[sg-gallery]
by Al Stark
I put together the three collages seen above: The History of Basketball, The Slam Top 500 and The Alternate Take of the History of Basketball. Hope the computer does them justice. It’s just something I do to keep out of trouble! Believe it or not, there is rhyme and reason for each individual piece.
The first collage is the ‘unofficial’ history of basketball from Dr. James Naismith to Kyrie Irving…with almost everyone else in between! The Rens to The Heat Big 3…Maurice Stokes to Dirk…The Fab 5 to the Flint Tropics (Semi-Pro)…Heaven is a Playground, Brooklyn to the Palestra in Philly!…Cousy to Derrick Rose…’Butterbean’ Love to Kevin Love…Elgin to Dr. J to Magic to Michael to Kobe.
The second collage is SLAM’s 500 Greatest NBA Players of All Time…plus the sidebars in the back of the magazine!
The third collage is the history of basketball…The Remix/Alternate Version. The Globetrotters to the ‘back to back’ NCAA Champion Florida Gators…Bill Russell on The Dons…Wilt on the ABA/San Diego Conquistadors…Rick Barry/Miami University…Nate Thurmond on the Cavaliers…The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association to The White Shadow TV Show to President Obama…Baseball Michael to Wizzard Michael…and some of basketball’s forgotten names…Sherman White/LIU, Eddie Fogle/North Carolina from Flushing, Queens…Skip Wise from the streets of Baltimore…Trajan Langdon ‘The Alaskan Assassin’…Milt & Dajuan Wagner…Tony Jackson…St. John’s. There are almost 500 entries!
Al Stark is a friend of SLAM who put together a list of players that eventually became our 500 Greatest issue.
