Category: Basketball

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

“Are you serious? Like, for real?” 

Derrick Rose can’t believe what he’s hearing. It’s a Thursday morning in Memphis, and even though the Grizzlies don’t have an official practice on the books today, DRose is at the team’s facility to lift weights, run drills and get some shots up—things a guy in his 16th NBA season has learned how to do to keep his game sharp.

That Rose is even in Memphis at all these days is something of a miracle, a testament to how the world is reciprocal and a chance for Rose’s career to wind down in the same arena where he stamped his spot on the national scene. After playing high school ball in Chicago, where he made his name as another in a long line of celebrated ballers from Simeon Academy, Rose left the Windy City in favor of the Bluff City, joining John Calipari at the University of Memphis. After a 26-0 start, the Tigers made it to the NCAA Tournament with a 33-1 record, eventually losing to Kansas in the championship game. 

After one year in Memphis, Rose went back home, the first overall pick of the Chicago Bulls. He won a Rookie of the Year award, made an All-Star team and became one of the pillars of adidas basketball. In a League of Goliaths, Rose was David, fearlessly attacking giants and slaying each possession as if it was his last. Rose played with breathtaking abandon, and his furious styles earned him legions of fans.

And then, before just his third NBA season, Rose appeared on the cover of SLAM for a third time and called his shot: He wanted to be the NBA’s MVP. Right away. So, he spoke his truth into existence in the pages of SLAM 143. 

“That was really me gauging the talent in the League at the time and feeling like I could compete against that,” Rose says today. “So why not go for it? I wanted to go for it, and I was also thinking about getting a championship, so I said that as a way to hype myself up.”

Whatever the method, it worked. Rose won an MVP at age 22, the youngest player in NBA history to win the nod. And then, not long after, during a first-round playoff game in 2012, Derrick Rose tore his ACL, knocking him out for an entire season. He returned in 2013 and posted four consecutive seasons averaging double-digits, but it was a different Derrick Rose, and not just on the court. Rose used his forced time away from the game to “figure out who I really am as a person…Back in the day, when I first got [to Memphis], I wasn’t able to articulate myself like this. So with me expressing myself like this, someone who has been an introvert, I pat myself on the back, because I had to work to get to where I’m at.”

The changes weren’t only internal. Looking back at some of those old SLAM covers, Derrick Rose is almost unrecognizable today. The eyes are still there—that laser-sharp stare—but the old Rose had short hair and a handful of tattoos. These days, Derrick Rose’s braids brush the tops of his shoulders, tattoos run all the way up to his chin, his neat goatee has blossomed into a full beard. He’s quick with a grin and willing to drop knowledge wherever he can—when the Grizzlies struggled defensively earlier this season, it was Rose who called out their need to improve communication. He may no longer be able to stop on a dime and soar over defenses, but his accumulated institutional knowledge makes him invaluable to NBA teams in need of leadership and experience, like the Grizzlies.

Rose says playing such a pivotal part of SLAM’s history means a lot: “When you think about the AI cover, that was the most iconic one that I can remember—the hair out, everything. For me, it’s an honor to actually be on the cover, and know there are people who still rock that cover, who still have those covers framed.”

And the disbelief? That came from being told that his old covers are among the most popular t-shirts that SLAM has ever produced. 

“Are you serious?” Rose repeats. When confirmed, Rose smiles wide. 

“That’s love, right there.” 

---

Feature via Getty Image. Portrait by Atiba Jefferson.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

I knew right away. Even as the words were escaping Kevin Durant’s mouth. It was the spring of 2007, and the 18-year-old Durant was in the mix to be the first pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. He was tall and lanky, and in one year at the University of Texas had flashed his developing scoring chops, averaging 25.8 ppg. The other candidate for the first pick was Greg Oden, who had led a stacked Ohio State team to the NCAA title game and looked to be the next big man in a long line of next big men. 

For SLAM 110, we had the idea of putting Durant and Oden on the cover together, like one of those old boxing posters, a play on the choice NBA teams had to make. Kevin and his mom showed up to the photo studio just outside Washington, DC, and they were game for our concept, although I remember them wanting to be sure we didn’t frame it as KD and Oden not liking one another; they were rivals, sure, but it was a friendly rivalry between two kids who’d played against each other on the AAU circuit for years. 

For the cover story, I decided to separately ask Oden and Durant the same set of questions, as if I were an NBA team conducting pre-draft interviews, and then put their answers side-by-side, as a way to compare and contrast their personalities and mindsets. We’d report, you’d decide. I interviewed Oden over the phone while he was traveling around for pre-draft workouts, and he was perfectly fine to talk with, answering everything politely and thoughtfully, saying all the right things you would want to hear from a potential No. 1 draft pick. 

The question that cracked the code, at least for me, was when I asked them each why they should be the first overall pick. Oden talked about working hard, being a good person, fitting in and making whatever sacrifices were needed for his team to win. His answer was perfectly fine.

But when I asked Kevin Durant why he should be the first overall pick, he said, “I think I have a winning mentality. Even though I’m young, I can bring leadership to an organization. I’m just cold-blooded. I really don’t care. Whoever’s in front of me, I’m going to do my best to destroy them. Younger people might back down sometimes, but I think I’m a tough player and I won’t back down from anything—I accept challenges. I know it’s going to be hard, but everything you have to face is hard. I’ll be young, and I’m sure people will write me off and say I’m too small or not ready, but I’ve been going through that my whole life.”

That was when I was certain. What else could you want from a kid about to make the leap to the toughest professional sports league available to him? I’ll take all the confidence you can muster. And in retrospect, looking back at all the accolades Durant has compiled, from an MVP to two rings to a few Olympic Gold medals, we all should have known what was on the horizon. 

The rest is his story. The Blazers took Oden first overall, while Durant went to the SuperSonics (who quickly became the Thunder). Kevin Durant fulfilled the promises of so many. During a time in the ’00s when basketball was creeping toward becoming positionless, Durant pressed fast-forward on that evolution and made a series of suggestions into a reality, scoring easily from all three levels, adding defense, ballhandling, turning players like Wemby and Chet into archetypes instead of unicorns.

Durant made his journey with SLAM alongside, from the photos of him in high school as an impossibly skinny kid to the championship covers. When KD launched his own podcast, he devoted an entire episode to SLAM. “SLAM was so important to us because it was all basketball,” he said. 

Today, at 35 years old, KD is currently fourth in the NBA at 30.8 ppg and has settled into life in the desert, teaming with Devin Booker and Bradley Beal to form what should be a formidable squad in Phoenix. Durant also recently slid into the NBA’s all-time top 10 in points scored, and he doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

From beginnings that were somewhat uncertain, Kevin Durant has more than made good on the promise he showed almost two decades ago when he first appeared in SLAM.

It was written. 

---

Photo via Getty Images. Portrait by Rachael Golden.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

It was very, very simple. Just a pump fake and one dribble to her right. That’s all she needed to win Game 3 of the 2015 WNBA Finals. A pump fake and one dribble to her right gave her all the space required to drill a buzzer-beating three from the top of the key. And that highlight is probably the best way to capture Maya Moore’s greatness. She was always efficient. She was always steady. She was always the closer.  

In 2018, we used Moore’s SLAM 217 cover (and the cover shoot content) to help catapult our women’s basketball coverage. Coming off that shoot starring the prolific winner (four WNBA championships, two Olympic Golds and two NCAA championships), we launched WSLAM, which has now grown to become the best coverage of women’s hoops on every level. 

And what a player to start with. Moore won throughout her entire career. Whether by the eye test or by looking at the stats, her dominance is obvious. This would be a good time to mention how she averaged 18 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists in her eight seasons with the Minnesota Lynx. It’d be appropriate to mention how she won the EuroLeague twice. And here, right here, feels like the correct place to mention how she also won the Liga Femenina de Baloncesto title, the WCBA championship three times and the world championship twice. 

We’re not calling her the GOAT. No, no. No, no, no. We’re just saying we understand those who do bestow that title upon her. Because…damn. That’s a lot of winning. Also, can’t forget the MVP trophy, the five different All-WNBA First Team selections, the WNBA Rookie of the Year award and the Finals MVP nod. Or the game-winners. Or the many on-court highlights that defied logic and all the history of previous WNBA players. We had never seen somebody on the floor like Maya Moore. 

Even off the court, Moore was singular, as she remains to this day. For somebody so utterly dominant and competitive when the bright lights are on, she has consistently been a gentle soul away from the flashbulbs and the cameras. Flip to page 41 of SLAM 217 for evidence. 

“My identity is not being the best basketball player,” Moore told us at the time. “Or even being Black. I mean, I’m a Black woman, and I own that. I try just to do as much as I can to live an authentic life and point people to truth. And being authentic means admitting when I don’t know. And admitting that I could’ve been better. And admitting I want to be better if I can.”

That hunger to be better is a little familiar. It sounds like somebody else who, like Moore, wore 23 on their jersey.

Moore was quickly grabbed up by Jordan Brand after she left UConn. It’s an important part of her story, and it contributed to her being on this list. Having the honor of being the first woman signed to Jordan is a quality illustrator of her greatness. The high standard that Michael set was met by Maya. 

Being associated with the Jumpman, as well as everything else she did on the court, combines for a nearly unquantifiable impact. We have to wait a few more years for young players across the country to get drafted to the W, get asked about who inspired them and hear them all speak about how much Maya Moore means to them. But it’ll happen.

Though Moore’s on-court career ended on August 21, 2018, her impact didn’t. She retired from basketball with a mission. She wanted to help a man named Jonathan Irons get released from prison. With Moore’s assistance, Irons’ wrongful conviction was overturned. Moore and her family advocated for previously concealed evidence in his nonfatal shooting case to be brought before the Missouri courts in 2020. He had spent over 20 years behind bars as an innocent man, and Moore gave up basketball to help him get his life back. Then, in the plot twist of our time, Moore and Irons got married soon after he was released. It’s one hell of a love story. 

So in the end, Moore, one of the greatest ever, hung up her Jordans to live her authentic life.

That SLAM 217 cover story opens  with a wry smile on Moore’s face. On some you-know-how-good-I-am-at-everything kind of energy. Both competitive and gentle. 

---

Photo via Getty.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

I called Chris Paul the “Forrest Gump of the post-2005 NBA” in a 2020 cover story about him. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory but figured I should spend some time here to explain that, because it sets the table for the reason CP3 is on this list.

Let’s quickly run through what earned him that distinction. In 2005, he’s drafted by New Orleans, but due to destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, he spends most of his first two NBA seasons playing home games in Oklahoma City. In NOLA, he becomes homies with Lil Wayne, becomes an All-Star, becomes arguably the best PG in the League, becomes a playoff contender. Then he’s traded to the Lakers, un-traded by David Stern (I can’t emphasize enough how big a deal this was on 2011 NBA Twitter), then traded to the Clippers, becoming the heart of Lob City (another massive part of early 2010s NBA Twitter) and a perpetual postseason contender. He becomes president of the NBA Players Association, signs a long-term contract, and then the Donald Sterling racist audio incident happens, and he’s in the middle of that saga. Eventually he’s traded to Houston, then OKC. Then Covid happens, and Chris is in the middle of setting up the Bubble, lowkey a huge national public health story. Then, while in the Bubble, the Jacob Blake shooting takes place, and Chris—literally on national TV before a Thunder-Rockets game is about to tip—is a part of the group that holds the players off the court, and later as PA president, is the head of the group that figured out how to infuse social justice messaging and action into the NBA’s infrastructure. He leads the Thunder on an impressive run in the Bubble, then later joins the Suns, where he leads the team to the Finals, and is on the team when there’s another racist owner situation with Robert Sarver, who later sells the franchise.

A couple years pass and then CP3 joins the Warriors, where he’s currently attempting to help push the Steph-Klay-Dray group toward another ring. Along the way he played an iconic commercial character (Cliff Paul), amassed 22,000+ points and 11,000+ assists, made 12 All-Star teams and the NBA’s 75th Anniversary team and dropped 13 signature sneakers with Jordan Brand. And he was on the banana boat, because of course he was. The guy is everywhere.

“Forrest Gump of the post-2005 NBA”—undeniably accurate. But that’s not alone enough to make it to this list, because this is the “30 Players Who Defined SLAM’s 30 Years,” and if there wasn’t a direct SLAM connection, Chris would just be a guy who was around the NBA universe for a while, paying us no mind. But CP3 paid us plenty mind. He was first featured in SLAM in April 2003 as a high schooler with a one-page PUNKS article in the back of the mag; his brother CJ once told me that his family had that page framed in their house.

He was on his first SLAM cover in 2006, his second in 2008, his third in 2009, his fourth in 2011, his fifth in 2012 (alongside Blake Griffin), and his sixth in 2020. In his prime, he had a fun, uptempo point guard game that a magazine like SLAM was practically created to celebrate, and in his veteran years, he’s been a methodical game manager who almost exclusively plays on teams we cover deep into the playoffs. He was always relevant in the sneaker world—the aforementioned 13 sigs—and he was early in the tunnel fit game, becoming an @LeagueFits regular during our fashion account’s salad days. (The three hoodies he wore in his most recent cover shoot were produced in collaboration with SLAM and LeagueFits and sold on slamgoods.com, with the profits going to charity.)

A player who’s seemingly everywhere, finding his way into every crevice of basketball culture and NBA happenings for almost two decades, and a publication that covers every crevice of basketball culture and NBA happenings for exactly three decades. It makes perfect sense that the two would have a great, symbiotic relationship.

So, of course Chris was going to be on this list. The guy is everywhere. 

---

Photo via Getty Images. Portrait by Kyle Hood.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

This was early 2002, a cold winter day in snow-covered Trenton, NJ, in an arena then named for a bank and since renamed for an insurance company, as these things are. Among the more than 8,000 people packed into the building were hundreds of media members; among them was a now-famous NBA reporter, best known for his hashtag social media bombs, then working as a columnist at a midsized newspaper where, a few years earlier, we (briefly) had been colleagues. Like the rest of the media pack, we were there to watch a high school basketball game, but really, we were there to watch one particular high school basketball player.

Chatting pregame near our baseline seats, two or three rows back from the court, he said something about that player that at the time I disagreed with, and that I’ve also never forgotten: “This kid’s like the perfect SLAM magazine guy.”

I disagreed because, well, we already had a few perfect guys. We had Michael Jordan, not far away from his final retirement but still the foundation without which this magazine could not exist. We had Kobe Bryant, a soon-to-be three-time defending NBA champion and Jordan’s polarizing heir apparent. And we had Allen Iverson, the purest representation of an ongoing cultural moment that this magazine has documented like no one else. But…this kid? Generationally special, no doubt. It just seemed a bit early to think of him on quite that level.

Six months later, around the time we gave LeBron James his third full-length feature—not including the year of high school diaries he’d penned for us—and his second cover, all (still) before he’d stepped onto an NBA court, I no longer disagreed.

We did not, for the record, see all this coming. Not all of it, anyway. Not the 21 seasons and 21 All-Star nods, not the four championships and four MVPs, sure as hell not the all-time NBA scoring record. But we were very confident he’d be very good, which is why we gave him feature-length coverage before pretty much anyone outside his hometown had heard of him. And the 27 covers and two special issues in the two decades since would seem to confirm that yes, LeBron James—a fixture in these pages for 23 of our 30 years of existence—is probably the single most iconic player of the SLAM era.

He’ll always be remembered most for his NBA superlatives, the unprecedented statistical output and, of course, those rings. That’s the lead on his Wikipedia page and the inscription on his Hall of Fame plaque. But the story—his story, and the nexus of his story with ours—is so much more than that. LeBron’s story was a movie (not to mention a couple of books) before he ever got to Draft night. That’s the story we told before anyone else, the one that left us uniquely suited to tell the rest. Maybe the only thing more incredible than how it started is that somehow, it still shows no signs of coming to an end.

We’ve told this one before, but for the sake of setting the scene, it bears repeating. Spring 2001, near the end of his sophomore year, we took a flight from New York City to Akron, OH, to spend a day with LeBron James. When we arrived at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, there was a small sign out front bearing the words “WELCOME SLAM MAGAZINE.” Within a year or so, it would be replaced with a sign on the door announcing that media were barred from campus.

But that was later. Back in ’01, the folks at St. V were excited that someone from a national magazine was coming to their tiny high school to write a story about one of their own. They knew LeBron was good, of course—by that point he was a two-time state champ and pretty clearly the best player in Ohio. But SLAM showing up was different. This meant LeBron wasn’t just good. He was about to be famous, too.

LeBron made his mag debut with that feature-length profile that summer, followed immediately by a year-long run as our Basketball Diary writer—the first non-senior to hold that spot. (They might not put that on the HOF plaque, but for both of us, it was history of a sort.) From the beginning, LeBron was telling his story in our pages.

It took a while, but eventually the rest of our sports media peers started catching up. The Sports Illustrated cover came late in his junior year, back when SI was elite and its cover choices could drive the narrative. Steady coverage on SportsCenter, then the place to catch the most important sports news and highlights, followed soon after. By the end of his junior year, Bron’s story was national.

By the middle of his senior year, when St. V was playing a national schedule and LeBron’s highlights were going pre-Twitter viral, it was an unprecedented circus. Ohio’s high school governing body didn’t know how to handle it, investigating the 18-year-old senior—who would be worth more than $100 million by his next birthday—for driving a Hummer gifted to him by his mother, then suspending him for taking a couple of throwback jerseys from a local shop. His first game back from that suspension—initially meant to cost him the remainder of his senior year before a legal challenge shortened it to two games—came on that cold night in Trenton. He scored 52 in a rout, capping the silliest week of the most ridiculous season in his legendary high school career with the loudest possible statement.

Months later—fresh off a second SLAM cover, on which he rocked our logo on a headband (his idea, we didn’t ask)—he was Nike’s $90 million man and the No. 1 pick in the 2003 Draft. Like we said, it was a movie before he ever set foot in the League, an action-packed drama in which the leading man over-came humble beginnings, surmounted every obstacle, and won in the end. And somehow, it was only the start.

It’s gotten difficult at this point to talk about LeBron’s NBA career without focusing on the numbers. The various totals and career averages are almost overwhelming. We’re talking about a dude who put up nearly identical averages—around 30 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists per—at age 37 as he did at 23. We’re talking about a dude who set the all-time NBA scoring record last year, and who’s on pace to blow by 40K by season’s end. He’s 39 now, and even as he’s shown some signs of time finally catching up, he’s still putting up 25, 7 and 7 a night—numbers just shy of the average output for his entire career.

But if you’ve been there as long as we have, the numbers, staggering as they are, remain secondary to the story. He put together arguably the greatest—and undeniably the most high-profile—high school career of all time. He came into the League with unequaled hype, and based on his individual play, lived up to it almost immediately. Championships proved more elusive in the NBA than they had in high school (where he won three), and the fact that he couldn’t carry otherwise mediocre rosters to a title during his first seven seasons in Cleveland led to a narrative that LeBron lacked a killer instinct. It was here that he paled when compared to Mike and Kobe, until he kicked off the Super Team era; with Dwyane Wade as his runningmate and a supporting cast more in line with the groups Mike and Kobe ran with, he finally copped his first two rings.

Eventually he came home(ish) to Cleveland, and with Kyrie and Kev took out the 73-win Dubs for ring number three. Then, perhaps inevitably, it was on to L.A., a more logical home base for both his growing media and business empire and his growing family. This time, Anthony Davis played the elite sidekick as LeBron claimed a fourth chip.

But again, the story—the how of everything he’s done, even more than the what—is what compels us. How he reinvented the idea of player empowerment, determining the steps in his career path in a way no star ever had. How he built on the Jordan and Shaq endorsement model to become not just the face of but a stakeholder in businesses ranging from European soccer to fashion to Hollywood, where he’s a powerhouse behind the scenes and a half-decent actor on them.

And most importantly: how this son of a single mother, a kid who never knew his dad, has embraced his role of husband and father, actively supporting his own family in a way that balances their public life with an entirely authentic devotion.

So here is LeBron, pushing 40, the game’s elder statesman, an icon across sports and culture, an actual self-made billionaire, a man whose influence on the game—both on and off the court—might not be fully measured for years to come. He may or may not be your GOAT, but that hardly matters. He’s never been perfect, but he’s been the perfect guy for this magazine and everything we love about the game. 

---

Photo via Getty Images. Portrait by Atiba Jefferson.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

Context matters. Context is essential. Context is why a guy who never averaged double digits in 10 NBA seasons belongs in this issue every bit as much as the current and future Hall of Famers he’s surrounded by.

Context starts in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NYC. Once an iconic destination in 20th century American culture, more recently an emblem of what happens when cities shunt poor people into crowded neighborhoods and starve them of resources. The sort of place about which a fellow Brooklynite wrote a famous rhyme about crack rock and jump shots. Maybe more than any single neighborhood in America, a place where a jump shot—or more correctly, a handle and court vision and unrivaled point god swagger—was, for a very select few, the way out.

Sebastian Telfair was one of the few, an inheritor of an immense Coney Island legacy who had to earn the right to claim it.

The legacy was Stephon Marbury’s, a dude whose high school career was crazy enough to inspire a Spike Lee joint and made him the obvious choice to originate this magazine’s Basketball Diary. He, his city, his borough and his neighborhood were all foundational to what SLAM was and became. And, well, Steph and Bassy are cousins. Steph blazed the trail Bassy had to follow, set the bar he had to clear. A blueprint (pun intended, as you’ll see), yes, but the opposite of a handout.

So Bassy followed, younger and smaller and less of a sure thing, and yet undeniable just the same. Visibility and pressure boosted by the lineage, and he embraced all of it. What did we say about handles and court vision and point god swagger? From the first day he suited up for Lincoln High, it was hard to imagine a high school basketball player being more confident, tougher or more fun to watch.

Then came another guy to connect and compare him to, this one a year older, and from somewhere well beyond the five boroughs. In 2001, LeBron James and Sebastian Telfair were co-MVPs in the ABCD Camp underclass all-star game. (If you were in the building, you remember Bassy being the best player on the court.) By the summer of ’02, Bron and Bassy were arguably the best players in their respective classes, and certainly the most talked-about. After that summer, they were linked—for better and worse—for good.

A sneaker industry veteran later referred to it as the weekend that “changed everything” in the grassroots hoops game. With the help of interested parties at one of those footwear giants, LeBron and his people flew into New York on a Friday afternoon in ’02 to link with Bassy and his crew. They went straight from the airport to IS8, a tiny public school gym in Queens that hosted legendary city league games, for the first of two runs against some of New York’s best talent. In between, on Saturday afternoon, they reconvened at the Hunter College gym in Manhattan for a photo shoot. The result was the first SLAM cover for both, and still one of our most memorable front pages in 30 years of doing this.

Bassy had two more years of high school after that, a period in which he won back-to-back NYC public school city titles, a state championship, and the New York state Mr. Basketball award. He also held down our Basketball Diary as a junior, just like Starbury and LeBron before him, further cementing his SLAM legacy. Fellow Brooklynite Jay-Z, then at the height of his hip-hop reign, was spotted courtside at his games, a moment captured in Through the Fire; the film remains an irreplaceable document of a talented hoop dreamer in an unforgettable basketball moment, a time when a 5-10 high schooler could get lottery money and a sneaker deal before the three-point shot and the positionless revolution remade the game. Fans overfilled high school gyms to watch him play, including the woman in Through the Fire who famously declared, “I named my cat Bassy!”

He was the subject of a book, too, not to mention a couple more SLAM covers, a 2004 lottery pick whose NBA career never became quite what he hoped. A year or two of college might’ve helped, and comparisons to his cousin and his guy from Akron did him no favors, nor did landing on rosters that were ill-equipped to compete for titles or to support a young player who had shown that, with the right team around him on and off the court, he could win and handle the spotlight while doing it. He played for eight teams in 10 seasons before he called it a career in 2015. And don’t get it twisted: not just anyone can spend a full decade in the NBA.

What’s his legacy? One of the greatest, most influential high school players in NYC history. The first true point guard drafted straight out of high school. Coney Island royalty. Movie star. And a player our own story simply wouldn’t be the same without. 

---

Photo via Getty Images.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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: Go to YT and search for “Matt Adam’s Infamous Vince Carter Mixtape” 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.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

Watch this game long enough and the awareness sneaks up on you. You start to understand how the spotlight narrows in hindsight, how the space for competing narratives is diminished by time. Turns out there’s only so much mental space available to recall the players who define eras. The result, as far as our NBA memories go, is that even some of the game’s greatest and most breathtaking careers can be nudged out of the light of immediate recall. We haven’t forgotten them, exactly. We just need to be reminded.

So here’s your reminder about Tracy Lamar McGrady Jr.

Seven-time All-Star, two-time scoring champ, 2017 Hall of Famer. A preps-to-pros pioneer whose career crossed eras: came into the League a year behind Kobe, made his first All-Star Game three years before LeBron arrived, dropped buckets on Jordan in Washington, KD in Seattle and CP3 in OKC. His peak, when it came in the early-mid 2000s, was crazy, a five-year run with the Magic and Rockets in which he averaged 27.6 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.3 assists per. In that extended moment, T-Mac was just about the last guy any NBA defender wanted to see with the ball in his hands.

The peak being 20 years ago now, the aforementioned narrowing of the spotlight hasn’t done McGrady any favors. The MVP winners in those years were guys named Iverson, Duncan, Garnett and Nash, a list that (obviously) doesn’t even include at-or-near-prime Shaq, Kobe and LeBron. The NBA’s top tier was crowded as hell in the first few years of the new millennium. Just know this: Tracy McGrady belonged in the same breath as all of them.

The legend began one summer week in New Jersey in 1996, when a long, skinny Florida kid with no national rep landed at the proving ground of adidas ABCD Camp. By the time that highlight- filled camp week was over, McGrady was the most buzzed-about player in the ’97 class. The college coaches who hadn’t heard of him a week earlier soon learned they needn’t have bothered learning his name. His decision—choose a college by signing day or sign with adidas for $12 million and head to the Draft—ended up being an easy one.

The appeal was still mostly potential when Toronto made McGrady the ninth pick of the ’97 Draft, where he joined the Raptors—and, a year later, was joined by his far-removed cousin and fellow Floridian Vince Carter. A lanky 6-8 bundle of unpolished talent, McGrady was slow to make an impact and quickly overshadowed by his high-flying distant relative. But by the end of his third season, when McGrady emerged to the tune of 15.4 ppg and started giving optimistic Toronto fans visions of a new-millennium Mike and Scottie, he decided he had no interest in sidekick status. T-Mac was ready to be a star.

A free-agent move back to his home state gave him the chance. It’s hard to believe in retrospect that he spent just four seasons in Orlando, where he averaged better than 28 ppg—including League highs of 32.1 ppg in ’02-03 and 28 ppg in ’03-04—got the first of three solo SLAM covers, and made that star-spangled No. 1 jersey iconic. The numbers were undeniable and the highlights ridiculous—he practically made the off-the-backboard self-alley-oop a signature move—but, lacking an elite supporting cast, his individual achievements never led to postseason success.

He tried to find it in Houston, where he landed after a trade in the summer of 2004 and teamed with Yao Ming, giving him the All-Star big man he’d lacked his entire career. But injuries curtailed the partnership, and McGrady’s numbers diminished throughout his five full seasons with the Rockets. After brief stints with the Knicks, Pistons, Hawks and Spurs, and a season in China, he retired in 2013.

Today, Tracy McGrady’s legacy and impact are clear. An icon of the preps-to-pros era. A lethal scorer and one of the toughest finishers in NBA history. Owner of an adidas signature line (and two KICKS covers to go with it) that combined innovative design and on-court performance as well as any in his era. Post-playing gigs with ESPN and Showtime, plus the founding of the trailblazing Ones Basketball League. And yes, that 2017 HOF enshrinement, an honor that some observers, blinded by ringzzz culture, questioned the inevitability of. They shouldn’t have. The résumé is beyond question, the numbers etched in stone and the highlights burned into the memories of anyone lucky enough to be watching. 

---

Photo via Getty Images. Featured image by Keith Major.

For three decades we’ve covered many amazing basketball characters, but some stand above the rest—not only because of their on-court skills (though those are always relevant), but because of how they influenced and continue to influence basketball culture, and thus influenced SLAM. Meanwhile, SLAM has also changed those players’ lives in various ways, as we’ve documented their careers with classic covers, legendary photos, amazing stories, compelling videos and more. 

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.

---

Twenty-five years ago, we at SLAM didn’t really comprehend the significance of putting Chamique Holdsclaw on the cover of SLAM 29 wearing an authentic Knicks game uniform. To say otherwise would be untrue. However, the importance of her embodying the early SLAM manifesto, in terms of us publishing a basketball magazine from a grassy knoll, taking pot shots at conventional wisdom, is nearly unparalleled.

Holdsclaw was an exceptional college ballplayer and a gym rat from Queens, NY, and, when we weren’t debating such weighty topics such as ugliest player or douchiest head coach, we, as media provocateurs (which is French for jabronis), wondered aloud whether the NBA was ready for her, rather than the other way around.

We weren’t just questioning whether Holdsclaw could hold her own, but whether the NBA (and society at large, for that matter) could accept a female player in the League. Period. And so the cover line, “Is the NBA Ready for Chamique Holdsclaw?” was both a literal and an existential question. And, for the most part, it was also rhetorical: we already knew the answer and it was “Not yet.” (It would be another 20 years before a second female player, Maya Moore, would own SLAM’s cover, which was still ahead of its time.)

Despite Holdsclaw’s supreme athletic ability and work ethic, we also knew that players like Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter would likely be able (and willing) to drop double nickels on her nightly if given the opportunity. The NBA players who we spoke with as they came through New York confirmed as much, privately. Indeed, any opportunity to try out for an NBA team would come with a bull’s-eye.

But, someone had to be first, what if it were her? Holdsclaw was entering her senior year of college, and had, among many positive qualities, one transcendent characteristic: a preternatural calm demeanor that hid a burning competitiveness. She could shoot and rebound and was unaccustomed to failure. A relentless two-way player, she won four consecutive state high school titles and three consecutive national championships with the Lady Vols. Her college coach, the legendary Pat Summitt, called her a “Jordan-type player and person,” which was all we needed to hear.

She was drafted first by Washington in the 1999 WNBA Draft and would play a decade in the W, averaging 17-8-3 over the course of her pro career. Later, Holdsclaw would describe the Knicks cover as “a statement piece: Women’s basketball had arrived.” The thing is, SLAM wasn’t joining the chorus, we were actually leading it. And it wasn’t actually a chorus, back then, it was really just a handful of us sitting in a windowless room at the decrepit-ish SLAM offices.  

We were fortunate that social media was non-existent back then, otherwise Holdsclaw would’ve been drawn into an ugly back-and-forth between the sexes about her worthiness, which was something she didn’t ask for or deserve. And what we considered to be a legitimate attempt to frame a larger point about the progress (or lack thereof) of gender equality in sports would have been ridiculed or seen as a cynical move. In those days, anger was communicated to us through handwritten, honest-to-goodness hate mail from readers. Surrounding Holdsclaw, negative response was largely muted, which as far as I was concerned, was a slam dunk. Until it wasn’t.

A week after the issue dropped, my phone rang and a dispassionate female voice on the other end said simply, “Hold for Coach Summitt.”

Gulp.

Ten seconds later, Coach’s familiar drawl was stinging my ears. “Are YOU the FUCKING BLOCKHEAD that almost ruined my player’s ELIGIBILITY!?” She was in zero mood for me. Apparently, as Coach then scream-splained to me, had Holdsclaw accepted the uniform after the shoot—which she did not—she would be in violation of NCAA rules and would lose her eligibility. I could so see us doing that by accident.

I then acknowledged that yes, in fact, I was the decision-maker on the Chamique Holdsclaw story and tried to explain my thought process. I even employed the phrase “chip away at the male patriarchy” in an effort to butter her up/get her to stop shouting at me. She listened for a few seconds and then abruptly hung up on me.

Part of me thinks she was satisfied with my answer and actually saw progress. SLAM had gone 28-for-28 with men on the cover until we decided to change the game with someone that she herself had coached up.

But more than likely, Coach Summitt just didn’t feel like spending any more time than absolutely necessary talking to a fucking blockhead. 

---

Photo via Getty Images.