This story first appeared in SLAM 250.
I’m wondering if my love for accumulating comes from the satisfaction gained from figuring out 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 challenge ever launched has a quantity, and this quantity represents a date on the basketball timeline appeals to me. I’m a weirdo. Don’t decide me.
By way of challenge numbers, our final milestone was after we hit you with the Iverson/Jordan double whammy on Concern 200, August 2016. Within the eight years which have handed since, issues have modified—not essentially in drastic methods, however there are adjustments nonetheless. In contrast, after we hit our first main landmark, Concern 50, again in 2001, the adjustments that had occurred since our conception in 1994 had been wild.
The web had immensely modified the best way we consumed basketball data. Salaries had developed from weighty to astronomical. Streetball had infested our DVD collections and the dishevelled trend period was about to get actual. Very actual. One factor remained, although. Michael Jordan was our basketball god.
It was becoming, then, that one of the 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 digicam angles. Our brief however important stint within the sport meant editors Russ Bengtson and Tony G had constructed a strong relationship with legendary NBA photographer Nat Butler. Nat has taken (and continues to take) a number of the most iconic footage in basketball historical past. To place it plainly, you seemingly rock his pics on tees, put up 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 pictures of one of the important moments in Mike’s profession. The consequence was a becoming cowl sequence for our fiftieth challenge.
The “acquainted however completely different” aspect 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. Every part slotting into place. Numbered within the basketball timeline.
