words, photography & design // Nick DePaula
When SLAM #41 dropped in April of 2000, we had just witnessed perhaps the greatest Dunk Contest performance of all time. Vince Carter was famously a sneaker free agent in just his second season, and he laced up the white and red AND1 Tai Chi on the fly for that instant classic array of dunks.
AND1 had been around for a few years as a rising apparel company by that point and their transcendent streetball Mixtapes were moving major, but now, their footwear was taking off too.
The Tai Chi became the first shoe in company history to sell more than a million pairs.
“Not only was that maybe the best series of dunks I’ve ever seen — because it was just dunks that you’d never even seen before — but it was almost like the dunks that he had done were tailor made for the colorblocking of the shoe,” said the brand’s former head of footwear.
The opening reverse 360 perfectly showcased the white and red sides of each shoe rotating through the air. The between-the-legs dunk — off of a bounce pass — immortalized the shoes in mid-air forever.
The iconic photo is so classic that the Raptors’ new unis feature the pose right on the front. Earlier today, Vince and the franchise unveiled a new outdoor basketball court featuring the silhouette at half court.
As the buzz back in 2000 after that mid-February All-Star Weekend continued, on the very next SLAM cover slot that was available, VC laced up a simple black and white pair of the Tai Chi for the cover shot.
Our AND1 Tai Chi collab features SLAM’s heritage colors of white, grey, black and orange, fittingly the exact shades from that Issue 41 cover shot.
The white-to-black mesh fade is a nod to the brand’s unique materializations from the start of the decade, and a way to bring the Tai Chi’s original yin and yang inspired split read to the side of the shoe.
As always, the shoe looks best with a suede color along the inside panel — a bright orange suede is seen here on the SLAM edition.
The contrast stitching, split color laces and chrome shank all tie back to the added touches that initially made AND1 footwear such a force in hoops during the turn of the millennium.
To layer in more detailing, our 30th anniversary crest can be seen along the inner right collar, opposite of the three vertical stars on the left collar that signify each issue’s edition number.
The 3M hits throughout tie back to the bright lights of All-Star Weekend, and the impact that The Greatest Show On Earth has had, all these years later, on both AND1 and SLAM Magazine.
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