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Air Force One
by Dave Zirin / @edgeofsports Under normal circumstances, this is the time of year when Louder Than a Bomb puts politics aside and makes a fearless NBA Finals prediction. Sometimes I nail it, like...
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He Got Game
by Dave Zirin / @edgeofsports Ever since NBA Chief David Stern announced his retirement, effective as of February 2014, a debate has erupted over the legacy of the man they call Money. Is Stern the...
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New Era
by Dave Zirin / @edgeofsports I wrote a book that is about to come out called Game Over: How Politics Have Turned the Sports World Upside Down. This wasn’t a book I wanted to write; it was a book I...
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NBPA Blue
by Dave Zirin / @edgeofsports By the time you read this, Billy Hunter will almost certainly have been fired as executive director of the NBA Players Association. [Yep!—Ed.] The 70-year-old Hunter, who...
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Brandon Knight is My Hero
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports One fateful day a long time ago, my undistinguished high school hoops team played Rice, then a prep powerhouse in New York. They had a freshman everyone was buzzing about...
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The First
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports In a bombshell that’s as historic as anything the L has seen since Earl Lloyd became the first African American player to suit up in the NBA, 34-year-old center Jason...
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Make Hay
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports This is not the column I wanted to write. I yearned to pen a love poem to one of the inductees of the Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2013, my boyhood hero Bernard King....
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Rebel Music
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeOfSports “Simple and plain—give me the lane I’ll throw it down your throat like Barkley” —“Rebel Without a Pause” Sometimes a tweet opens a window to a much larger story. After NBA...
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Unlike
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeOfSports Muhammad Ali asked the world, “What’s my name, fool?” Marlo Stanfield of The Wire said, “My name is my name!” Even Walter White, Breaking Bad’s chemistry teacher turned...
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Top 50: John Wall, no. 24
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports John Wall was asked at age 19 to make a playoff team out of Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee and a group of disinterested spare parts more likely to space out on the court...
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Prickly Rose
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports Derrick Martell Rose has had many a glittering label in his brief and blessed career: No. 1 high school player in the country? NCAA Finalist? No. 1 NBA Draft pick? Rookie...
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Boston Marathon
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports The most frustrating moment of my professional life quickly transformed to relief followed by regret. On Friday, November 1, I was invited to the city of Boston’s...
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Nene Cares
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports There is hope in the world of Washington, DC, basketball for the first time since Gilbert Arenas was dropping 60 on the Lakers with “phenomenal swag” and turning his back...
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Nevermind
by Dave Zirin / @EdgeofSports As I write this, the Seahawks are heading to the Super Bowl, with brash cornerback Richard Sherman’s name on everyone’s lips. As I write this, people are dancing in...
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Shadow and Shade
by Dave Zirin One person’s shadow is another person’s shade. If you are part of the NCAA’s power structure, kicking back in your $35-million Indianapolis compound, an ominous shadow is spreading over...
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Zen Time
by Dave Zirin Count me among the people who think that the man with 13 rings, Phil Jackson, will be a rousing success as the new president/CEO/Grand Poobah of the New York Knicks. Count me among the...
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Sterling, Silver and the Clips
by Dave Zirin On April 27 1967, Muhammad Ali refused induction into the US military, shaking the sports world—not to mention the real world—to its foundation. On April 29, 2014 a similarly seismic...
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Think Ahead
When Larry Bird was a rookie, he was 23 years old. In the 2014 Draft, we didn’t see a 22-year-old until pick number 11, where the Denver Nuggets snatched up Creighton’s Doug McDermott and subsequently...
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Global Games
I had the privilege to be in Brazil for the first two weeks of the World Cup. It was unforgettable, as the sounds of soccer emanated from every bar and restaurant, and even every garage and pharmacy....
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Labor Day
The news from the world of amateur athletics over the last month could be summed up by saying, “The NCAA is dead! Long live the NCAA!” Let me explain: As anyone with the ability to even spell “law...
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#SLAMTop50: John Wall, no. 18
It’s difficult to remember that it was just one short year ago when one of the big questions heading into the 2013-14 season was whether John Wall was really worth his recently signed max contract....
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#SLAMTop50: Kevin Durant, no. 2
The size of a healthy kidney bean. That’s how big the fractured bone on the side of Kevin Durant’s foot happens to be. If you really want to understand why KD is considered the consensus “choice 1a” in...
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No Flex Zone
There was one name that I truly hoped would be part of the 2014 NBA soap opera, and that name is Bill Fletcher. No, Fletcher doesn’t play basketball and I can’t attest to his vertical. But he did throw...
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Solemnly Swear
To his eternal shame, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was compelled to testify under oath in suspended-for-life running back Ray Rice’s arbitration hearing. An army of lawyers fought and failed to keep...
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Fight the Power
What is so stirring when we look back at the socially conscious athletes of the 1960s is not what they did but who they were. It was the stars, the best of the best, the jocks with the world in their...
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The Arena Has Gone Dark
There’s an old maxim from Bill Parcells that once you win a championship, you share blood with your teammates. The 2014-15 Knicks will be bonded in a similarly intimate fashion, except it’s less blood...
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Shark Month
Whenever March Madness enters the sports ecosystem, it’s an opportunity to celebrate the young women and men who have been playing their hearts out since fall, shaping the narratives that make up our...
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Open Letter to NYC
To describe the late Anthony Mason as a “former NBA player” does not begin to capture the ways in which he left his imprint on the game, the collective hoops consciousness, or our individual...
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Truth Shall Set Us Free
In honor of SLAM’s Throwback Issue, a tip of my hat to the player who most looks like he was unfrozen after 40 years in a cryogenic chamber and put on a 2015 NBA court: Paul Pierce. His veal-like...
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Voices of Reason
Over the last year I have done a radio program in Washington, DC, with former NBA player Etan Thomas. Thomas played 11 years in the NBA, so suffice it to say he has an extensive Rolodex of former...
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#PrayersForPearl
There are some athletes who will always be forever young. They will always be 19, always be dazzling, always, in some ways, be perfect. This is especially true in basketball, where teenage phenoms...
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SLAM Top 50: LeBron James, no. 1
More than a decade ago, I wrote an entire column about two short quotes credited to LeBron James. It was obvious that this teenager with a headband was going to have immense cultural capital. All of us...
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A Beautiful Mind
Who could have predicted that the most political, thoughtful and consistently interventionist athlete of 2015 would be a 68-year-old Hall of Fame legend, a man who spent most of his career not talking?...
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Silent Treatment
What comes to mind when you hear the name Samaki Walker? Maybe it’s his time on the Lakers during the Shaq/Kobe glory years. Or perhaps it is the fact that the former Lousiville star is part of what is...
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Unforgettable
On this day (Feb. 24) in 1978, a then-New Jersey Nets guard named Kevin Porter set a record by dishing out 29 assists in a single game. (That record was later broken.) In our new issue, Dave Zirin...
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Rock Chalk the NCAA
I made my first trip to Lawrence, KS, in February. Traveling to the land of Rock Chalk Jayhawk was actually less of a “trip” than a pilgrimage. It is part of the Mt. Rushmore of college basketball’s...
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S.A. Smash
I am making it plain: The San Antonio Spurs will beat the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals this year, en route to an NBA Championship. Even though Stephen Curry, the presumptive unanimous MVP,...
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SLAM 201 is On Sale Now!
We have had NBA Finals MVPs who dedicated their victories, through a mask of tears, to their mothers, their fathers and their hometowns. But we’ve never had an MVP say he won the trophy as a statement...
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Where It All Began
In the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a backlash against everything we love about today’s NBA, and standing against this tide, alone in those days before twitterstorms, hashtags and online petitions,...
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Can’t Hold Us Down
There are times when the rock of history gets pushed forward by just a yard and we miss the fact that it’s not just an ordinary yard. It’s one that takes us into new territory. I would make the case...
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SLAM Top 50: Kevin Durant, No. 4
Not since 2011, that first year when LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, has the NBA had a consensus villain. Well we do now. Unfathomably, that villain is a player who disavowed the nickname...
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Message
When Victor Oladipo says the words, you can hear the excitement in his voice. “Oh, no question.” he told Complex Sports. “I truly believe [protests will come to the NBA]. Because at the end of the day...
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What Now?
Today there is a new generation of political athletes in the NBA, comprised of some of the League’s brightest stars. This group of highly influential young black men are leveraging their fame to affect...
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Court Vision
On October 29, legendary 57-year-old rap icon Kurtis Blow went into cardiac arrest, his pulse stopping for five minutes. He survived and is already back on tour, rocking mics for as long as you like....
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Powerful Beyond Measure
There is no NBA All-Star taking our collective breath away quite like 22-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo. It’s the elastic arms and galactic skill set combined with a rapidly developing basketball...
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#RESIST
“Now we’re judging people by their religion—trying to keep Muslims out. We’re getting back to the days of putting the Japanese in relocation camps, of Hitler registering the Jews. That’s where we’re...
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A Welcome Distraction
As the playoffs—aka the second season, aka 40 Games in 40 Nights, aka “where legends are born”—get set to begin, it’s worth looking back on the most unique NBA season in recent memory, if not ever. I’m...
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The Last Bomb
I started this column over 10 years ago with a notion that the SLAM Magazine audience would be down to read a regular feature on the never-ending collisions between politics and hoops. It was a...
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The Message
It’s an indelible memory for me, 14 years later. I was just starting as a sports and politics columnist for a local Maryland newspaper called The Prince George’s Post, reading an interview with this...
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LeBron James Is Blazing a Unique Trail in Sports History
GRAB YOUR COPY OF LEBRON VOL 2 Can LeBron James save democracy? “Saving democracy” seems a hell of a lot to ask a basketball player, even one with the galactic gifts that the ageless James still...
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