All-Star Weekend

Let's look at some new basketball cards. 

It's All-Star Break time for the NBA. I won't be watching the game on Sunday because Damian Lillard, 6th in the NBA in both scoring and assists per game, was left off the team in one of the worst All-Star snubs of all-time. (This is where I can also point out that Portland is a borderline playoff team this year, currently sitting 7th in the West with the top 8 qualifying, making his exclusion even more inexplicable.) Still, I figured this was as good of an occasion as any to show off some shiny new hoops cards I snagged at the last card show in the form of a discounted retail jumbo pack of 2015-16 Prizm.

Mostly, I was really happy with this lot because I pulled 3 Blazers cards (though no Lillard.) Al-Farouq Aminu is one of the nine (!) new Trail Blazers this season and has been a capable starter from the jump, so it was nice to get my first Blazers card of the Chief.

This one, of course, was a must as it slides right into my Drexler collection. I have mentioned this before, but I have always appreciated that NBA sets tend to augment their size with former players of intrigue rather than silly subsets or other gimmicks.

On the insert side of things, Mason Plumlee was an interesting choice for Team USA. With his former Duke head coach calling the shots, it made sense. Plumlee apparently didn't make the next round of cuts for consideration for the Olympics this year, but like Aminu he's been a starter all season in his first year in Portland. I'm also glad that a potential team collector's dilemma was avoided when Panini included the Blazers team name on this card. I like this.

There were other non-Blazers to be found, of course. Opinions on Kevin Love have been divisive, both in and out of his native state of Oregon. I am not a fan. He snubbed my Ducks.

Speaking of things I am not a fan of, last year's All-Star jerseys were horrendous. They reminded me of something they might throw on a player in an unlicensed Star Pics photoshoot from like 25 years ago, or something some fake basketball player might wear in a B movie. Just awful. This year's threads are probably better, but like I said, I'm not going to be watching.

Each one of these packs of packs contains a special retail-only bonus pack of three Red, White & Blue Prizm cards (Panini's version of refractors).

I'm kind of kicking myself for not including this in my shipment of cards to get rid of on COMC. I'll certainly entertain trade offers for it.

Petro is one of the all-time tragic basketball stories (and there are, sadly, many). I'm glad to see that he's well represented on cardboard even though his career was so short.

I am going to make some updates to the Guilt-Free Basketball Club soon, including some of the Super Traders that like NBA stuff. I'll get these (and others that I have piling up) distributed as best I can.