Basketball

Basketball is a fan favorite American sport with an amazing cultural staying power, case in point, both Space Jams. The WNBA has also been gaining popularity recently, a wonderful step forward for women’s sports in the US. The first documented sport that basketball most likely evolved from was noted in a German book published in 1591 about a game played by the Indigenous people of coastal North America. The first documented game of basketball as we know it was in 1891 in Massachusetts.

Seeing as basketball has been around for a few centuries, it only makes sense that many magazines have been dedicated to spreading the news and opinions about the game. College Basketball Today focused on the college teams of North America. SLAM, a magazine still around today, focuses on both the NBA and WNBA.

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College Basketball Today, 1990

College Basketball Today was published by Spectator Sports, which was a monthly publication.

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Pro Basketball Today, 1990-91 Annual Issue

Pro Basketball Today was a special annual edition of the quarterly Basketball Today magazine, published by Dojo Publishing, LTD. out of New York City. The annual edition provided exclusive scouting reports on teams and individual players in the National Basketball Association, profiling some of the biggest basketball stars of the 1990s. The cover features an action shot of Michael Jordan in his Chicago Bulls jersey, about to shoot a basket.

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SLAM Vol. 1, No. 1

SLAM is a magazine that began publication in 1994 and is currently still being published – an astonishing feat for magazines which usually tend to be incredibly short-lived. SLAM combined basketball news with hip hop culture, both basketball and hip hop becoming incredibly popular when SLAM began publication. At its inception, SLAM was published quarterly, but today it is published bimonthly.

Initially published by Harris Publications, Inc., SLAM became such a success that it is now published by Slam Media Inc. SLAM has also largely kept the formula for its magazine format the same throughout the years, another rarity for a magazine. Today SLAM is available internationally via digital means, another resounding success for this magazine!