This story first appeared in SLAM 250.
I’m wondering if my love for gathering comes from the satisfaction gained from realizing that the whole lot is so as and accounted for. That the numbers line up and the whole lot slots into place. The truth that each SLAM concern ever launched has a quantity, and this quantity represents a date on the basketball timeline appeals to me. I’m a weirdo. Don’t choose me.
When it comes to concern numbers, our final milestone was after we hit you with the Iverson/Jordan double whammy on Problem 200, August 2016. Within the eight years which have handed since, issues have modified—not essentially in drastic methods, however there are adjustments nonetheless. Against this, after we hit our first main landmark, Problem 50, again in 2001, the adjustments that had occurred since our conception in 1994 have been wild.
The web had immensely modified the way in which we consumed basketball info. Salaries had advanced from weighty to astronomical. Streetball had infested our DVD collections and the dishevelled vogue period was about to get actual. Very actual. One factor remained, although. Michael Jordan was our basketball god.
It was becoming, then, that probably the most iconic MJ moments ought to inhabit the entrance web page of our fiftieth drop. It was the notorious free-throw line jam, the Windy Metropolis model—the White Cements…Solely we did it completely different. I’m not solely speaking in regards to the three alternate covers, I’m speaking in regards to the never-seen-before digital camera angles. Our brief however important stint within the recreation meant editors Russ Bengtson and Tony G had constructed a stable relationship with legendary NBA photographer Nat Butler. Nat has taken (and continues to take) a few of the most iconic photos in basketball historical past. To place it plainly, you probably rock his pics on tees, publish them in your feed and select them as your background. The (presumably) unlikely friendship that our forefathers made with Nat meant that he granted entry to—and permission to make use of—beforehand unseen photographs of probably the most important moments in Mike’s profession. The consequence was a becoming cowl collection for our fiftieth concern.
The “acquainted however completely different” ingredient of the SLAM 50 covers epitomizes these early SLAM years. Providing you with one thing you thought you knew, however making you look twice. Reminding us that the whole lot adjustments, whereas someway staying the identical. All executed chaotically however completely. The whole lot slotting into place. Numbered within the basketball timeline.
