicks are his fourth team, and it’s already his second stint with them. “Being with Under Armour has been great so far, really cool,” says Ray, who has spent the last several days doing UA photo shoots, public appearances and meet-and-greets with employees. “I’m doing more with them than I’ve done in the past. This is an up-and-coming organization as far as basketball and it’s been great to be with these guys.”

In a way, the former Final Four hero and now-23-year-old Walker has the most stable NBA situation. He’s coming off an 17.7-ppg/5.7-apg/18.86-PER (the best of this foursome by a good margin) sophomore campaign and is the leader of his team. Then again, that team is in Charlotte, where a two-year stint makes you a graybeard and the team nickname won’t even exist in 10 months. Who knows how long Kemba will be in CLT? Not as long as he’ll be in Under Armours, it says here. “Losing is frustrating,” Kemba says with a shake of his head. “The first two years have been a learning process that has made me better, but I don’t want to lose anymore. We’ve made some good moves, though. New coach [Steve Clifford], a real post presence [Al Jefferson]. It should be nice. We’ll still be an underdog, though, just like Under Armour. Here, we’re just growing, giving input and doing better with each sneaker.”

Ah yes, sneakers. SLAM doesn’t sell—and shoes definitely don’t sell—on the strength of a “family atmosphere.” It can be a selling point as you sign athletes or hire employees, but everyone in this business knows at the end of the day—or quarter, or at the least, fiscal year—at some point, you better move some product.

More and more, the folks at Under Armour feel they have the product to move. On the footwear front, the push this year is the Anatomix Spawn, which all four of our cover subjects are wearing at this shoot. A mid-cut shoe with innovative UA proprietary foams in the tongue and full-length Micro G midsole, the real story of the Spawn’s design is its close adherence to an actual human foot.

“We had fit, performance and innovation in mind,” says Ross Klein, Lead Designer of the Anatomix Spawn. “We started this shoe with the idea of no dead space. With that, and keeping in mind the idea of fit, we starting trying to understand the complexity of the foot. The foot has 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 muscles and ligaments and tendons. So you’re finding these matrixes of different entities, but they all work together and become almost like a machine that just churns. Then we started subdividing the foot; there’s the hind-foot, the mid-foot and the fore-foot—three basically different sections of the foot, all with different bones and different systems. So, the densities, elasticities, the strengths, all of those things which differ, are comprised in this shoe. That’s why if somebody looks at this shoe and thinks it’s complex, it’s actually no different than how our foot interacts, it’s just under your skin.”

And, as you can see in the pictures in the gallery above, the shoes—which dropped in team colors on September 1 and will be released in more unique colorways on October 1, all with a $120 price tag—look pretty fresh, too.

“This shoe keeps us moving in the right direction,” says Mike Parker, UA’s Brand Marketing Director for Basketball. “I think our early product was on par with the industry standard but didn’t stand out too much. Then last year we came out with the Charge BB, which was so different. The Spawn is not as drastic as that, but it has a great story tied to fit. It’s a very important shoe for us.”

Kemba and UA teammate DeAndre Jordan have already worn the shoe at the USA Basketball Mini Camp, and they, along with Brandon, Greivis and Ray, will be wearing it when the ’13-14 NBA season kicks off. “I love these new Spawns. We really help each other with them,” Kemba says of the player-designer relationship as new shoes come through the pipeline. “It’s very cool.”

Adds Klein: “Because we’re so small, we really do work hand-in-hand with our players. Each of these players have different needs and different offerings. Somebody wants more collar foam, and someone wants less tongue foam. So, we’re very quick to be able to identify what they need and to filter it through what they’re going to be wearing during the games. We were so hands on in this process that we got the in-line one as tuned to every one player’s needs that it sort of went for everybody.”

On the apparel tip, UA is already in good shape. So good, in fact, that they can go out and do a licensing deal that features some of the most recognizable images in pop culture. While not a strict basketball play at all, Under Armour execs are only too happy to see their high-profile ballers rock their new Alter Ego line of baselayer performance apparel, which features legendary superhero logos from DC Comics and Marvel such as Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk. “Superhuman feats are accomplished by athletes every day. Whether it’s achieving a personal goal or competing on the field, we wanted to enable athletes to feel like a superhero and show off their alter ego,” says Glenn Silbert, UA’s Vice President, Men’s, Youth and Accessories.

Naturally, the players are happy to wear them, giving our photographer his best shots when they were in the gear, and then asking to keep the samples at the end of the shoot.

Whether it’s laughing about opponents they have in common, poking fun at how they each look in the different superhero outfits, or breaking into the “Harlem Shake” mid-photo shoot, each of the four guys we are shooting today can be described as emotional, fun and vocal. They are leaders. They are point guards.

“This is a really good group of guys,” Parker says. “They all have that leadership background. Giving orders, working hard and leading by example. And that’s what we’re trying to do at Under Armour—lead by example.”

Parker is referring to Under Armour’s place in the world, but any conversation with someone who works in UA Basketball also leads to where and how hoops fits within the company, as well. After all, this was a brand built on football, lacrosse and baseball, building a suburban consumer-base that often doesn’t have much in common with the style leaders of America’s big cities.

“Internally, basketball is a very prized possession because it’s so tough,” Klein says. “You have a company that owns an incredible majority of the audience in terms of footwear now [Nike], and we’re coming in as these new guys and we’re causing a lot of disruption. Internally, everybody wants to see how we’re doing that. They want to see what’s locked up in the cabinets because the innovation that goes on with these shoes is pretty advanced. We not only use the factories that we’re familiar with to build shoes, but we also use factories that are unfamiliar to shoe building that are just specialized in one specific aspect of a shoe. Also, with our marketing department, they’re looking at huge assets, like we just signed St. John’s, a big New York City school. We’re chugging away at this grassroots campaign and going in more humble instead of screaming out, ‘We’re the greatest, we do everything.’ We’re very humble as a team, but basketball is a little magical here.”

As the guys slowly end their impromptu shootaround and gather their belongings, they talk about where they’re headed next. After several days together, these four “teammates” will go their separate ways by tomorrow. But their bond will last. “We’re not going to talk too much during the season because we’re going to be trying to kick each other’s butts,” Vasquez says with a chuckle. “But seeing the guys during times like these is always cool. Ray Felton’s got eight years in the League—you think I can’t learn from talking to him? I’ve known Brandon for a real long time. And Kemba—everyone likes Kemba. It’s just a fun group to be around.”

“It’s real tight-knit,” Parker cosigns. “Everybody genuinely likes each other. At some brands, the only people who are allowed to talk to the players are the ones who work in Sports Marketing. Here, everyone can, from Product Line Manager to Marketing. We work with the players, because all of us have the same goal.”

The post La Familia appeared first on SLAM.

by Ben Osborne / @bosborne17

portraits by Atiba Jefferson / sneaker shot by Tom Medvedich

As I say in my “Sneaker Pimp” letter and the cover 1 post, there’s no arguing that Nike is still the brand for superduperstars. Besides exhibit A for that, Kevin Durant, this issue also looks at the shoes Jordan Brand endorsers Blake Griffin and Russell Westbrook will be wearing, and features Jrue Holiday and Iman Shumpert, who proudly wear adidas.

As we’ve mentioned in past KICKS, though, Under Armour just keeps nipping at the other guys’ heels. What UA lacks in superstars they make up for in…superheroes? Not exactly, but the crazy licensed Alter Ego tops that Brandon Jennings (Iron Man), Raymond Felton (Batman), Greivis Vasquez (Spider-Man) and Kemba Walker (Hulk) are rocking on our cover do give off that vibe. Everyone in this crew of four starting NBA point guards is approaching the new season with something to prove, on and off the court. Brandon, who was philosophically weighing the pros and cons of the likelihood that he was done with the Bucks on the day of our shoot, is hoping to accomplish much more in Detroit than he did in Milwaukee. Raymond, who is constantly overshadowed, even on the Knicks, wants to get New York one step closer to a title. Greivis is looking to show the Pelicans they never should have traded him, and Kemba, who had a quietly tremendous ’12-13 season, is hoping that a new coach and a legit big man can stop the stream of losses in Charlotte.

These guys carry the underdog vibe they feel in the NBA into the shoe game, too, knowing that by rocking a brand that is still so new they are going against the grain. Armed with superhero gear and a fresh new shoe, the Anatomix Spawn, they all feel this will be a big year. They also don’t take opportunities like being on a KICKS cover lightly, which made the day I spent with them in Baltimore fun…and hopefully the story I wrote in the issue fun to read!

Nike, Jordan, adidas and UA just scratch the surface of what’s in this year’s KICKS. Between our First Step section, feature well and always thorough product sections, we also cover the likes of Above The Rim, AND 1, Converse, Li-Ning, Puma, Reebok and more.

So…who are your friends at KICKS rooting for? All of ’em. For real. We will always have amazing respect for Nike, which has outfitted the most players during the SLAM Era and was the sole sponsor of KICKS 1. But we like variety, too. As consumers, and observers of the culture we helped explode, we love seeing different brands do cool stuff. We also dig all the creative folks who are turning sneakers into a way of life—this issue alone features articles on a collector, customizers, museum, playwright, photographer, professor and retailer who have skin in the game.

Us? We’ll just keep being the “Sneaker Bible,” in all that encompasses. Please look for our latest effort on New York City newsstands today and nationally/internationally next week.

Click here to see our other KICKS 16 cover, featuring Kevin Durant and the KD VI.

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When we posted this year’s Champs cover two weeks ago today, the reaction was pretty awesome. Via the site, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, readers expressed their approval. And then LeBron chimed in: “S/O @slamonline for the cover! #SlamIsFam #StriveForGreatness #EarnedNotGiven #Witness.”

I was on vacation at the time, and given how the job my co-workers and I do has largely become a 24-7 operation, my goal was to take five days as off as possible. Then my phone started blowing up. And in no time at all I went from trying not to be in touch with the office and not talking about my job with the folks I was away with, to excitedly showing our site and Bron’s post to pretty much everyone I was with.

I wasn’t trying to brag or be obnoxious, and for the rest of the week I did do a good job of properly relaxing, but for a couple-hour stretch, I just felt too proud to ignore the feelings.

Yes, Bron was shouting himself out, too, and no, I don’t think he reads every issue of SLAM from cover-to-cover, but here’s my position…

For going on 20 years, SLAM has been the magazine of the player. We give the players’ side of things, we’re a constant in backpacks and string bags across the country, and getting in SLAM—or even better, getting on our cover—remains a massive goal for every youngster who starts hooping seriously. But they don’t all look through our mag for self-serving reasons. They do it because we’re good. And if the Best Player in the World likes us enough to put a post like that out to a combined 12 million people via IG and Twitter, well, we must be doing something right.

And I think this latest issue, with one of our more unique cover looks (shouts to Creative Director Melissa Brennan, as always), lives up to what has made Bron and so many others happy customers over the years. We’ve got our great Finals recaps, with in-person reports from all seven games, making it a must-have for Heat fans (and, arguably, Spurs fans, since we certainly show the game Western Conference Champs a ton of respect in the issue). We’ve got features on breakout Playoff performers Harrison Barnes and Reggie Jackson. We’ve got an Old-School on baller/politician/scholar Tom McMillen. And perhaps best of all, in this era of fleeting media, we’ve got the Year in Photos, with sick shots of the game’s best players, all but begging to be ripped out and saved or put on your walls. The issue will be out today in NYC, nationally later this week and in subscribers’ mailboxes next week. Buyers will not be disappointed.

And don’t think we’re slowing down. I got my little vacation in and the whole crew had a long 4th of July Weekend, but we are back to work in a big way. KICKS 16 is on deck, and then we’ll go back-to-school with a whole new look in SLAM 172. We just want to live up to what the King says: #StriveForGreatness.

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First, a note about the calendar. The first SLAM I or anyone else bought came out in early 1994. It didn’t even have a cover date on it. It was an experiment, really. It could have sold out in a week, or it could have languished on shelves for months, never to be printed again. There is zero exaggeration when I say a mag like SLAM had never existed before. The “’94” launch makes this special 20-year anniversary issue a smidge early. But here’s the thing: Dennis Page and friends built the magazine in ’93. The first Slamadamonth—soon to be displayed in a new section on this site with 169 others—happened in November, ’93. And, our good old-fashioned publishing calendar has always created a challenge for this issue that drops in June. All these factors combined to make us want to celebrate right now.

This is also the time of year when the game’s true greats separate themselves from the merely good/entertaining. There is no doubt SLAM honors both. Stephon Marbury was on multiple covers. Sebastian Telfair was on multiple covers. Steve Francis. Latrell Sprewell. Jason Williams. We don’t apologize for any of those.

All those cats were fun as hell, and for much of the long NBA season, the unique skills and personalities that players like that possessed help make so many games worth watching. But people who think that SLAM is about style over substance are dead wrong. The three players who have been on the most covers in our history are Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Why? Because they combined the style and flavor that entertains with the accomplishments—many of which happened in June—that makes their impact everlasting. They are the players who combined it all in the ultimate package. They are the players we had special illustrations commissioned of. And in many ways, they are why we are still here.

Besides reflections on how these cover subjects helped shape the history of SLAM and its readers, this very special issue includes quotes from dozens of other players who have been on the cover, a feature on the long path the aforementioned Telfair has taken, SLAM photographers’ favorite shots ever and so much more dope stuff.

Look for all three covers on newsstands this week, and be sure and stay locked to this site as well as our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds for more anniversary goodies.

#SLAM20

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Related: A bunch of NBA players speak about their SLAM cover experiences.

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