Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
Slam Magazine Issue 50, dated April 2001, is one of the most significant single issues in the publication's history — and the cover pairing of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant is the reason why. By April 2001, Jordan was in his final Washington Wizards chapter, having un-retired for a second time in September 2001 — wait, more precisely, in April 2001 Jordan was still in his front office role with the Wizards, having retired from playing following his second three-peat with the Bulls in 1998. Kobe Bryant, meanwhile, was in the middle of the 2000-01 NBA season with the Los Angeles Lakers, who were in the process of completing a dominant championship run that would give them their second consecutive title. Bryant at this moment was emerging from Shaquille O'Neal's considerable shadow and establishing himself as one of the most electrifying individual performers in the game — younger, more acrobatic, and more ferociously competitive than almost anyone else on the court. The cover pairing of Jordan and Bryant on a milestone fiftieth issue of Slam is therefore not a casual celebrity grouping — it is a deliberate editorial statement about basketball succession, about who had defined the game's recent past and who was defining its present and future, made at the precise moment that question was most actively being debated among serious basketball observers. Collectors building a comprehensive archive of Michael Jordan's documented legacy across basketball publications will find the Michael Jordan magazine collection the most focused resource for tracking his coverage across the full arc of his playing career and beyond.
The fiftieth issue milestone gives this particular Slam a specific editorial significance beyond its cover subjects. Milestone issues in magazine publishing — particularly for publications with the cultural authority that Slam had built by 2001 — are typically produced with heightened editorial investment and a self-conscious awareness of the publication's own history and identity. A fiftieth issue of Slam featuring Jordan and Bryant is not simply a regular monthly installment; it is a statement about what the magazine believed mattered most in basketball at the precise moment of that anniversary, and the choice of these two figures as the cover subjects is itself a document of how Slam understood the game's generational continuity in April 2001. The included original poster adds a further dimension — Slam's poster inserts were among the most visually ambitious in sports publishing, and a milestone issue poster featuring Jordan and Bryant together is a particularly specific artifact of how the publication visualized the relationship between basketball's greatest recent champion and its most electrifying active performer. Collectors focused on Bryant's career specifically will find the Slam Magazine archive one of the most consistently substantive resources for his coverage throughout his two decades with the Lakers.
April 2001 sits at a genuinely significant moment in NBA history more broadly. The Lakers were in the process of completing what would become one of the most dominant playoff runs in league history — they went 15-1 in the 2001 playoffs, losing only a single game across four series — and the dynasty that Shaq and Kobe had built was being discussed as potentially the most powerful force in the game since the Jordan-era Bulls. The Jordan-Bryant comparison that this cover implicitly invites was not yet the settled historical debate it would later become; in April 2001 it was a live and genuinely contested question, with Bryant still in the process of accumulating the championships and individual achievements that would eventually anchor his place in the conversation. Collectors focused on this specific era will find that 2001 magazine issues from Slam and its contemporaries capture the NBA at a moment of maximum competitive intensity and generational transition, with the game's historical hierarchy still being actively written rather than retrospectively assessed.
About the Publication
Slam Magazine was founded in 1994 and established itself across the following decade as the most culturally influential basketball publication in the United States, occupying a distinct editorial position that set it apart from more institutionally oriented competitors. Its audience was younger, more culturally engaged with the hip-hop and streetball dimensions of basketball culture, and more interested in the personalities, aesthetics, and cultural significance of the game than in statistical analysis or league administration. The magazine's visual identity was built around bold, high-contrast photography and graphic design that treated its cover subjects as cultural icons rather than simply athletes, and its poster inserts — large-format images of major players designed explicitly for display — became one of its most distinctive and collectible features. Milestone issues represented the publication's most deliberate editorial statements, assembled with heightened awareness of the magazine's own history and identity and typically featuring the subjects and visual treatments that the editors understood as most emblematic of what Slam stood for at its best. Issue 50, arriving in April 2001 at the height of the Lakers' dynasty and with Jordan still fresh in the cultural memory of every basketball fan, represented precisely that kind of milestone editorial investment.
Key Highlights Inside
- Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant cover — a milestone fiftieth issue pairing of basketball's greatest recent champion and its most electrifying active performer, functioning as a deliberate editorial statement about generational succession and basketball legacy at the precise moment the Jordan-Bryant comparison was most actively contested among serious observers of the game.
- Original poster included featuring Jordan and Bryant — a large-format visual artifact of the publication's most ambitious milestone issue, representing Slam's tradition of producing display-quality poster inserts and carrying the specific additional significance of the fiftieth issue context in which it was produced.
- Coverage appearing during the 2000-01 NBA season in which the Lakers completed a 15-1 playoff run on their way to a second consecutive championship — placing this issue at the peak of the Shaq-Kobe dynasty and at the moment when Bryant's individual stature was most actively being elevated relative to O'Neal's within the team's broader narrative.
- Fiftieth issue milestone context — giving this installment a specific editorial weight and self-conscious historical awareness that distinguishes it from regular monthly issues and that typically correlates with more substantive content, more ambitious visual treatment, and greater long-term collector interest within any publication's run.
- Newsstand origin confirmed by the absence of a mailing label — a meaningful condition attribute for a Slam milestone issue, preserving the full visual integrity of what is one of the most historically significant cover images in the publication's fifty-issue history to that point.
- Note: Specific interior article titles, additional player features, and other editorial content beyond what is indicated by the cover subjects, poster, and listing description are unconfirmed for this issue. The above reflects what is verifiable from the cover subjects, issue number, date, and the thoroughly documented histories of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and the 2000-01 Lakers season.
Condition & Rarity
Very Good condition is a strong and meaningful grade for a Slam Magazine milestone issue now nearly a quarter century old, and the specific attributes of well-preserved surviving copies of Issue 50 are worth understanding carefully. Very Good indicates a copy showing only light wear consistent with careful storage rather than active reading — slight spine stress, minimal corner softening, or very minor surface wear — while retaining full structural integrity, clean interior pages, and overall presentation quality that reflects deliberate preservation. The original poster intact is the most specifically significant condition detail for this issue: Slam's posters were designed for removal and display, and the majority of surviving copies of any given issue have had their poster extracted by original purchasers who purchased the magazine precisely to access that content. A copy retaining its original poster therefore represents a collecting-oriented preservation from the time of original purchase, a minority of the total print run, and a meaningfully more complete artifact than poster-absent copies regardless of their overall condition grade. The absence of a mailing label confirms newsstand origin, avoiding the adhesive cover damage that subscription labels cause and preserving the full visual integrity of a cover image that carries considerable historical significance. A protective plastic covering indicates deliberate archival intent that correlates with better interior page condition and maintained poster integrity across nearly twenty-five years of storage.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Very Good copies of Slam Magazine Issue 50 with original Jordan-Bryant poster intact and no label are among the most specifically sought issues in the publication's entire run — the combination of milestone issue status, generational cover pairing, and poster completeness creates a configuration that serious collectors of both Jordan and Bryant memorabilia pursue with considerable intentionality. For those tracking Jordan's print presence across basketball publications throughout his career and legacy, the Michael Jordan magazine collection is the most focused starting point for finding other significant issues across different titles and across the full arc of his public presence in the sport. The broader Slam Magazine archive offers a wide range of issues for collectors building a comprehensive picture of the NBA's most culturally influential era, and those focused on the early 2000s specifically will find the complete 2001 magazine collection a valuable resource for contextualizing this milestone issue within the larger basketball and cultural landscape of the year it documents.