Late Night Top Shot 📺
Featuring The Redeem Team, Magic Johnson on Jimmy Kimmel Live, NLL Hardcourt, Sorare Simmering & More
Good Morning, B&B Team! Hope your week is off to an excellent start!
We are officially a week out from the start of the NBA season, and I am HYPED! While the offseason drama is always fun, I’m ready for some real basketball to watch.
In the spirit of the season starting, I watched ‘The Redeem Team’ documentary on Netflix this weekend — highly recommend. A few quick hitters on my thoughts:
Getting a behind-the-scenes look at Kobe Bryant in his element was SO cool. The man was just built different, and in an era where it seems like every player is buddy buddy, his competitive fire and quiet/closed off demeanor was fascinating to watch.
Although it seems impossible, I feel like I forgot just how physically dominant LeBron James used to be in his early years. Seeing the chasedown blocks, killer defense and the massive dunks brought back some serious memories (and pain, as a fan of an Eastern Conference team that got stomped by him every year).
Where was the Dwight Howard commentary? Dude was such an important factor on the team, but I can’t recall a single meaningful scene or interview with him. Also — what a rollercoaster of a Hall of Fame career he has had.
There were a lack of several voices, but something we didn’t have a shortage of — Carlos Boozer.
My two favorite scenes: Kobe blowing up Pau Gasol to send a message on the first play of the game, and this hilarious club story:
Let’s get into all the action from the last few days:
Late Night Magic 📺
We saw some major marketing out of Top Shot on Monday, via Magic Johnson’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! :
For a longer look at the episode (the brief Top Shot talk starts at around 8:40), here’s the full interview.
I have to admit, it was pretty surreal to see Kimmel pull up a moment on national television. It’s a similar feeling to Jimmy Fallon talking about Bored Apes — seeing the spotlight shined on our little corner of the internet is always wild to watch.
With the public NFT sentiment being… not great! — I thought Magic and Jimmy kept things positive, and definitely put a focus on DIGITAL COLLECTIBLES (not the dreaded NFT word).
With Jayne mentioning previously that this season will have a $40-60M marketing budget, I’d assume this is not the last we’ll see of Top Shot in the public eye. And while I don’t think Magic is the most convincing collector to use — his star power is a great way to help change the normie public perception of NFTs in general, a critical factor in mass adoption.
Maybe all it takes is a little Magic to get the digital collectible train back on track!
‘Hardcourt’ Heroes 🕹
Remember Hardcourt? Once a seemingly integral part of the future of Top Shot, the previously in-development mobile game has been off the radar for almost a year.
And while it isn’t back ON the radar, it looks like the SoHo House of Top Shot is adding some utility for members in the form of a game:
The not-Hardcourt game will feature cash prizes (dapper balance) and Cool Cats packs— an innovative way of continuing to distribute the remaining supply under their control. If you don’t recall, here’s the NLL update from June:
The Cool Cats Unopened Pack Inventory: a collection of 14,579 Cool Cats packs from the NBA Top Shot vault spanning Cool Cats Drop 1, Drop 2, Drop 3, Drop 4, Cool KAT and Cool Cats: 17,784 — representing over 16,000 total Cool Cats Moments — will now be under the complete control of the NLL Council.
The Cool Cats era feels like a different time in both NFTs and Top Shot — just a distant memory. And while funny cat GIFs used to be a staple of the newsletter back then, it’s been awhile:
Sorare Simmering ⏲
With the season around the corner, for the first time we’ll have another NBA-type NFT collection competing with Top Shot for our attention. The announcement of the Sorare NBA (sorry, The Association fans) launch came in hot last month — and after a bit of quiet things seem to be simmering towards tipoff.
It sounds like this week will be a big one in terms of actual mint and game information, with a community chat happening on Thursday with former player Jay Williams (who I did not realize had .eth in his Twitter handle 🤝).
It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts Top Shot — while different products on the surface, the two are competing for a similar demographic within a tiny NFT world. Sorare has seen huge success with its soccer product — and has more volume in the last week than TS and All Day combined, per CryptoSlam.
And while not angling to be a digital collectible in a highlight sense, Sorare hits on many of the gamification angles that people have loved about All Day — and continually complained for on Top Shot. Will people choose one basketball NFT to focus on? Or divide their money between both?
Not sure, but I’m certainly excited to find out!
Around The First Mint 🗣
🎧 The Future of Ownership (Feat. Jess Sloss)
🎧 How Premint is Making NFTs Less Painful (Feat. Brenden Mulligan)
🎧 Is NFL All Day the Answer to Sports NFTs? (Feat. Dave Feldman)
Thanks for reading! — Zach @ The First Mint
Follow Zach on Twitter at @GhostOfGregOden.
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
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