Brooklyn Nets Big 3 Screen Print by Fitz x Phenom Gallery

Phenom Gallery continues its line of officially licensed NBA screen prints with this killer Brooklyn Nets Big 3 poster by artist Fitz!  It features Brooklyn Nets stars Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and Barclay Center.

The Brooklyn Nets “Big 3” by Fitz is an 18”x24” signed and numbered 5 color screen print.  Limited to just 250 pieces, it can be purchased now exclusively at the Brooklyn Nets Team Store online for $70.

Golden State Warriors 2018 Back To Back NBA Champions Screen Print by K-Tran x Phenom Gallery

Phenom Gallery continues its awesome NBA screen print series with a poster celebrating the Golden State Warriors Back to Back NBA World Championships! Designed by artist K-Tran, this Warriors serigraph is officially licensed by the NBA and Think450, the licensing arm of the NBA Players Association. The Golden State Warriors are currently a modern NBA dynasty having won 3 of the last 4 NBA World Championships. For this release, K-Tran took the concept of two players – Steph Curry and Kevin Durant – going back-to-back as an influence of the team’s achievement of winning the NBA Finals two years in a row. Along with these two imposing NBA MVPs, this print features the iconic NBA Larry O'Brien Trophy in the background.

Golden State Warriors 2018 Back To Back NBA Champions by K-Tran is an 18”x24” signed and numbered 7 color screen print. Limited to just 300 pieces, fans can purchase this awes poster now at the Phenom Gallery online store for $60.

NBA Finals 2018 FFB T-Shirt Collection by Fur Face Boy

The 2018 NBA Finals may be over but now you can relive them forever with these killer NBA inspired Fur Face Boy t-shirts! Check out Fur Face Boy’s hairy mascot redesigned as three iconic NBA players who were battling it out in the 2018 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and one young gun from Fur Face Boy’s favorite team, the Dallas Mavericks.

The NBA Finals 2018 Fur Face Boy T-Shirt Collection includes FFB Reaper (aka Kevin Durant), FFB King (aka Lebron James), FFB Chef (aka Steph Curry) and FFB Junior (aka Dennis Smith Jr.). Each NBA FFB t-shirt is available now, in sizes S-3XL, at the Fur Face Boy online store for $24.99 each.

NBA Pop! Sports Series 1 Vinyl Figures by Funko

The NBA Playoffs are really heating up and now’s your chance to immortalize the 2012 season with these cute, chunky vinyl figures of your favorite basketball player! Whether you’re a Heat, Knicks or Lakers fan, there’s definitely a figure for you in Funko’s NBA Pop! Sports Series 1. What’s really amazing is there are ten figures in this first wave of NBA Pop!, making it Funko’s largest single release to date. NBA Pop! Sports Series 1 includes Lebron James, Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Pau Gasol, Rajon Rondo, Kevin Love, Lamarcus Aldridge, Derrick Rose and Mr. Linsanity himself, Jeremy Lin.

The NBA Pop! Sports vinyl figures feature one point of articulation, stand 3.75” tall and come packaged in a full color displayable window box. These figures are available now in stores everywhere, but you can save yourself a trip to your local toy store by ordering them online from Entertainment Earth for $9.99 each here.

NBA Pop! Series 1 Concept Artwork by Funko

Funko has teamed with MINDstyle (yes, that MINDstyle) to produce a line of officially licensed NBA Pop! vinyl figures. Series 1 includes Lebron James, Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Pau Gasol, Rajon Rondo, Kevin Love, Lamarcus Aldridge and the reigning MVP, Derrick Rose. While these figures look awesome, The Blot has just one question…where’s the beef? As in where’s Kobe Bryant!?! Pau’s great, but the Lakers fan in me needs a Kobe Pop! vinyl figure immediately. I guess I'll just have to wait until Series 2.

As a University of Texas alum, I also think it’s pretty cool to see two fellow longhorns included in this release, Kevin Durant and Lamarcus Aldridge. I guess they can’t say we’re just a football school anymore! Funko also leaked the preliminary artwork for a future Jeremy Lin NBA Pop! vinyl figure. This would make a pretty sweet New York Comic-Con 2012 exclusive wouldn’t it?

NBA Pop! Series 1 will begin shipping in late April to ensure they reach you in time to cheer on your favorite team during the playoffs!

The Seattle SuperSonics Are Renamed The Oklahoma City Thunder!?!

I don’t know what the NBA’s problem is, but someone needs to start regulating the names of their franchises. The new name for the franchise formerly known as the Seattle Sonics, the OKC Thunder, is horrendous! (link) The Thunder is not the name of a once proud NBA team. In fact, it should never be the name of any major league professional sports team.


The nickname Thunder is the name of a Minor League Baseball team, or a defunct NFL Europe team (i.e. the Berlin Thunder) or even a few defunct Arena Football Teams (i.e. the Columbus Thunderbolts, the Cleveland Thunderbolts, or the Houston ThunderBears). But under no circumstances should Commissioner David Stern have ever allowed the Oklahoma City team to be named the Thunder. I just cannot believe this is happening, but I guess it’s better than the alternatives. Other names in the running were Wind, Barons, Marshalls, Energy and Bison. Not a single good name in the mix!

The Toronto expansion franchise started a horrible trend in 1995 when they decided to name their team the Raptors due to the popularity of Jurassic Park. I mean come on, had anyone ever even heard of a raptor before that movie came out? The name is beyond dated. Then the NBA let their 2004 Charlotte expansion franchise name its team after its owner Robert L. Johnson, and now we have the Bobcats. I don’t care what anyone tells me, the “fan vote” was rigged and the fact that “the bobcat is one of the few indigenous predators to the Carolinas” is just an excuse for Bob Johnson to have named his team the Bob-cats. (link)

I thought the Toronto Raptors and the Charlotte Bobcats were bad names, but now those teams look great compared to the Thunder. It’s not even plural! Arrrhhh! The other thing I don’t understand is why the Charlotte Bobcats and the Oklahoma City Thunder couldn’t decide on team colors. Both teams spent a lot of money on designing a team name, logo and colors, and yet they couldn’t even decide on a final two. No, these teams thought they’d be cute and just claim any number of colors they thought might look good together.

You see the Charlotte Bobcats’ colors are Bobcat Orange, Silver, Blue and Black, while the Oklahoma City Thunder’s colors are Light Blue, Orange, Navy Blue and Gold. Don’t they know that any respectable franchise only has two colors!?! At most a team throws in an alternate third color or maybe an unofficial secondary color like black and white, but not every color under the rainbow. I think this is going to backfire and eventually the team is going to have to settle on two (or maybe three) like the rest of the NBA, the NFL and MLB. After all of this, I can’t wait to see how bad the OKC Thunder’s jerseys are going to look. All I know is I feel sorry for Kevin Durant. I guess he should have stayed in college for one more year.

Kevin Durant Upper Deck All-Star Vinyl Figure

Today Upper Deck released their Kevin Durant All-Star Vinyl Figure for sale at their online store. The figure commemorates the former Texas Longhorn becoming “the first ever Seattle player to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award.” (link) The figure comes in three versions: Home Edition (limited to 500), Road Edition (limited to 1,000) and Black Edition (limited to 250). The Home and Road Edition Kevin Durant vinyl figures are being sold for $74.99 while the Black Edition retails for $99.99. You can also purchase the Kevin Durant Dual Pack for $149.99 which includes two Kevin Durant All-Star Vinyl Figures, one Road Edition and one Black Edition.


I think Upper Deck moved a little too quick to make a Kevin Durant All-Star Vinyl Figure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Durant, but I’m always hesitant to buy any sports collectible of an athlete in their professional jersey because of the way players today tend to jump to a new team as soon as their contract is up. Considering this is only Durant’s first year on the Seattle Sonics, what’s to say he doesn’t end up playing somewhere else in 3-4 years and is ultimately remembered for playing on his second, third or even fourth team. On top of that, it is almost a given than the Sonics will be leaving Seattle in the next few years, meaning these figures will be obsolete in no time.


In fact, the owner of the Sonics has already said he’d be happy to leave the team name, colors and records in Seattle for a future franchise to take over. That would mean Durant’s team would have new jerseys, colors and a new team name as soon as next year once the team is relocated to Oklahoma City. I don’t see how anyone could justify spending $75 on a figure that could be out of date in less than 6 months. The argument from Upper Deck that while “the future home of the Sonics may be up in the air, Seattle will always be the site of Kevin Durant's rookie campaign” just doesn’t cut it for me. (link) It’s really too bad Upper Deck didn’t make a Texas Longhorns variant figure of Durant, because The Blot would scoop up one of those bad boys in a heart beat.