{"id":713903,"date":"2021-11-17T13:41:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T18:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=713903"},"modified":"2021-11-17T13:44:55","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T18:44:55","slug":"kevin-garnett-1998-slam-kicks-nick-depaula-special-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/kevin-garnett-1998-slam-kicks-nick-depaula-special-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"How Kevin Garnett’s SLAM Presents KICKS Vol. 1 Cover Changed One Sneaker Insider’s Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story appears in an entire special issue dedicated to the Big Ticket. Shop now.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s up with the rubber band?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People ask me all the time. Explaining that I\u2019ve worn one on my left wrist every day since middle school is always more awkward than I expect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s when I saw KG on the debut cover of KICKS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s up, dog?\u201d it read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was 13\u2014and that magazine changed my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youthfulness of the League\u2019s first prep-to-pros player in 20 years was understood. A 22-year-old KG was also fresh off his very first signature shoe with Nike, had just inked the lockout-inducing $126 million contract and was re-defining the concept of positionless basketball for a new generation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He represented the future of the League as it evolved into a post-MJ era\u2014and seeing him grace the first-ever cover of SLAM\u2019s offshoot KICKS magazine was a perfect fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKevin said he wanted to be remembered as the one player that had fun every single time he went out there,\u201d former Nike exec David Bond recalled on page 11, of KG\u2019s very first Swoosh meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always loved that quote. Hoops is fun. Sneakers are fun. I\u2019ve tried to carry that same youthfulness with me ever since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been a long ass time, but the rubber band\u2014from an endless supply of 3 1\/2\u201d x 1\/4\u201d bands that I switch out weekly\u2014has been a daily reminder ever since of why I do what I do. And I\u2019ve got KG and SLAM to thank for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the issue dropped in the fall of 1998, there had never been anything like it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can write about sneakers?\u201d I remember thinking, while reading about sneakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was all new territory, and seeing and holding a tangible extension of that meant everything to me. The SLAM team might not have even realized it, but that single issue opened the doors to what kids around the country even thought was possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our understanding of \u201cworking in sneakers\u201d at the time was that working at Foot Locker would be cool, off the strength of just getting a discount. No one even knew an entire world surrounding the game that we all loved existed as a career path. Whether that meant working in the sneaker industry at a brand in design or marketing, or writing about the players and pairs that moved the needle, that first KICKS issue was eye-opening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple sneaker magazines, dozens of footwear-centric blogs, and seemingly millions of Instagram pages\u2014focused just on kicks\u2014all followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue was also insanely informative, providing every reader with a foundation of footwear knowledge that would basically supercharge the generation of kids hopping onto the Niketalk and Sole Collector<\/em> forums at the start of the 2000s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was one thing to think \u201cthe patent leather Jordans\u201d were a sick shoe or to have heard the legend of the Air Jordan XIII being inspired by MJ\u2019s \u201cBlack Cat\u201d nickname, but when KICKS dropped, there was a full lineage of every Air Jordan model, all together on a two-page spread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 10-page stretch that followed it was a literal encyclopedia of \u201cevery Nike Basketball sneaker ever,\u201d as the cover promised. Listed out in order were product shots of all 378 of the Nike models that had hit retail by that point. (No. 278 is the greatest hoop design of all time, by the way. The very next one, the Air Thrill Flight at No. 279, was the first pair of Nikes I owned, thanks to my $40 budget growing up.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in the mag, there were actual features and interviews with sneakers designers\u2014another first. The only industry name that anyone knew was Tinker Hatfield, and here was a three-page spread, each on Eric Avar and Aaron Cooper\u2014both with hair! The duo designed Nike Basketball\u2019s most iconic silhouettes of the \u201990s for the likes of Penny Hardaway, Scottie Pippen, Jason Kidd and Gary Payton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On page 87, I found myself staring at not only Avar for the very first time, but also the shoes I had just finished my seventh grade basketball season in\u2014a black and green variation of Dennis Rodman\u2019s Air Shake NDestrukt that I snagged for $19.99 at Ross. (Our team colors were also green\u2014so it\u2019s quite possibly my all-time favorite find.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exaggerated grooves of Avar\u2019s sketch, along with a reversed Swoosh and \u201cNIKE\u201d text over the heel Air window were all different details than the shoe sitting in my bedroom, sparking my curiosity and imagination for what else I could uncover from Nike\u2019s archives of what-if designs and concepts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooper\u2019s first-person penned piece on Pip\u2019s second shoe connected how an athlete\u2019s insight and involvement could drastically shift where a design is headed, after Coop admitted he worked up the first, more bulky, Air Pippen model without much input from Scottie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of Russ Bengtson\u2019s features and framing laid the foundation of how I envisioned a designer profile reading. So I started to develop a roadmap of how I could get there. I became the sports editor of my high school\u2019s paper a few years later. Russ pointed out that Nike was located in Oregon\u2014so I went to the University of Oregon, studied Magazine in the School of Journalism, and would make the drive north often to try and make connections in Beaverton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my very first \u201cFocus: Artist\u201d article in a 2006 issue of Sole Collector<\/em> that highlighted an undiscovered talent named Justin Taylor, to the countless designer interviews I\u2019ve conducted ever since with the likes of Jason Petrie, Leo Chang and the rest of the team that carried on the torch at Nike Basketball, KICKS was the blueprint all along. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of the first times I interviewed that celebrated trio of Hatfield, Avar and Cooper during the late 2000s, I remember thinking back to the pages of the first KICKS issue a decade earlier. Talking to Coop about his Garnett 3 design, a vibrant, fading black and blue sneaker that I wore in high school, was an all-time moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A handful of years after that first issue had dropped, in 2003, I have a pretty distinct memory from around 4 am on a spring Friday night. I was at my high school\u2019s \u201cGrad Night,\u201d and they had a standard exercise for all of the students to participate in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A massive white paper roll waved out in front of us over the auditorium floor, and I remember one of our teacher chaperones yelling out \u201cGrab a Sharpie, and write down what you\u2019ll be doing in 10 years!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t hesitate for a second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna write about sneakers, for SLAM,\u201d I told myself.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it all started with a picture of Kevin Garnett and a rubber band. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

KEVIN GARNETT: Anything Is Possible is a feature-length chronicle of Kevin Garnett\u2019s remarkable career and the pivotal moments that defined it. Stream the documentary on SHOWTIME. <\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6yv6I2TAIqw&feature=emb_title\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photos via Getty Images.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story appears in an entire special issue dedicated to the Big Ticket. Shop now. \u201cWhat\u2019s up with the rubber band?\u201d  People ask me all the time. Explaining that I\u2019ve worn one on my left wrist every day since middle school is always more awkward than I expect.  But that\u2019s when I saw KG on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":713929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49435],"tags":[62525,261,63535,12990,63536,63148,63367],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-713903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-magazine","tag-feature-1","tag-kevin-garnett","tag-kevin-garnett-special-issue","tag-nba","tag-nick-depaula","tag-slam-kicks","tag-the-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713903"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731470,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713903\/revisions\/731470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713903"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=713903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}