5 on the 5: 2006-07 Topps Basketball

In honor of tonight's NBA Draft, I thought I'd show off some packs I rescued from a Target bargain bin recently. When I saw these packs, I immediately thought about pulling a Brandon Roy rookie card. I don't have a ton of recent basketball cards and I certainly don't have a ton of rookie cards of Blazer All-Stars. Here are five packs featuring the stylings of Larry Bird (bleh) and some guy a lot of Portlanders really wanted in a Blazers uniform four years ago. Thank goodness for Kevin Pritchard.

Wait... they want to fire Pritchard? What in the world is wrong with the Blazers?

[updated 04:10 PM - per The Oregonian beat writer Jason Quick, Pritchard is officially done but will finish the draft process tonight.]

Pack 1:

240 - J.J. Redick (First card out of the first pack is a rookie. I'm not sure how the rookies were distributed. Sometimes rookie distribution is weird in packs of other sports besides baseball.)

255 - Andrea Bargnani (Here is the #1 pick of the 2006 draft. Let that sink in for a bit.)

141 - Jamal Crawford

33 - Larry Bird (More bleh. His card is #33. I see what they did there.)

116 - Kevin Garnett (A friend of mine keeps reminding me that I used to be a huge KG fan. I wouldn't say "huge" exactly, but I used to mess around with the Timberwolves back in the NBA2K days on the Dreamcast. He is incredibly obnoxious, though.)

64 - Ryan Gomes

3 - Chris Paul (The hot rumor a couple of days ago was that Chris Paul was going to be traded, and one of those teams may have been Portland. Obviously, that was seriously going to happen, right?)

OTG20 - Elton Brand Own the Game (These cards are pretty unsightly.)

135 - Brad Miller

34 - Ray Allen

128 - Brian Cook

82 - Joey Graham

Pack 2:

246 - Brandon Roy (Jackpot! Wait... is it too late to return the rest of the packs? Maybe I will be greedy and hope I get a LaMarcus Aldridge rookie. Roy is the best thing to happen to this franchise since Clyde Drexler. With the way the Blazers are being run, though, I wouldn't be too surprised to see him get traded for a sack of pickles.)

239 - James White (I'm sensing a trend here. Two rookies at the front of each pack perhaps?)

23 - Jason Richardson (J-Rich tore apart Portland in a couple of playoff games this past season.)

142 - Mike Miller

197 - Carmelo Anthony (Gross. There's nothing like opening a few packs to make me realize how many players I hate in the NBA.)

145 - Manu Ginobili

79 - Smush Parker

33 - Larry Bird (So is there a Bird card in each pack? This is a different picture than the first one I pulled. I would have showed that, too, but I have already dedicated way too much space to Larry Bird here. As you can see, Topps took some liberties with the 2006 baseball design here. In some years, the designs are almost identical, like 2008.)

31 - Shawn Marion

78 - Darko Milicic!

76 - Johan Petro

77 - Yao Ming

Pack 3:

254 - Saer Sene (This reminds me... I need to do something with this card soon.)

216 - Adam Morrison (The Stache...)

27 - Peja Stojakovic

92 - Hakim Warrick

140 - Chris Bosh (One of the highly sought after free agents this offseason... I'm not completely sold on Bosh being a franchise guy to build around, though.)

168 - Troy Murphy

84 - Melvin Ely

CCS17 - Yao Ming Clutch City Stars (This is way too busy for me.)

183 - Zydrunas Ilgauskas

110 - Steve Nash

83 - Jason Williams

31 - Shawn Marion

Pack 4:

265 - Shannon Brown

222 - Shawne Williams

1 - Elton Brand

80 - Sarunas Jasikevicius (What happened to him?)

188 - Samuel Dalembert (Dalembert was one of the first pieces to be moved in what is supposed to be a massive offseason for player movement.)

103 - Josh Howard

51 - Chris Kaman

OTG23 - Chris Paul (I always get Paul cards. He's like my Ichiro of basketball... or Mauer lately.)

69 - DeSagana Diop (DeSagana Diop's name is kind of fun to say outloud.)

199 - Etan Thomas

16 - Mike Bibby

47 - Andrei Kirilenko

Pack 5:

236 - Hilton Armstrong

261 - Solomon Jones (Either this was a bad draft after the top 6 or so, or I just have bad luck.)

263 - David Noel

145 - Manu Ginobili (Batman again.)

79 - Smush Parker (Parker played all 82 games for the Lakers in 2005-06. Isn't that hilarious and weird?)

152 - Carlos Boozer (Ugh.)

167 - Brevin Knight

CSP12 - Ben Gordon Clutch City Prospects (You don't hear the term "prospect" very often in basketball. It's more of a baseball term.)

- Checklist 2 of 2

77 - Yao Ming (More Yao cards for the fire.)

121 - Andre Iguodala (Iguodala has been another buzzed about name recently. Clearly he's not playing in a regulation game here.)

72 - Nate Robinson (This is what happens to fans when they run on the court in an NBA arena. In baseball, you get tasered.)

164 - Shaun Livingston

Enjoy the draft, everyone. Hopefully Pritchard won't be fired by the time it's all over, but I know that's goofy thinking at this point.