This story first appeared in SLAM 250.
I ponder if my love for amassing comes from the satisfaction gained from understanding that all the pieces is so as and accounted for. That the numbers line up and all the pieces slots into place. The truth that each SLAM difficulty 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 difficulty 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. In contrast, after we hit our first main landmark, Problem 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 advanced from weighty to astronomical. Streetball had infested our DVD collections and the saggy style 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 vital 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 totally different. I’m not solely speaking concerning the three alternate covers, I’m speaking concerning the never-seen-before digital camera angles. Our quick however vital stint within the sport 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 number of the most iconic footage in basketball historical past. To place it plainly, you doubtless 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 photographs of one of the vital vital moments in Mike’s profession. The consequence was a becoming cowl collection for our fiftieth difficulty.
The “acquainted however totally 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 all the pieces adjustments, whereas someway staying the identical. All executed chaotically however completely. All the things slotting into place. Numbered within the basketball timeline.
