Monday, May 09, 2022

2021-22 Panini Contenders Basketball


Here's another new pack of basketball cards from the current season. This is another one that came from a blaster that I picked up recently.
 

65 - RJ Barrett - Contenders is one of those sets that tends to look the same year after year. This year, they at least switched up the typeface rather drastically and did some different things with the background. It always squeezes the photo of the player off to one side or another, which isn't great.


23 - Kyle Lowry - Here's one of the first card looks at Kyle Lowry in a Heat uniform. He's wearing Miami's ransom note jersey.


80 - Christian Wood - The backs push the front photo off to the right side of the card instead of the left.


37 - Chuma Okeke - Contenders pushes the entire rookie portion of the base set off to autograph territory, which means the readily attainable cards are full of second year guys like Okeke.


94 - Blake Griffin - I have no idea how or why they make up these seat, row and section numbers. There's also, like, half of a QR code.


52 - Russell Westbrook - Nevermind, I think I cracked the code. Well, at least part of it. The seat number corresponds to the player's jersey number. Imagine getting a ticket to a game in Seat 0.


162 - Austin Reaves Rookie Ticket - In hobby boxes, I believe the autographs come at one per pack. In blaster boxes, you get one hit per box, which could be a memorabilia card. I ended up with this sticker auto of a dreaded Laker. He's not a household name, but it looks like Reaves put up some good numbers in his first season in limited action.


13 - Aleksej Pokusevski International Ticket - The last card is an International insert, which shows the map of the world with the player's home country superimposed over it. I guess Panini didn't want to try to locate Serbia on a map?

2 comments:

John Bateman said...

The seat is uniform number
The Row Height
The Section weight

Jafronius said...

The NBA is getting too crazy with their alternate uniforms. Ransom Note alternates FTW!