SLAM Magazine bounces back boldly with iconic cover T-shirts

In the upscale neighborhood of professional basketball, where the influential and zeitgeist-touched stretch their legs as the action gallops past, the SLAM cover T-shirt has been an increasing sight, visible on everyone from Teyana Taylor to Rich Paul. And, yeah, players have donned the duds.

The shirts are driven by the realities of business. But nobody could maneuver a puckish magazine run by a devoted, sarcastic few into a cultural shorthand, a secret handshake for hoops fans. Allen Iverson on the cover of Sports Illustrated was not the same as AI on the cover of SLAM in a retro Sixers jersey and sporting a towering blowout. 

SLAM covers always hit differently. 

Even in their diminished state, long-standing print magazines lean toward stately, a quality never attributed to “the Basketball Bible.” It’s also a key reason why SLAM continues to hold such appeal.

“I’ve always perceived SLAM as your friends,” said basketball photographer Jon Lopez, who has shot covers for the magazine. “Somebody on the block who you grew up with, who speaks your language and understands your vernacular of the game as opposed to this larger-than-life character you’ll never get to be with, and you’ll be lucky if you ever got a phone call from them.” 

Long before eighth-graders had highlight tapes and women’s hoops started getting respect, the publication didn’t stick to the NBA and men’s college hoops, the staples of most straight-ahead sports magazines. It paid attention to playgrounds and high school. Chamique Holdsclaw, then a superstar at the University of Tennessee, made the cover in October 1998. SLAM, Dawn Staley said, “really understands the game and the culture of our game — not just Black culture.” 

That started before you even cracked the spine. Dennis Page, the founder and publisher of SLAM, told journalist Alex Wong in Cover Story: The NBA and Modern Basketball as Told Through Its Most Iconic Covers that he wanted to do for athletes what the cover of Rolling Stone did for musicians. 

When SLAM finally landed access to players for photos, it happily ceded control, said Russ Bengtson, the magazine’s editor-in-chief from 1999 to 2004.  

“I think a lot of what made SLAM great and what makes SLAM great, is trusting the players themselves,” he said. “They’re the arbiters of cool, not us. We’re a delivery system for it. When I was editor, I’m not going to think that I know what’s cool better than Allen Iverson does.” That meant players didn’t have to resort to rigid poses and are-we-done-yet smiles of official NBA and team photo shoots. They could wear headbands or chains or even switch jerseys with their teammates. 

Lopez said nothing about the cover feels corporate. Former editor-in-chief Tony Gervino told Wong that the turning point was the May 1995 cover featuring Latrell Sprewell and Tim Hardaway of the Golden State Warriors, neither sporting a smile. 

“They were obscure players to a national audience and we wanted to plant our flag as the anti-establishment basketball magazine,” Gervino said. The goal, Bengtson added, was to make the players look like rap stars.  

“It was one of those things you wanted no matter what you accomplished as a player…you wanted a cover of SLAM,” said Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who got his wish with the January 2000 issue. (He was also part of this iconic 1996 rookie class spread.) It was more than being recognized as a great player. It instilled a certain street cred, “a certain kind of swagger, a coolness about you,” the 2002 All-Star said. 

SLAM was not your father’s basketball magazine. “My dad read Sports Illustrated,” Abdur-Rahim said. “I read SLAM.” So did his son. Now, Abdur-Rahim, who serves as the president of the G League, said his cover “gives me some coolness about me as an older guy” among the players.  

Staley, who has won three NCAA championships coaching the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team, was the first coach to land a solo SLAM cover. “We have pretty big egos,” said Staley, a Hall of Fame hooper, “but you never think you’re big enough that you will be on the cover of SLAM.”

Swagger only sells so many magazines. Though SLAM, Lopez said, has adapted to the hall of cracked funhouse mirrors that is the digital age — “They do a phenomenal job of pairing the print with the digital”—magazines need to continually reinvent themselves. So when Page visited Lynn Bloom, director of authentics and archives at Mitchell & Ness, he had an idea: “Don’t you think people would wear SLAM cover tees?”

A partnership made sense. “Their covers are spectacular,” Bloom said via email. “They use the best photographers in the industry, so the images are always striking and memorable.” And there’s synergy. “In many cases, the athletes on the cover is wearing a jersey that we now make, so it’s a natural fit.” 

The shirts provide a way for people to “rep both SLAM and their favorite players,” observed Adam Figman, CEO at SLAM. But it’s a revenue stream and a cross-promotional bonanza. “It’s great that we’ve found a new way to grow our business,” Figman said in an email. “Media is a tough business and the cover tees have helped us expand in a really crucial way.” The shirts, he notes, had been bootlegged for years. 

When Staley visited Philadelphia, her hometown, guys from the neighborhood wore her shirt. “It’s that kind of cool cultural thing,” she said, “that connects or reconnects the people who really know you.” 

During Bengtson’s time at the magazine, the cover was “a very ephemeral sort of thing.” Yeah, the staff would sweat over cover lines and other details, but “this stuff is going to be gone after a month or a month-and-a-half.” Though SLAM sells shirts with contemporary stars, “the SLAM cover has become part of that nostalgia for the player”—Vince Carter, Shaquille O’Neal, on and on. Many photos in SLAM, Bengtson adds, became “the definitive images of those guys.” 

The cover, Figman said, “remains some of the most coveted media real estate there is in the sports and basketball worlds, and the cover tees are another opportunity for us to showcase just how much of a needle-mover the cover remains.” 

Does that translate to people buying an issue of the magazine? 

“It’s possible, but probably not common,” Figman admits. “I think more likely someone would see someone else wearing a cover tee and either think, ‘I need that shirt’ or “I hope my favorite player is on a future cover so I can get the shirt when that happens.’” 

Though it recently celebrated its 30^th anniversary and was honored by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, SLAM is “still a shoestring operation,” Bengtson said. “It’s still the Wizard of Oz. You pull the screen aside of this incredibly professional-looking, glossy magazine, it’s still just a couple of people doing it.” Figman said SLAM’s ability to keep the cover relevant is partly attributed to the staff’s “elite understanding of both who’s hot at any given moment and who’s next.” 

In a permanently temporary industry, an influential magazine is enjoying an extended relevance. For some former SLAM staffers, there is another benefit. “To see that history live on a little bit in a different format now,” Bengtson said, “is very cool to see.”