Opening the Vault: Unedited highlights from the April 2000 Issue of SLAM
By Miles Wray
Through some accident, my wonderful, late grandfather purchased the 41st issue of SLAM in April 2000. For years, the magazine sat on his glass coffee table among a spread of large, regal books about sports — mostly about baseball from the Ted Williams/Joe DiMaggio era. Vince Carter glared out at the Thomas Kinkade prints that lined the walls.
Through another accident, I still have the very same magazine. When I first read it — my subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids already several years old — SLAM could not have been a more scandalous shock to my G-Rated system. There were curse words. Curse words!
Many things have remained the same about SLAM in the subsequent 16 years. There is still the breathless hype for The Next Big Thing. There are still a ton of pictures of floating, empty shoes, both in and out of advertisements.
Also: everything has changed. As these unedited highlights from the issue show, time has a wicked way of transforming The Next Big Thing, with our backs turned, into yesterday’s goofy memory:
*****
On Mark Madsen:
He won’t lead the team in scoring. He might lead in rebounds. But it they had a way of measuring heart and leadership, Mad Dog might set an NCAA record. Fans sometimes downplay senior guidance, because it doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, but coaches won’t ever make that mistake. The 6-9 Madsen is made for the tournament stage — think back to the facial he delivered on Rhode Island in the ’98 Dance — even if you have to look past the box score for proof.
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A quote from Antoine Carr:
“Nowadays you can’t touch people. They called a flagrant. If that’s the way they want it, it ain’t no thing. I’ll put on my tutu. This game is ridiculous. They need to let us get back to playing ball instead of walking around like Tinkerbells.”
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An interview with Isiah Thomas about becoming the new commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association. The CBA would go bankrupt a year later:
SLAM: What drew you to the CBA?
Thomas: It’s always had huge potential. The vision is to be the world’s second-best basketball league. We have the second-best talent and it’s a lot better than most people realize, but the light on the NBA is so bright that it obscures other things.
[…]
SLAM: You are the official developmental league for the NBA, but teams still lose rights to players who go to you. Is your goal for each NBA team to have an affiliated CBA team which they can send players to and from?
Thomas: Eventually, yes. But to start we could expand to 15 teams, with each one shared by two NBA teams. The NBA has to figure out what to do with this influx of youth entering the league. Hockey and baseball have always had to deal with this issue and they have great minor leagues. This could be the NBA’s answer.
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Imagine for a moment if there was no salary cap. Got it? Now try and picture how much money Grant Hill would get next year.
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Dickey Simpkins is no Dickey Smipkins.
[This is exactly how it is typed. I have no idea what it means.]
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A short chart in the local newspaper following Eddie House’s 61-point smackdown on Cal Berkeley illustrated just how dominant the Arizona State guard was on the night of January 8. And how dangerous he is every night he steps on the floor.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m arrogant or anything like that,” the 21-year-old says, “but I always had felt that once I get going it’s pretty hard to stop me.”
*****
Gary Payton’s competitiveness is one of the NBA’s seven wonders — along with Shaquille’s strength, Vince’s hops, AI’s crossover, TD’s bank shot, J-Will’s behind-the-back dimes and KG’s whole damn game.
*****
“Gary’s capable of doing anything on the floor when he focuses his mind to it,” says Vin Baker. “I remember Wilt Chamberlain saying he could do anything — lead the League in assists, rebounding — Gary could be that same player in this decade. Lead the League in assists, or lead the League in scoring, or steals.”
*****
Many non-fictional myths will be told before it — this short and almost mythical career of Vince Carter — is over. Before the retirement, before the two or three championship rings, before the statue outside of the Air Canada Centre, before Gerald Wallace is handed his legacy. Vince Carter, Zeus-like.
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SLAM: You seem like the type of person that likes that type of pressure of taking the entire responsibility of a franchise on his shoulders.
Vince Carter: I don’t look at it as a lot of pressure, I just look at it as something that I can do and something that can benefit me and the organization. I mean, in one year, look at what we’ve been able to do, we got Muggsy Bogues, Dell Curry and Antonio Davis. I’m lovin’ it.
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The host body that is Sam Cassell in this journey has brought us here. Here to live in the shadow of the legacy of the great Oscar Robertson, who wore this Bucks uniform before him. You can feel Oscar’s presence with every shot Sam makes, with every turnover he creates. “I got to do my thing tonight or Nick’s going to let me hear about it all summer long,” the voice says. Sam Cassell means that this game against the Denver Nuggets is one of only two times you’re going to ball against Van Exel all season, which makes for claims over the offseason because you two are best friends and have cribs down the block from each other in Houston. Being Sam Cassell means tonight you have to outball your boy because you ain’t trying to hear it later. Being Sam Cassell tonight means you need to imitate Oscar Robertson.
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“Dog, how do you want to be remembered when this ride is all over?”
“Just as a champion, baby!” is how [Cassell] responds to it. Then in true I Am fashion, he lets out a loud fart, smiles and quietly walks away.
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From a story about a Los Angeles Clippers at Vancouver Grizzlies game on December 19, 1999 — “a game that wasn’t even on DirecTV”:
What follows is a chronicle of one lonely day in the NBA’s hinterland, a place where the only Big Game are the moose that roam not far from the city.
[…]
4:37 P.M.: The Clippers’ locker room is chillin’. The guys are ordering Chinese food and peeping the Nets-Hawks game via DirecTV in the locker room. Everyone is feeling Steph.
I ask Maurice Taylor about the fact that today’s game is blacked out, everywhere. “I don’t care if it ain’t on TV,” he says. “Just ’cause one game is not on TV, does it affect you? No. When we was growin’ up, there wasn’t no TV. We just played outside. If you went around this locker room, I think you’d see that nobody knew that this game wouldn’t be on TV.”
Two lockers from Mo, Michael Olowokandi scolds me in his professional English for even asking about the game’s exposure, or lack thereof. “As an NBA player, that is totally immaterial,” he scoffs. “We play to win. We’re trying to put ourselves in a position where games mean something down the line. So as far as TV coverage and media coverage, immaterial.”
[…]
6:17 P.M.: Introductions. Shareef gets a decent reaction — nothin’ special, though. No mention is made of the fact that this is Lionel Hollins’ first home game as Grizzlies’ coach.
[…]
6:47 P.M.: Lamar is keepin’ it real like Nas used to. L.O. plays real hard, real smart and really fucking well. I’m making these observations in the second quarter, but he’ll go on to score 28 on runners, low-post moves, long jumpers. Damn. He also throws textbook chest passes and rips down boards like a skinny Barkley. Too bad nobody will see his highlights tonight.
[…]
7:00 P.M.: Checking in for Vancouver is the multi-tattooed, long-haired Cherokee Parks. I’m quickly convinced he should be on the next cover. Of High Times.
[Note: This appears to be a transformation that occurred for Parks only after he made the NBA, Robert Swift-style.]
[…]
7:58 P.M.: Chris Ford, one-time coach of the once-proud Celtics, is basically reduced to cajoling rather than coaching the Clips. Odom handles most of the on-court play-generating, so Ford spends the better part of the game imploring Olowokandi to do something, anything, that will help the team. “Let’s go, Michael,” “Keep working, Michael,” “Pay attention, Michael” he begs of the enigmatic Englishman.
[…]
8:18 P.M.: It’s official! The Canucks have made a trade! Remarkably, this news is confirmed to the press when a press release is handed out to everyone on Press Row with 1:30 left in the game.
[…]
The Grizzlies win, 85-84.
9:00 P.M.: Shareef and I are the only ones left in the Grizzlies’ locker room. He’s approachable like a 12th man, if saddened by the lack of coverage tonight.
“Tonight wasn’t even on Direct?,” he repeated. “My mom’s been watching a lot of the games on DirecTV, but I guess not tonight. It is the Grizzlies playing the Clippers, though, so that makes sense. But it ain’t so bad. You gotta take into consideration that we’re both real young teams; I look at it like in two or three years, when both of us are more established, then we’re gonna have our time to shine.”
*****
Sebastian Telfair is named the nation’s best eighth-grade player:
As of December, Telfair was averaging 23 points and 8 assists for his Brooklyn USA traveling team. One of the highlights of this season was playing in Minnesota’s Target Center, where his cousin [Stephon Marbury again!] started his NBA career. “That was real cool,” said the 14-year-old Telfair. “Like anybody who plays basketball, I would like to take it all the way to the NBA, if that’s what the Lord has in mind for me.”
*****
On Caron Butler:
Within months, [Coach Jameel] Ghuari had convinced Butler that the best place for him was off the Racine streets and into the Maine woods, so he could get schooled by Max Good, then the stern coach of MCI [Maine Central Institute]. Buter hated it all.
“When I first say the campus I was like, ‘This ain’t no place for me,’” Butler says. “Then there was Coach Good. Oh man, he was like a demon. He started yelling at me wen I got off the plane and never stopped. He’d yell about not playing hard enough, about my room not being clean enough. I was like, ‘This ain’t going to work.’”
“But look at me now.”
Butler is now so comfortable in Maine that he returned for a fifth year of high school in an effort to shore up his academics and mature some more, he says.
*****
From “Post Game,” an editorial by Kenny Smith:
This is it. The final criteria. This is for all the players who think they are the Man, but realistically are just fortunate to play on good teams. If you are removed from your team, your team is no longer a contender. This means that 70 percent of the time, you personally will determine the outcome of the game. (Your teammates can win three of 10 without you.) That’s it, only a few good men left. (Probably no one who is reading this because if you were the MAN, you wouldn’t read an article to figure it out!) So, who’s left? The list is as follows: Shaq, Duncan, Malone, Zo, Payton. That’s it, finished, no more no less.