NBA Top Shot: Making sense of the league’s new digital collectibles platform

Ever wanted to own an iconic piece of NBA History? NBA Top Shot will make it possible for you to to do just that. Well, in a manner of speaking

Imagine if you could own an iconic moment in NBA history like Kawhi Leonard‘s “The Shot” from Game 7 of the last season’s Eastern Conference Semifinals. Or Damian Lillard‘s almost halfcourt buzzer-beating 3 to win Portland‘s first-round series against OKC.

Soon you’ll be able to do just that…well, in a manner of speaking.

On July 31, the NBA and NBPA announced a new platform for fans to collect and trade digital collectibles called NBA Top Shot. (If you go to the site now you can sign up for early access.) The platform will be blockchain-based with Dapper Labs, the creator of Crypto Kitties, providing the digital expertise.

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Crypto Kitties? I’d never heard of it until now although the Crypto Kitties Twitter account does have over 28 thousand followers. What is most relevant about Dapper Labs’ previous experience with Crypto Kitties is that the basic idea of how the NBA Top Shot will work is similar.

Crypto Kitties is a blockchain-based digital trading card community where players… collectors? breed, collect and sell 100 percent unique and proprietary kitties.

According to the official release by NBA Communications:

"NBA Top Shot will feature a social experience built around digital collectibles as well as a complementary head-to-head game designed to create a fun, authentic and accessible fan engagement on blockchain. Like other sports games or fantasy brackets, fans who play the game are tasked with creating their ideal squad, but in this game, their rosters are built by acquiring live in-game moments from the NBA season. These moments, such as a Kevin Durant 3-point shot, or Joel Embiid dunk, which are acquired as digital collectibles or tokens, can then be either owned forever or used to compete against other players in online tournaments and leagues on-chain. By introducing innovative features and mechanics to the team-building experience, and simplifying the head-to-head gameplay, NBA Top Shot will offer a fun and compelling experience that is accessible to basketball fans of all ages."

My initial reaction on reading this news was, “Why!? What would be the point of this?” Which was immediately followed by, “Oh gosh, I must be starting to get old.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the application of this kind of content could be pretty interesting.

With the popularization of Smartphones, the purchase of virtual “goods” is nothing new to us. There are countless apps on Google Play and Apple’s App Store that you have to purchase to use. And even among free apps, the vast majority of them have options for in-app purchases or to buy an often ad-free premium version. It sounds like the NBA Top Shot will be designed to capitalize on the virtual goods marketplace.

The first application for these virtual collectables is obvious to me as someone who had a large collection of basketball trading cards when I was young. NBA Top Shot would seem to be the natural evolution of traditional sports trading cards for the digital age. Plus, there would be advantages such as not having to worry about keeping physical cards in pristine condition. Besides, do people even collect sports trading cards anymore?

On the other hand, I feel like the monetary value of the digital collectables won’t be able to match that of their physical counterparts, as obsolete as they may be. Historically, the rarity and condition of a physical trading card have contributed in very big ways to its overall value. One example is a Michael Jordan rookie card that sold for $100,000. And one of the draws of traditional collectables has always been that one day they might be worth something.

Since the basis of NBA Top Shot is collecting specific moments during the NBA season, I’m interested to see if and how exclusivity will factor into this concept. As discussed in the Netflix series, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj in the episode entitled Supreme, the demographic I’d expect this platform to have the most interest for is very into the idea of limited edition.

Yeah, yeah, I know the release says this platform is meant to be accessible to fans of all ages. But accessibility and interest are two different things. Let’s be real, my dad, as much as he loves basketball, has absolutely no use for NBA collectibles of any kind, much less those comprised exclusively of code. Even my interest is mostly curiosity-based and even then, if I was only going to watch basketball and not write about it, it would probably be only a passing interest at best.

So will there be an attempt to build exclusivity and if so, how would it be done? Possibly by making a particular moment only available for a limited number of purchases? I would assume that’s how it’s going to work. Perhaps how high a player is ranked will determine how many times that particular moment is available to buy. Or maybe it will be how incredible the moment itself is. How posterizing was a dunk? Was a 3-point shot from halfcourt a buzzer-beater that won a game? Was a crossover particularly ankle-breaking?

And what about defensive plays? For obvious reasons, offensive plays have always been the easiest to get excited about. And in today’s scoring focused NBA that’s even truer than ever. But you can’t deny the crowd reaction to a perfectly-timed steal or an incredible block.

In any case, right now, it only makes sense that there are more questions than answers and I’m looking forward to seeing how the collectible side of the platform comes together.

The part that I think will be the most interesting is the tournament and league side of things. Fantasy sports have operated on the same basic principle since they started. You build your dream team and how well the individuals perform during the season determines how well your fantasy team does overall. NBA Top Shot takes fantasy sports in a bit of a different direction and one that I think is pretty cool.

I know that there are A LOT of folks who love, love, love, their fantasy sports. I just wonder if this new platform will be able to entice some of that market to try something new and if they will like it enough to abandon what’s tried and true or add a new type of play to what they already do. If not, the target audience could be limited to the younger generation of NBA fans.

As mentioned above, your roster would be based on the live, in-game moments that you acquire throughout the season. Reading this part immediately made me think of watching Greivis Vásquez play when he was with the Toronto Raptors. Man, watching him was…well it was something.

His lack of defensive awareness notwithstanding, he always seemed to be a step slow and could always be counted on to heave up questionable 3-point shots. But in unlikely clutch moments, it seemed like he always came through with a big bucket.

To me, this platform has the intrinsic ability to make second and third-tier players that might seem like a liability to a fantasy team roster much more valuable if, like Vasquez, they are players that come through in the clutch. Because it doesn’t matter if the guys that sink the buzzer-beating three or throw down monster dunks regularly only shoot 28 percent from the floor. Those moments are still spectacular.

If nothing else, it’s an extremely innovative idea that can be easily replicated for use in other sports fields and is inherently targeting the right demographic of fans. I’m interested to see if it’s something that is embraced for the long haul. or, like it’s financial crypto precursors, will burn brightly for a period of time before largely flaming out. Only time will tell.