The State of the Blog

I know, weird timing, right? (Plus a new Twitter find.)

I have a couple of announcements. First off, I'm not renewing the Cards on Cards fantasy hoops league for the coming season, which is about to tip off later this month. It was fun being in a casual league, but the way the last season came crashing to a halt left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. I may revisit the idea if things ever get back to normal. This also reminds me that we never officially crowned a winner from last year.

Yahoo crowned a winner, however, after the league went dark in March. Congrats to Venus City Minds (aka KO Rob) who successfully defended his title, albeit in a strange way. I usually send off a prize to the league winner, but basketball blasters cost about as much as a month's rent in some places so I'll have to think of something else here. Manute's Glutes (aka Rob) was in second place when the thing was called, and I never got a chance to face off against either of them in the playoffs because they never happened. Oh well.

I'm also officially calling off my annual Bowl Pick 'Em contest. As fun as these things are, I just can't get behind this contest this year which is supposed to be about frivolity, randomly matched opponents and weird bowl game names but are actually going to involve young unpaid athletes putting their lives at risk. Who knows how many actual bowl games there will be? Since these games are mostly poorly attended anyway, aside from the very top games, I don't think the lack of crowds will make things much different, but it also will be even less fun to watch. Let's try again next year. I'll try to think of a different contest to hold.

As far as March Radness goes, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I wouldn't hold out a ton of hope that the real tournament will happen. College kids, you know...

On a completely different topic, I managed to get hooked up with the entire Trail Blazers team set (sans rookie Nassir Little) from the brand new NBA Hoops Premium Stock set thanks to generous Twitter guy @DaEpicDonut. Premium Stock is only available in factory set form as far as I can tell, and offers another take on the NBA Hoops design from the recently concluded season.

All of the cards have the Prizm designation on the back and have this shiny sparkly pattern. This isn't a full parallel version of the Hoops set, though, as most of the cards use brand new photos with players on their new teams if applicable. This is my first and possibly last look at Trevor Ariza in a Blazers uniform in cardboard form.

Melo wasn't even in the league when the original Hoops set was released, so it's safe to assume the regular set and this set don't have the exact same checklist. I haven't done a comparison between the two, so I'm not sure if they replaced a few of the players with new ones or just re-did the checklist altogether.

Here's a shot of another now-former Blazer in action. Whiteside was mostly very good while his team was pretty lousy before the pandemic stopped the season, and was reduced to an under-contributing backup once Jusuf Nurkic returned to claim his starting spot. This returned Whiteside to roughly the same position he was in when he left Miami, unfortunately for him. Anyway, it's a cool looking photo.

Here's the whole bunch, which included a bonus Dame Chronicles card.

Next up- better news? And... maybe some baseball cards for once!