Kobe and LeBron: The two biggest stars. One big magazine.
by Ben Osborne / @bosborne17
Oh, how I dreamed of walking into the media room at the Finals and dropping this on the table that holds the day’s clips, quotes and stats…
But hey, shit happens. The Cavs were worse than we thought, and the Celtics were a whole lot better.
Those dreams were just about the ego boost that comes from timing something right, though—they don’t reflect on a product that isn’t about this month anyway: It’s about careers.
Simply put, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James exist on a different level than the rest of the players in the NBA. Even if there are nights when other guys can play as well as them, there are never nights when anyone is a bigger star. This is true on TV, in arenas, and, increasingly, around the globe.
SLAM’s publisher and I—with the backing of the rest of our staff—have been wanting to do an issue like this (flip covers, 100 pages, with each guy getting 50, and a dope pullout poster in the middle to separate them) for a good 18 months now. But it took time to gather up the stories, build up the photo archives, and get Nike on board with some ad support. We finally got all the key commitments around late March and slotted this in to drop during the Conference Finals. Well, here we are.
Again, the professional side of me wishes LeBron’s Cavs were still on a collision course with Kobe’s Lakers to play in a Finals that might have set TV ratings records for the NBA. But the fan side of me, who has obviously 
read through this issue 20 times already, knows that the mag—which will be on newsstands for three months and at simbackissues.com until it sells out—is great regardless of who is playing in the Finals.
What makes it so great? Hard to know where to even begin answering that question.
We re-ran the best cover stories we’ve ever done on these guys, done by writers such as Cheo Hodari Coker, Scoop Jackson, Russ Bengtson, Ryan Jones and Lang Whitaker. We ran incredible photos, from exclusive shoots of these guys in high school through incredible action photos that we combed through Getty Images to find. We wrote new stories about them both, covering everything from their early days as players to their on-court footwear histories to their current roles as the NBA’s biggest names.
Trust me: if you like one or both of these players, and/or just want a keepsake of NBA basketball in 2010, you need this magazine. Look for it on newsstands everywhere next week.
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@Enigmatic. I think a mix of old and new content really works for us. I suppose the small percentage of people who collect every SLAM ever and memorize the stories could be turned off by some stuff they’ve read before, but I’ve WORKED HERE and at least copy read every issue we’ve pulled from and still don’t remember all the great writing in some of these stories. Plus, people like Scoop are no longer allowed to write for us, and I doubt we could afford Cheo. So to be able to re-run their stuff and let MANY fans who never read it enjoy it seems great to me. It also serves as a great time capsule of their careers. If we want to do a 6-page story on Kobe as a second-year player, why assign a new one now? We did a great version of that in 1998!
Also, to read the players’ quotes from 98, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, etc etc is really amazing. ALSO, even in the cases where parts of stories have been re-run, the way the stories are designed is completely different, and most of the photos in this issue have never been run in SLAM. This is all just words from me. Go to bookstore, flip through it, and make your own decision. I predict you (as in Engimatic but also everyone else on this site) will like it.
The logic is faulty.
The economics, fantastic.
Like every other magazine that has ever existed, Slam is a business first.
The people who run the business came up with this idea because they thought it would sell.
The people who handle the editorial content were then charged with making it dope.
If you generally like Slam’s editorial content, and you have an affinity for either of these players, you’ll probably really like the issue.
Otherwise, don’t buy it.
But please don’t waste your time saying it’s lazy to recycle content; there IS some new content, and the recycled content is advertised as such, and no one’s making you buy it.
And please don’t question the “justification” of this issue existing. Like everything else that exists in America, it exists because the people who handle the money want it to exist.
I know we all need stuff to complain about, but if you want to complain that capitalism exists, maybe a Slam special issue shouldn’t be your first target.
Unless you’ve already railed against BP today. In which case, as you were.
It looks like a lot of work went into these, so I’m not belittling anything you guys did, but to me it just seems a little premature to do these. With Jordan it made perfect sense.
Look people, if SLAM only catered to what people wanted to read, it would have to charge you like $20 for an issue, if not more, to pay for the production costs and editorial expenses, not to mention the other costs of running a business. They can charge you what they charge you, particularly if you subscribe, because the money you spend at the newstand or on a subscription is not how they support their operations.
Your purchase is a number they use to prove their circulation, which they in turn present to advertisers, who pay them a certain amount per ad because they want their ads to reach a certain amout of eyes.
In short, stop complaining that you can’t get exactly what you want from a magazine when you’re not willing to pay the full cost of getting what you want.
Enjoy the product and stop whining about who else “deserved” to be on a magazine cover like being on the cover of SLAM will have any real impact on a player’s career.
John Stockton turned out just fine without a whole bunch of SLAM love.
with the subscription
I’ll mostly stick with what I said before: Pick it up at a store, look at it, and decide if you want to buy it. If you like SLAM, you will like this. I promise.
Also, I would like to do more of these on other players, too. We just need to know that they’d sell enough to cover our costs and that we have time to do them on top of all our regular issues. AI, KG, Wade…all possibilities. Let’s see how this one does.
Thanks for the support.
Thanks.
If so which one?
The comments make clear that many readers in fact do not understand the basic economics of running a magazine. Also, you clearly do not understand the meaning of the phrase “wax and wane.” Maybe you were thinking of “wax off,” from Karate Kid.
Sincerely,
Ryan’s bunched underwear (we had him type this for us)
Ben: Please do the KG one!!
What the f*ck are you talking about? Because I have no idea.
^
^
That started with the Team USA players when everyone else didnt wanna rep thier Country y’all started putting so and so, team USA. It was clever back then but now its just whack. we know Steve nash plays in Phoenix. Bring back the catchy one liners for the Slam-ups
Cool.
Because it’s a bonus issue, it’s all good with me. The Jordan issue was a bad fiasco in my opinion, but if SLAM wants to throw out a magazine honoring Lebron and Kobe ALONG with their usual monthly copy, I don’t see the complaints.
I’ll see how much is new content and see the price (which hasn’t been mentioned) and decide whether I should cop it or not. If it’s 50/50 like Ben said, I’ll probably get it.
Who?
@Bcgreen20: Every issue has both covers. Should be in Mexico this week if not there already.
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