Slam

AMAZON FOUNDER JEFF BEZOS has said it takes about 10 years to become an overnight success. Eddie Cantor, a comedian popular in the early 20th century, said it takes 20. A few other amounts of time that came up when I Googled how long it takes: three years, six years, eight years, 15 years, 25 years, 60 years. (That last one was for a Chinese fashion model who broke through at age 79—don’t try that one at home.) Obviously there’s no definitive answer, but I was thinking about the concept when we were putting together this issue. SLAM 240 is not going to singularly make Victor Wembanyama a star, and it certainly won’t singularly make him a “success” (depending on how you want to argue it, that’s either already the case—he’s…

dondeestajorgee via Instagram @ya.boy.scottie I hope my son grows up to be like you. So impressed with you. brazenyute via Instagram Happy Scottie Barnes Slam Cover Delivery Day to all who celebrate yungwonk via Twitter Toronto got you! Canada got you! And for sure you got US!! I expect a crazy szn from [him]. Top scorer ppg for the Raptors nxt szn. Year 2 loading…. Sherwin D’Souza via YouTube This is why every Raptors fan isn’t interested in KD. We ain’t giving up Barnes for no one. We aren’t giving up Siakim, Van Vleet, OG, Trent Jr or Achiuwa. We love our team which is built on D, culture and chemistry. We won our only championship with a mercenary. We will win our next 2-3 championships with the players we drafted or signed undrafted. So excited to see…

BILL RUSSELL WAS A TEAM player. I think that’s probably the most important thing to remember about the tall man who won 11 NBA championships, was a 12-time All-Star, five-time MVP and averaged 22.5 rebounds per game for his career. The defensive expert played with an athleticism and lunch-bucket tenacity—particularly when it came to blocking shots and grabbing missed ones—that came from a desire to give everything that he could so that his team could be the best it could be. There was no “me” to his game. But there sure was a “win,” which was what he brought to the Celtics, for whom he played from the start to the end of his career, in the process making them pro basketball’s first real dynasty. Russell died in July at age…

USA BASKETBALL held its impactful Women in the Game Conference in September, with the goal of inspiring high school girls, female college students and young professional women who want to pursue a career in sports. It was a huge success, in no small part thanks to Jennifer Lynne Williams, who joined USA Basketball in July 2021 as chief development officer of the USA Basketball Foundation. This year’s conference, held in Las Vegas, included four guest speakers who were able to share their own success stories from within different parts of the industry and give out some impactful nuggets of wisdom to the attendees before a Q&A session opened things up. The young women were also given tickets to the USA Basketball Red vs. White scrimmage held the day before the main…

THE PLAN WAS TO become an attorney. For Rutgers’ new women’s head coach Coquese Washington, her objective was to play hoops for Notre Dame, and then attend their law school. But, court ambitions of a different sort led her to a distinguished WNBA playing career, and eventually into coaching. Washington’s career sits at a unique crossroads in women’s basketball: she’s both experienced enough to have played college hoops at Notre Dame before there was an obvious path to the WNBA but also young enough to represent a new direction for Rutgers. With the retirement of legendary coach C. Vivian Stringer, Washington fills a position that hasn’t been vacant often—she’s just the third full-time women’s basketball head coach ever at Rutgers, after Stringer and Theresa Grentz. “They’ve had two coaches, and both of…

FOR THE LAST 20 years, Kevin Couliau has been searching for the perfect basketball court. The mission has taken the hoops fanatic to some of the most heralded and historic environments in the basketball ecosystem. Capturing the beauty that resides within the game like no other behind the lens, the co-director of the critically acclaimed documentary Doin’ It In The Park has retraced 10 years worth of personal archives for his most recent work, Blacktop Memento, fragments of erosion. The book features an original cartography of asperities, wrinkles and color spectra that fill the outdoor concrete of courts around the globe. From Dubai and the Mecca to Guadalupe and Ghana, Couliau has traveled the world documenting the social impact of playground basketball and its intersection with urban planning. The culmination of those…