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Things seemed to be going so well through Series 3 of NBA Top Shot. Pack drops had been running smoothly, there was sound logic behind which players were receiving Rare/Legendary Moments, and the market was pumping with loads of creative and fun Flash Challenges.
Unfortunately, that all came to an end a few weeks ago with the first release of the KD Certified packs. Since then, it’s been snafu after snafu with regular market shutdowns, non-randomized pack drops involving certain collectors pulling five straight Legendary Moments while the vast majority received nothing but 60K+ Commons. The most recent outrage was spawned by Top Shot’s decision to create 50-mint Legendary Moments from the 2000 NBA All-Star 3-point competition and dunk contest. That decision spoiled hard-earned Full-Team Sets for many of Top Shot’s most devoted users. Why?
But first, let’s address recent pack drops.
Chaotic Pack Drops and Market Closures
First off, I don’t blame Top Shot for their experiment with randomized pack drops, which give collectors the potential to snag a Rare or Legendary Moment in a standard pack. This was something that caught fire on NFL All Day, and the community wanted to see a version of this setup in Top Shot. However, despite things running smoothly on the NFL side (where they’ve yet to introduce a marketplace), it’s tough to imagine a more chaotic rollout on the NBA front.
Top Shot created two versions of the KD Certified drop: an Elite Pack which cost $49 and had better odds of securing desirable Moments – but also had a higher CS requirement – and a Standard option for $19, with much worse odds. I didn’t mind the low odds that much considering they were right there on the pack page, so folks knew what they were getting into. The problem was with the randomization (that wasn’t).
Unfortunately, Top Shot had a glitch in their system where the packs didn’t randomize properly, and that resulted in folks at the end of the Elite queue pulling nothing but Rare/Legendary Moments. Top Shot was quick to acknowledge the mistake. They instantly refunded everyone from that drop, then pushed back the release date for the Standard pack by another few days to try and get everything in order. But again, things went poorly during the second release, with hour-long pauses in the queue. Nor did it seem like they fully addressed the randomization issues, since a disproportionate number of collectors who received Four Star Rookies also got hooked up with a Holo Icon Moment. Instead of refunding the Standard Pack collectors, Top Shot offered little more than a confusing blog post that didn’t quite address the issue at hand.
Then came the shutdowns. Once the 72-hour pack drop experience had concluded, there were a litany of market shutdowns due to buying issues, and those lengthy shutdowns destroyed anyone’s chance to buy the dip. Why were they so unprepared?
The KD Certified drop was followed up with an NBA All-Star pack that included some S3 Rising Stars Moments and a queue that again presented different odds based on your Collector Score. While the queue and randomization process was smoother, the post-drop experience was another nightmare. Again, Top Shot had multiple hour-long shutdowns due to buying issues, with collectors regularly getting put in 15-minute timeouts for failed transactions. Getting hit with a 10–to-15 minute buying ban in Top Shot after a failed transaction isn’t anything new. However, I’m curious as to why, two years into this still-in-beta product, the process of buying Moments remains an issue.
If you’re keeping track, that was two consecutive disastrous pack drops (four if you count the different queues) over a two-week span, so I think it’s safe to say that this experiment has not exactly been a resounding success.
I get the intrigue of adding the chance, however slim, of pulling a Legendary/Rare Moment in a $19-$49 pack, but for whatever reason, these specific drops have royally screwed up what was previously a smooth-running system at Top Shot. I also understand the fury from the Standard Pack buyers, as a lot of folks spent close to $100 on packs filled with 60K+ Commons, which will sell for no more than $38 after fees. It’s one thing to buy a lotto ticket on a $9 pack with the hopes of securing a rookie, as the worst-case scenario there will have you getting close to breaking even, but a $60-plus L (which was the norm for most collectors) is going to make a lot of people angry.
I also don’t think it’s wise to do these sorts of drops outside of Base Set releases. It used to be $14 for a non-base pack that would guarantee you at least one of the non-Base Set Moments, but now it’s a lottery for everything at a much higher price – it feels too much like gambling.
Is Jeff Hornacek a “Legend”?
In another curious decision by NBA Top Shot, they decided to nuke a few Full Team Sets with the second release of their Series 3 All-Star pack, which will include “Legendary” Moments from the 3-point competition, the dunk contest and both the All-Star and Rookie/Sophomore game. These Legendary Moments will have an Edition Size of 50, and in a strange twist of gut-wrenching logic, Top Shot has decided that the only Legendary Moments that will count towards Team Sets will be the ones from the 3-point competition and dunk contest. Top Shot’s reasoning being that the players in the sideshow acts were representing their actual teams, whereas the players in the games were simply representing their conference. Okay.
If you look at the highlights from the All-Star and Rookie/Sophomore games, the players are wearing the jerseys of the team they played for, because, at the time, Eastern/Western Conference All-Star jerseys did not exist.
Above, Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal pose with their shared All-Star MVP trophy. How is that not an example of them representing their teams? If anything, it’s an even more explicit representation of who those guys played for.
And which players will compose this legendary lineup, you ask?
Alonzo Mourning, Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson (as a Reward), Vince Carter, Lamar Odom and… Jeff…Hornacek…
You read that right. Jeff Hornacek will be breaking up Utah’s Full Team Set with a Moment from 2000’s 3-point competition, which was billed as one of “the worst NBA 3-point contests” in NBA history. In that competition, Hornacek converted 11 of his 30 shots attempts, but because two of the makes were from the money-ball, he finished with a score of 13 – which still stands as the lowest-winning score ever in the 3-point competition. So, what’s so legendary about it?
At least for Vince Carter’s dunks, you could make the case that they’re Legendary, as he threw down some of the most memorable jams in the history of that competition.
But Hornacek? Could he even be considered a “legend?” Sure, he had a solid career, and made the All-Star team once, but a legend? I don’t know. I don’t understand why Top Shot decided to include that Moment at all, and to break up a Full Team Set with such a mediocre Moment from “the worst” 3-point contest in NBA history is a slap in the face to holders of the Utah set. I don’t think the reaction would be so negative if this set was being destroyed with a Legendary Moment from Karl Malone or John Stockton, that’s something a lot of people could accept and are anticipating, but lowest-score Hornacek is an extremely tough pill to swallow.
Generally speaking, I don’t think that Top Shot should release any Moments from the All-Star games, because what fan cares about that? I cover the league professionally and there have been years where I don’t even watch that meaningless game where defense is non-existent. Does anyone have fond NBA memories from All-Star weekend? My guess would be no.
That said, if they’re going to keep churning out these All-Star packs, at the very least make them Commons for the casuals. Legends aren’t made in All-Star games.
Solutions
I think Top Shot needs to face the facts and abandon this current pack format before too many collectors rage-quit the platform. Whether it’s randomization issues, or some sort of coding error associated with these drops that is messing up the buying process on the market, it’s just not working. Entangling Legendary, Rare, Base Set and non-Base Set Commons all in one pack is more confusing than alluring. People aren’t going to want to score boost for an expensive pack that is a complete gamble, and collectors who ground their way to a high Collector Score through strategic buying aren’t going to want to stick around if all is for naught.
I’ve seen lots of Utah set holders liquidate their accounts over this, and the same can be said for the Toronto fans. Does Top Shot really want to limit Full Team Sets to a maximum of 50 collectors per team? That would be a total of just 1,500 collectors having access to Full Team Sets, but the reality is that number would be even lower, as some folks would hold multiples of a certain bottleneck. That’s quite an exclusive club considering on any given month Top Shot has roughly 50-60K+ unique buyers on the market. Regularly infuriating both new and OG collectors seems like a bad business model.
It was Top Shot after all that incentivized collectors to assemble Full Team Sets in the first place, so why pull the rug out from the folks who did that? This isn’t something that would be hard to fix, either. The first option would be to follow the trend of previous packs and not have All-Star Moments count towards team sets, but this seems like an unlikely route for Top Shot to take. So, what else can they do?
Like they did with the Archive Set, they could introduce cheaper alternative options to both Carter and Hornacek, and they could do that with a Flash Challenge or an airdrop to set holders, but they need to do this fast. Folks are panic-selling their accounts right now, losing potentially thousands of dollars in the process, and it’s not like Team Set holders are your average collector – these are Top Shot’s most loyal customers who have made deep investments in the product. Collectors need to know now if there is a planned alternate release for set holders, otherwise, Top Shot is essentially incentivizing fire sales.