This story first appeared in SLAM 229.
In 2012, the Summer Olympics came to London, where I live. For basketball fans like me, the chance of getting a ticket to witness Team USA live up to their usual hype was a fictional concept. It wasn’t going to happen. I took some work out of town, trying to forget the fact that one of the best men’s USA basketball squads was catching lob passes on my doorstep, and I wouldn’t be a part of it.
My brother-in-law, a world-class barber, got in touch with the crazy news that he’d been asked to trim the US men’s basketball team while they were in town. Word?!? There was no possible way that I’d be able to tag along, but he’d keep me posted about how it all went down.
Phone calls followed. He talked about Bron being mad chill, Kobe being mad focused and how DWade (who wasn’t on the squad) showed up one day and got a fresh cut. Another dude who stood out was a young kid, the first draft pick that year. Yet to play an NBA game, he was a boy among men at the Olympics. “They were all talking about his eyebrow,” my brother-in-law said. It had to be Anthony Davis.
We’d previously seen The Brow on the cover of SLAM 149. At that point, he was a stand-out SLAM HS All-American. A year later and AD was called up to the Olympic squad. He was fresh out of breaking records and winning a title at Kentucky. He’d made headlines for his insane defense and had gained a reputation for leading a new breed of big men. The three-point shooting, fast-break finishing (while still shotblocking) kind. He was another product of Chicago’s prestigious basketball history, and his NBA career was about to go off.
In that summer of 2012, SLAM put Davis on the cover of Issue 160. Like so many times before, SLAM saw his future. The All-Defensive, All-NBA and League-leading block seasons, the All-Star Game MVP honors. Sadly, I passed on the opportunity to get a signed copy of his cover that year. I slept on his potential for a moment. This year, Anthony Davis has made me regret that decision more than ever.
