Ever since I used to be rising up, SLAM has been the most well liked and largest journal ever. Each first of the month, everyone knew that you just go to 7-Eleven and also you go choose up that new SLAM Journal.
Clearly, I used to be at all times the one to have it. My mother would take me to 7-Eleven and the donut store, and that was the primary two issues I’d ask for within the morning, each first of the month.
Seeing that new SLAM as a seventh grader, it made me work tougher. As I used to be establishing all my targets as a hooper — taking part in within the McDonald’s Recreation, being a nationwide champion in Excessive Faculty, and finally making it to the NBA — being in SLAM was proper there on the high of my checklist.
Once I was 12, I knew that if I made the SLAM cowl sooner or later, our lives would change.
The primary time I assumed I might be in SLAM was once I noticed Sebastian Telfair and LeBron James on the duvet as highschool basketball gamers. That proper there took it to the subsequent stage for me. Just some years later, earlier than my tenth grade 12 months at Dominguez Excessive Faculty in LA, there I used to be, doing my first photoshoot to be in SLAM.
I used to be within the locker room, simply imply mugging the entire time. Simply letting the world know: There’s a hostile younger child from Compton coming.
I simply at all times liked the grittiness, and seeing a few of the finest basketball gamers from world wide within the journal. You had been at all times listening to the hype about gamers for the primary time. Because the rivals that we’re, everybody desires to go in opposition to one of the best, and SLAM at all times stored you up to date on who was coming and who was subsequent.
Quick ahead to now, and listening to that SLAM goes into the Corridor of Fame on its thirtieth anniversary — it’s properly deserved. It’s only a huge second for actual basketball. With all the things that they put into the streets, the love of basketball has positively paid off for them. I’m simply glad for everybody that I’ve recognized on the journal through the years.
To rejoice SLAM’s thirtieth anniversary, I needed to attach my very own model Tuff Crowd with SLAM for a fireplace assortment. Engaged on this collab collectively is simply one other full circle second in my life.
As everybody is aware of, I by no means went to varsity. Me going throughout the nation to Oak Hill early, then making the choice to skip school, exit the nation and go abroad — my route in my life has at all times been completely different. Even retiring early and beginning Tuff Crowd was completely different.
That’s what this assortment represents. That taking a threat is nothing, when you may have that perception in you.
The enjoyment of taking a threat and never understanding what’s coming is the great thing about life.
At Tuff Crowd College, we maintain it hostile. It’s the varsity and mindset for everybody that has taken a unique path in life to get to the place they wish to go.
We needed to make use of the unique SLAM emblem for this assortment, with that grittiness, to take all of it the way in which again to ’94. We’ve obtained a coach’s jacket, two hoodies, two tees and a few recreation shorts which can be loopy. It’s about having that teaching swag, and celebrating the concept of college spirit and taking part in by your individual guidelines.
This collab can also be simply displaying how a lot the sport has meant to me. Approach again once I was 12, I wasn’t mistaken. Being in that SLAM Journal as a tenth grader, after which on the duvet at 18 years-old in Italy and once more as a NBA rookie, actually did change my life.
All these years later, this assortment additionally reveals how we’re at all times larger than simply basketball gamers. With the ability to put the ball down and get into one thing exterior of it, however nonetheless be linked to the sport of basketball, is only a nice feeling of pleasure for what I’m constructing with Tuff Crowd and the place I’ve been in my life.
And I’ve obtained SLAM Journal to thank for giving me that inspiration from the very starting.
SLAM Journal picture credit score: Drew Reynolds.
