You don’t have to be an early reader of SLAM magazine to be familiar with one of its most famous covers: the 1996 NBA rookie class, considered to be one of the three best NBA drafts of all time. Nearly 20 years later, featured on the cover of SLAM‘s November 2014 issue are the rookies of the 2014 NBA Draft, which is being hyped up as the best draft since 2003 — another Top 3 draft of all time. For the new cover, SLAM gathered a dozen top rookies — minus Dante Exum and Dario Saric — from the Class of 2014 to pose for a similar photo.
Here’s the original lineup, from left to right: Marcus Camby, Ray Allen, Stephon Marbury, Kobe Bryant, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Jermaine O’Neal, Kerry Kittles, Steve Nash, John Wallace, Antoine Walker, Samaki Walker. We’ve got a long way to go before we can start comparing the two classes. Also, Ray Allen somehow managed to land on both covers in on e way or another.
