by Ben Osborne

SLAM 127 is on sale everywhere (in the US at least) by now and subscription copies have gone out too…time for a-a reminder to those of you who do not have it to go get it! and b-a dope contest related to the issue.

As always, our friends at Converse (what up Paul!) have come up big in an effort to deliver DWade goodies to his real fans. Check out all that we have in store for deserving readers…

-Two signed Wade 3 shoes (right foot only; pictured below the cover). As you can see in the image, it’s got a really nice silver signature on one of Dwyane’s great shoes.

-10 pairs of Wade Slashes (any size, any of the three colorways shown in this post). As in, whoever wins will get to tell me their size and what colorway they want and Converse will send us a pair specifically for the winners.

How do you win? I wish I could make sure only owners of the issue entered, but we don’t get down like that. Technically this is a “no-purchase-necessary” giveaway (like always) and anyone on here can win. So here’s what I came up with…to me, while Kobe and LeBron have been typically amazing (don’t want to sound like I’m taking their greatness for granted, but in a way you could say their seasons were expected), Dwyane has been the individual story of the season. I’m not ashamed at all to say I didn’t see it coming. Yes, I know what he did in the Finals. Yes, I saw the gold-medal game. Yes, I stated vehemently that the Heat would win 45 games (in Eboy’s preview, in some Lang comments, and in NOYZ all season; shoot, Lang and I have a bet on it). Shit, I wrote one fo the first national features on Dwyane before he left Marquette, so it’s not like he hasn’t been on my radar for a long time. But still…30-5-8-2-1? At 6-4? After two straight severely shortened seasons? Leading a young, short, mediocre team to the brink of home-court advantage in the first-round of the Playoffs? Remarkable. Given all that, my question is: When did YOU see Dwyane in his current light, which is Top Three Current Players and a MVP candidate, if not favorite? At Robbins High? Marquette? Rookie year? The Finals? If you’re like me, the true answer might be like March 9 of this year! If you really saw it coming a long time ago, cool. But I’m not necassarily going to give the prizes to those who can claim the longest lead time on seeing DWade turn out like this. As always, I’m looking for creativity, passion and good reasoning.

That’s it. Just do your thing in the comment section by explaining when you knew Dwyane could be this good. In my opinion, the two signed shoes are the cooler of the prize options, so they’ll go to places 1 and 2. Places 3-12 will win their own pair of Wade Slashes (from left, the colors are white-black-red, white-blue and black-silver).

We’ll let this percolate this week and then pick winners Friday.

Thanks for playing!