The Sixth Man

SLAM - 2019, Vol. 26, No. 2

Damn. Twenty-five years goes fast. When I launched SLAM back in 1994, I was just a hardcore basketball fan like everyone who follows or reads SLAM today. The idea was actually quite simple: I was going to make a magazine about basketball and its culture and we were gonna cover all of it…the NBA, college, high school, streetball legends, sneakers, the gear, the music that is the soundtrack of the game. In ’94, one player embodied this idea: Michael Jordan. All the magazine had to do was be like Mike—be fly as fuck. We were the first magazine to do anything like this, so I guess that makes us the OG. We were the basketball internet before the internet. The magazine still drops nine times a year, including our amazing special issues (SLAM Presents KOBE, LEBRON, TOP 100, etc). And yes, the cover of SLAM still matters as much as ever. Our social channels, now up to 10+ feeds on a whole bunch of platforms (if you don’t follow all of them, you should), are ready to crack seven million followers. So I’m pretty proud that we are still standing 25 years later, bigger than ever. 

We are also proud to have LeBron James and Kemba Walker grace the covers of this issue. Both players are symbolic of the DNA of SLAM—LeBron because of his absolute greatness and respect for the game and its history, and Kemba ’cause he’s from New York, like us, and his game is so fly. And Mike owns the team he plays for. But I could not have done it without a whole bunch of amazing folks grinding every day, so time for some thank yous: Thank you to every player, on every level, in parks and gyms across the globe, who plays basketball ’cause they love it. Thank you to every player who took time out to allow SLAM to tell their story. Thank you and much respect to everyone who has ever worked at SLAM. Thank you to every advertiser that has supported SLAM. Thank you to the six amazing Editors-in-Chief (Cory Johnson, Tony Gervino, Russ Bengtson, Ryan Jones, Ben Osborne and Adam Figman) who have each managed SLAM with the TLC and understanding of what SLAM represents to the culture. And a special shout out to Scoop Jackson for this issue’s cover story, A Love Supreme, on LeBron. His words have personified the heart and soul of SLAM since Day 1, and he no doubt understood the John Coltrane reference the minute we called him for this story. 

The journey with SLAM continues. If you really love the game, you get it. Maybe when they write the book about SLAM, they can call it A Love Supreme. Here’s to the next 25 years.

Dennis S. Page 

Publisher