Ever since I started working out of the Dime office, I noticed the UPS man comes around at least five times a day. Today he delivered a box from our guys at Mitchell & Ness. Inside was a stack of sleek black T-shirts that simply read, “The Moment The Game Changed” with the date October 26th, 1984 on the bottom it. After doing some simple math in in my head, I realized that was the night Air Jordan started his legacy in the NBA.

Obviously we all know that MJ is in Springfield today getting his name officially cemented in history. These t-shirts coincide with Mitchell & Ness’ super dope Jordan jersey packages that have been selling like Jay-Z concert tickets.

I’ll spare you the tragic details, but to put it flatly, I grew up broke. In elementary school, a fresh pair of Pro-Wings was about as “fresh” as I’d get. Or if Santa put me on the Nice list, there might be a pair of XJ-900s or some generic FILA’s under the tree. Major labels were mostly reserved for football cleats (on sale at the Chubby ‘N Tubby); I didn’t get my first pair of signature sneaks until the second Iversons came out when I was a teenager.

For me, Air Jordans were both a pipe dream and a source of taunting. I didn’t even bother looking at them in the store — my exposure was limited to my friends bragging about their newest pair, or flipping through the Eastbay catalog, claiming “I’ma get those!” knowing I was lying. Read More »

Young, angry MJ would carve you up.

Today, John Stockton receives the highest individual honor a basketball player can get: an induction in the Basketball Hall of Fame. As a Jazz fan growing up, I couldn’t be happier. For 19 years, Stockton gave our boring and bland town something to get excited about. He was a huge reason why the Jazz were a playoff team every year and why they made it to the finals twice. It is almost impossible to be from our neck of the woods and not give him Pope-type status. Read More »

On this unofficial Michael Jordan Day, the Dime crew reminisces on our personal favorite MJ moments, as well as our favorite Jordan sneakers.

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The Flu Game Growing up in the middle of the Jordan era, I eagerly huddled around the television to see what he would do next. The next amazing dunk, the game-winning shot, the shrug, the finger wag … anything he did, I had to see. Out of all those games and moments, one stands above all of the others: Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals. Read More »

There are certain plays that just stand out in your mind over time. Having watched basketball my whole life, the seasons blend together and one game-winning shot is sometimes hard to decipher from the rest. But when it comes to certain plays, they will never leave your mind. These are the plays that you spent hours on the playground trying to perfect, and before YouTube, you bought all the videotapes you could just to seem them again and again. When it comes to Michael Jordan, this play is when he posterized Patrick Ewing. Read More »

With the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony taking place today, we wanted to give the true diehard fans of the Dime Magazine community an opportunity to write about the 2009 class. Dime reader Dave Harrison, one of the most insightful Jazz fans we know, and who covered the team for a Salt Lake City TV station in the ’90s, shares his thoughts on John Stockton:

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There’s more than one reason the legendary John Wooden never hesitated to say “John Stockton” when he was asked who his favorite player was. Read More »

There’s a reason this video has almost 6.5 million views…

If media overhype isn’t your thing, or if you’re one of those people who was never a big Michael Jordan fan, you may want to stay in bed and keep away from the TV and Internet today. As you may have heard, MJ (and David Robinson, John Stockton, Jerry Sloan and C. Vivian Stringer) will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame today, so it’s gonna be all-Jordan/all-day on pretty much every sports outlet. Some of the Dime crew will be in Springfield, Mass., for the HOF festivities, where we’ll be providing live updates on Dime’s Twitter page. You should also check out @mitchell_ness on Twitter for updates from the VIP point of view, plus the latest on the hottest Jordan product ever released. They may be sold out already at the NBA Store, but we’ll let you know where you can get yours … Now about those “other” H.O.F. inductees: Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about them. Read More »

With the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony scheduled for this Friday, we wanted to give the true diehard fans of the Dime Magazine community an opportunity to write about the 2009 class. Dime reader Ian Queliz, who has repped his San Antonio Spurs harder than anyone we know, shares his thoughts on David Robinson:

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“The Admiral” is by far the most important Spur to ever put on the uniform — even ahead of Tim Duncan. Why? To put it simply: Without David Robinson, there probably wouldn’t even be a team in San Antonio. Read More »