Record price for Kobe Bryant’s SI cover featuring Michael Jordan fitting for NBA legends
On June 14, 1992, the Chicago Bulls won their second consecutive NBA championship, defeating the Portland Trailblazers four games to two in the NBA Finals.
The Bulls, led by Michael Jordan, the greatest of all time, closed out Clyde Drexler and the Blazers, 97-93, in Game 6 in Chicago. “His Airness” was named NBA Finals MVP for the second consecutive season and led the league in scoring for the sixth consecutive year.
At the height of their superpowers, Jordan and the Bulls were the biggest story in sports.
The biggest magazine in sports was the iconic Sports Illustrated. On seemingly every newsstand, in every supermarket, on every bookstore shelf and draped on the wooden magazine rack at every American school library (where I often found mine), the sports world began and ended inside the pages of SI.
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It came as very little surprise that Jordan was featured on the June 22, 1992 cover in his home white Bulls uniform with a celebratory cigar in hand after besting the Blazers. The joy of winning a second straight title shows on his face. “How Sweet It Is” reads the big yellow headline. How sweet, indeed.
With a reported circulation of three million weekly copies, Sports Illustrated was delivered to rabid sports fans all around the country. Come rain, sleet, snow or shine, MJ's big bright smile was found in mailboxes and on doorsteps everywhere.
The faithful mail carrier at the Wynnewood, PA Post Office delivered a copy of this very issue to 1224 Remington Rd.
The 13-year-old young man living at that address became a basketball savant in his own right, with a bloodline that included a father who was an NBA veteran. After moving to the U.S. from Italy, the young man devoured anything and everything basketball related, MJ and SI included.
The name on this subscription and mailing label was none other than Kobe Bryant.
Jordan went on to win six NBA championships with the Bulls and become the biggest sports star the world has ever known. Quite possibly the brightest Jordan-inspired star, Bryant went on to win five NBA championships with the Lakers to earn his rightful place in the conversation of all-time greats.
The June 22, 1992 cover of SI connects these two basketball icons in one of the most unique and personal ways possible. This incredible piece of serendipitous history, graded 4.5 by CGC, sold in Goldin’s September Elite Auction for $59,887.
Fittingly, the sale is a record for an unsigned subscription copy of SI and also broke the record for a celebrity's personal copy of a magazine, zooming past Neil Armstrong's own Life subscription copy of him leaving for the moon.
Jordan and Kobe, together to the moon and beyond. That's as fitting as it gets.