E-sports and pro NBA2K gamers, Feature

It’s day 3005 of quarantine. Interstate players are pummelling your outmatched squad. The rival set floated two uncontested jumpers, plucked a steal and posterized your star. Coach benched you for verbally flaying your teammates. The GM is a microsecond from stress-induced hernia. While you scan the animated screen for salvation, fans fiercely lament last year’s defeat. As Esports inch closer to sweat-stained reality, the NBA2K League nears main stage.

On Basketball Cards, Homecourt Mag

On Basketball Cards, Homecourt Mag

Yep, it’s been a while. I took some time off creative writing, while focusing on photography, but I'm back with a new article for the 90s kids out there, and feeling good about it. Banner image by Steve Duck, and published over at Homecourt in full.

Before you could serve Pau Gasol $200 for a shout-out, ‘90s kids stockpiled pictures of basketball players made from cardboard, plastic and ink. Tear open a dazzling foil packet, inhale the fresh scent of chemical print, and you’d possess juvenile hard currency. You could score a “rare” holographic Michael Jordan card. You might also get jumped for being too showy with the loot. Pre-internet, b-ball collectibles were the youth stock market, and teen investors were all in.

Sports cards were devised way back in the 1900s. Cigarettes came with collectible inserts to forge brand loyalty (as if nicotine wasn’t enough). Cards often had facts about the player on the back, which perhaps birthed the modern day stat-head. In an era when people couldn't afford books and the internet sounded like an abstract fishing device, trading cards were dubbed “The Working Man's Encyclopedia.”