Getty Image
NBA Top Shot is the collectable of the moment in the basketball world, and many think it has a bright future as an asset as much as a piece of sports memorabilia. But the company’s next move appears to be rooted in its past. The company has two current base sets and can’t keep packs of its video highlights in stock amid an explosion of attention in recent weeks.
You can read more about it here if you’re still catching up, but Top Shot essentially offers fans encrypted video highlights they can buy, sell, and trade with people on an open market for real money. It’s basically a digital trading card of NBA highlights, and people are really excited about them.
Top Shot routinely asks fans what moments from this season they want added to the pool of collectables, and the of-the-moment feel is definitely part of the appeal — and the hype — that’s seen interest in the collectables skyrocket in recent weeks.
NBA Top Shot Community
We’ve got some Tuesday night NBA action on tap
Quote tweet your fave highlights from TONIGHT’S games Use the hashtag #NBATopShotThis #⃣ pic.twitter.com/YMFIlylTHS
— NBA Top Shot (@nba_topshot) February 16, 2021
That includes in Josh Hart, who tweeted about Top Shot and opened some packs on his Twitch channel on Saturday. Hart was joined by Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou and community lead Jacob Eisenberg to chat about Top Shot and what the future holds for the company. The stream also had a pretty funny moment: Hart got a Deandre Ayton moment where he blew past Hart himself for a dunk.
Interestingly, the company said the immediate future of Top Shot is trying to get the platform out of beta and handle the huge influx of users they’ve seen in recent weeks. But they also said the next step as far as moments is highlights from the 2005-2010 NBA seasons, specifically some retired Hall of Fame inductees like Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki.
“That will feature some Hall of Famers who are making their Top Shot debut,” Eisenberg said during Hart’s Twitch stream, noting that those packs should arrive in the next few weeks. They will likely be in the Run It Back series, which has already highlighted the 2013-14 season. And it’s something that the company has been rumored to be expanding into in the past.
An ESPN report from earlier in the week from Brian Windhorst mentioned something similar. In an extensive piece about Top Shot collecting and the boom Dapper Labs has seen for its product since its 2019 launch, there are also some details about where the company may be headed next.
There are plans for growth, as Dapper Labs is preparing a rollout of games to be played with the Top Shot Moments. The first is called “Hardcourt” where fans can pit teams they create against one another.
The company has also already started talks with retired NBA players to secure rights to historic highlights. There has already been one series of these created, called Run It Back, released. The idea of classic Michael Jordan Moments, like “The Shot,” for example, being released in limited supply could set records.
“We have a vast archive of content we can tap and a lot of our history that people will want to own,” O’Keeffe said.
Eisenberg mentioned that licensing issues for former players are a bit more complicated: retired players have to opt in to be part of the NBAPA licensing deals. Michael Jordan, for instance, was described as “a different conversation.” But that kind of growth seems to certainly be in the cards for Top Shot, even if it’s not a card company at all.
