ATCN get down with Slam Magazine…..

February 16, 2010 by Danny Wood

Over the summer I had the chance to get inside the Slam Dome. This had been a dream of mine since I picked up my first Slam back in 96 when basketball became a part of my life in secondary school. I got in contact with Slam Editor Ben Osborne and bagged myself a tour round an office that could only be described as perfect ( If Carlsberg did offices…). Surrounded by basketball memorabilia from yester year and present day that would have any basketball fan, shoe junkie or hip hop head in tears. Every Slam cover graced the wall from the first Larry Johnson cover of 94 to the present. Bags of unworn trainers ready for the latest edition of ‘kicks’ sprawled across the floor with a lone pair of Jordan 1’s hanging from the ceiling; and in this basketball utopia we talk. Ben throws up a 4 for ATCN, we talk basketball, cheating refs, college jumps, football and just the other day….John Terry. For the rest hit MORE

It must be noted that Ben is an Arsenal fan, please don’t hold it against him…read on!

DW: When they say that any publicity is good publicity what do the recent black marks of the Donnaghy scandal and now the Gilbert Arenas gun debacle do for the league’s public image profile and Stern’s quest to regulate everything?

BO: I think Stern hated both of these incidents, and then quickly sought to help the League benefit from them in negotiations with the refs and players. The referees had to come to a new agreement before this season and there is no doubt the League used the Donnaghy situation against the refs like, Why should we pay you X when (at least) one of your guys was betting on the games? Similarly, I’m afraid Stern’s main mission (on behalf of the owners he works for) is to crush the players in the negotiations that will take place between now and the summer of 2011. To that end, he will harp on the irresponsibility of Arenas in explaining why the players have gotten too much in the past. When I first heard the Donaghy accusations I thought they were horrific and could really damage the League. However, since he got out of prison, wrote a book, did numerous interviews (including one with us: http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2009/12/one-on-one-with-tim-donaghy/), he really has yet to say anything confirmable that implicates other refs. Maybe he did act alone, in which case it deserved to be pushed aside the way it did.

DW: Similarly, would something like the John Terry affair have caused such a big stir in the NBA world, it’s not exactly Tiger Woods or anything? Note how the affair’s perception/context might change come the end of the weekend…. Might have more in common with Donnaghy than you think….

BO: I haven’t followed Terry all that closely. Are there real gambling accusations, i.e., that he may have allowed debts to influence his play? That would be MASSIVE in the US. I always say a pro would never throw a game in the US because you couldn’t pay him enough to be worth it. I think point-shaving is rampant in college, but again, I don’t think it happens much in the NBA. As for cheating with a teammate’s wife? I think that would be a pretty big deal. My impression is that the British tabs are a little more ruthless than the American ones when it comes to sport celebs
(excepting Tiger of late), so run-of-the-mill NBA affairs would probably get nothing like Terry-level attention. But the teammate aspect does seem to me like it would be big here, too.

DW: Will football ever really grab the American people’s imagination and be seen as an equal to any of the big 4 sports or will it just be a game for school kids, given the brief rise and fall of striker?

BO: I think it will totally rise, it’s just taking a bit more time then people (myself as a founding Editor of the Striker Mag you mention included) expected. For one thing, MLS keeps growing steadily with new stadiums opening. For another, the best English/Spanish/Italian league games are becoming easier and easier to watch on American TV/the internet,
etc. Even five or six years ago, if I wanted to watch Arsenal I had to goto a loud bar and pay for drinks, if not a cover. I’ve spent my last two Sundays watching a quality broadcast of their games, LIVE, from my living room. (And yes, Mr. Spurs fan, I know they played like shit both games. Not the point.) The above are reasons why soccer will improve it’s standing in the US. Meanwhile, other than basketball, which I think has the greatest growth potential globally (easiest to play, magnetic superstars, already played as commonly as soccer/football), I see major flaws with
baseball/football/hockey… Baseball’s costs could become prohibitive to more and more people;  Football’s danger could become prohibitive to more and more people. Both baseball and football are also so linked to PED’s. If the crackdown on those drugs increases, those sports could suffer. I think it may take 25+ years, but I just feel like baseball and football’s holds on America are tenuous, especially with America getting more and more diverse and less and less Americans having the type of family history that binds you to one of those sports. Hockey seems to me to have many of the same problems as baseball and football, PLUS it has never been all that popular in US anyway. I actually think soccer would rank ahead of hockey in a poll of young fans favourite sports RIGHT NOW.  If I had to bet on a ranking of team sports popularity in this country in 25-30 years I think it will look like
this:
1-Basketball
2-American football
3-Soccer
4-Baseball
5-Hockey

DW: Following Brandon Jennings success so far this year will it the overseas jump after high school be viewed as an equal alternative to college? Do you see the league somehow taking issue with it?
BO: It all depends on the kid. I think it was a great move by Brandon, but he has a special mix of confidence, curiosity, personality and special basketball skills that allowed him to make that move. I’m afraid many kids would struggle over there. There wasn’t one kid in the 2010 High School class who made that move, and while there’s already one 2011 kid over there (Jeremy Tyler), I haven’t heard of any other prospects considering it. I don’t think the League would have a big problem with more kids doing it if they perform well.

DW: When will Omar get a more regular spot on slamonline.com?
BO: Whenever he wants! Or: whenever we have money. Pretty much all columns on slamonline are written for free. Until we start making real ad money on the site, the best thing we can offer writers is exposure to build an audience.
Many of our writers have taken advantage of just that, but I think Omar feels pretty strongly that he’s not going to write regularly unless we pay him. I totally respect that, and in the meantime I get as excited as anyone
else when I see a new column by him go up. Here’s his archive, by the way:
http://www.slamonline.com/online/category/blogs/omars-gangster-entertainment
(If you don’t know about Omar’s gangsta entertainment corner….get to know. It’s pure genius)

DW: We miss Sam Rubenstein!!
BO: We miss him too. Just came by the office a couple weeks ago, actually. Thankfully, Sam is still part of SLAM every month as the author of the hysterical “What Player Are You” column that runs in Hype. He’s also got a blog archive on the site, though it isn’t updated much more frequently than Omar’s: http://www.slamonline.com/online/category/blogs/the-watcher/

Big big thanks for Ben and the Slam team for letting me loose in the office. Big thanks to my fellow hoop head, shoe junkie and Team Friday brother Alex Lois for the Q’s.  Here are the essential links….

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