The Greatest Mixtape Ever, Extended Remix
Growing up a basketball-obsessed kid in the ‘90s, SLAM Magazine functioned as something more than just a publication I read for fun. SLAM provided insights into corners of the game lightyears away from the rural boondocks in which I lived, or even the more cosmopolitan spots like the basketball camp I eagerly awaited each summer.
SLAM exposed me to an alternative basketball history; a history in which Earl “The Goat” Manigault became a figure who commanded respect from no less than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The magazine also provided my first sampling of the Dunbar High School sensational six, 20-plus years before they were covered in one of my favorite basketball books.
Another basketball book I love, Rick Telander’s Heaven is a Playground, told the story of James “Fly ” Williams’ background and neighborhood commensurate with the New York playground legend becoming a proto-March Madness legend at Austin Peay.
SLAM followed Fly’s tragic decline in the 20 years that followed.
But more than covering the less mainstream stories that Sports Illustrated or Sporting News didn’t, SLAM functioned as a cultural guide to basketball. SLAM embraced the relationship between hoops and hip-hop in a way no other outlet would or could, featuring Ice Cube alongside Nick Van Exel in a story about Los Angeles’ love affair with the Lakers and the Beastie Boys with Anthony Mason in the East Coast parallel for the Knicks.
Each edition of the magazine offered these cultural samplings that weren’t always as pronounced, but certainly established the publication’s cred and shaped its identity. I fondly remember a small featurette that played off Snoop Dogg’s line from “Tha Shiznit” off his solo debut album:
To tell you the truth
I swoop in the coup
I used to sell loop
I used to shoot hoop
Snoop’s basketball game became the stuff of legend coinciding with his rising musical popularity. The D-Oh-Double G even claimed that while playing under his government name of Calvin Broadus, he fielded offers from Div. I programs including his neighborhood Long Beach State and powerhouse UNLV.
SLAM asked Jerry Tarkanian for comment; he said he’d never heard of Broadus. Claims of Div. I offers without verification mean Snoop may have been the predecessor to Tristan Jass1 — who himself is the social-media successor to the And1 Mixtape style of basketball player — but it’s a fun urban legend all the same.
And SLAM covering it reflects the magazine’s importance to the evolving identity of the game.
I’ve expended all these words on SLAM in a commentary on ESPN’s And1 Mixtape/Tour documentary because the publication was vital to the growth of And1 as a cultural touchstone. SLAM functioned as an arbiter of cool, and its advertising of And1 gear placed it at the peak of late ‘90s and early ‘00s hoop fashion, which in turn helped fuel the And1 Tour.
Likewise, I led with SLAM, which has a presence in the documentary but little more, to highlight just how much more there is to the story that 30 For 30’s The Greatest Mixtape Ever Made did its best to tell under impossible limitations.
Mixtape is the first 30 For 30-branded documentary I have watched in ages, in part because the series has been so poorly marketed for the last five years and the overall quality took a dip.
Neither is the fault of filmmakers tabbed to bring these stories to life, particularly in this instance. Mixtape is an aesthetically pleasing documentary that touches on interesting facts surrounding the rise and decline of the And1 Mixtape/Tour.
The production team presented interviews with some fascinating figures, including Snoop and Common. All told, they had the pieces of an excellent feature-length documentary (if not complete docuseries).
Instead, Chris Robinson and Set Free Richardson were afforded 47 minutes to detail a decade-and-a-half of history. I am an avid watcher of documentaries, and offer up for contrast that individual episodes from the majority of docuseries I watch are longer than 47 minutes.
As a result of the narrow window, so much of relevance had to be left out. Rafer Alston’s tenure playing for the aforementioned Jerry Tarkanian at Fresno State is completely ignored, beyond the brief mention of his 1997 SLAM cover in a Bulldogs uniform.
While the uninitiated might be left to assume Skip To My Lou went directly from the New York playgrounds to the NBA, Alston’s trek West is just part of a larger, fascinating connection between the Mixtape community, New York City and Tark-era Fresno State.
To wit, Alston was briefly Bulldogs teammates with Kenny Brunner — briefly, because Brunner was dismissed from Fresno State for his role in a robbery using a katana.
Brunner resurfaced years later on the And1 Tour under the nickname “Bad Santa.” Fresno State, meanwhile, peaked a few years after Brunner’s dismissal and Alston’s departure with a 2001 NCAA Tournament team featuring Melvin Ely and Tito Maddox.
The ‘01 Bulldogs are relevant to the larger And1 story, having brought a previously missing air of legitimacy to the brand as the only team in March Madness wearing And1-made uniforms and shoes.
Meanwhile, Bad Santa is one in a variety of names that gained fame from the And1 Tour during the 2000s, yet didn’t appear in Mixtape. Fan favorites like Grayson “The Professor” Boucher and Troy “Escalade” Jackson were nowhere to be seen despite playing central roles in the most mainstream era of the Mixtape concept.
In fact, the Tour itself plays a limited role in the overall narrative of the documentary — ironically, given the And1 Tour was an ESPN property. Perhaps because of its ubiquity on daytime ESPN in the pre-hot takes era, it was less necessary to cover than the roots of the Mixtape, but it deserved more attention all the same.
But, again, I don’t blame the filmmakers. 30 For 30 as a brand is in a strange place.
The documentary series’ standing in the greater Worldwide Leader empire seemed guaranteed to decline following the exits of John Skipper and Bill Simmons. The concept of 30 For 30 — which is to say, the name — was the brainchild of Simmons.
Simmons’ most celebrated contributions to sports media lie in rebranding existing properties or mediums with glossier veneers and expanded budgets. Grantland was just a more hip (and more pompous) version of the original Page 2. 30 For 30 was a more highly produced spin on Sportscentury.
In other words, Simmons didn’t invent the sports documentary. What’s more, the name “30 For 30” became outdated almost from its inception2. So why the 30 For 30 name wasn’t simply changed to “ESPN Documentaries” the moment Simmons left, I’ll never know.
Likewise, I don’t understand the rationale in continuing the property while failing to market it effectively or give the filmmakers ample time and opportunity to produce documentaries that reach their potential.
With the advent of ESPN+, the network has unlimited space to go hard on the documentary and docuseries market. The success of The Last Dance under the ESPN umbrella speaks to the public’s appetite for deep, compelling sports documentaries.
Mixtape was a prime opportunity to go similarly in-depth on a pivotal cultural moment in basketball, playing out parallel to the timeline of The Last Dance. Robinson and Richardson deserved a bigger canvas, and the audience deserved a story allotted more than one minute less than the clock on an NBA game.
For those unfamiliar, Jass is a basketball social-media influencer with more than one million subscribers on YouTube. He recently gave an interview claiming to have had multiple Div. I scholarship offers, and he even signed with a college — NAIA member Ottawa University in Arizona. Jass returned to social media full-time and has been successful with it, but isn’t a D-I caliber player and none of the recruiting services report him having D-I offers.
30 For 30 came from the original idea of producing 30 documentaries in conjunction with ESPN’s 30th anniversary. Only a handful were actually released on the network’s 30th birthday.