The NBA to Launch 18,000 Ethereum-Based Playoff NFTs Today

Key Insights:

• The National Basketball Association (NBA) plans to launch 18,000 Ethereum-based NFTs today.
• Called The Association, there will be 75 NFTs of each player from the NBA playoffs.
• Last week, the NBA took a bigger step into web3 with the launch of NBAxNFT, the official NBA Discord.

It’s been a strong year for NFTs and the sports world. Increased player and team interest has driven sponsorship deals and increased player adoption of crypto.

For sports, the digital asset and virtual space are ideal avenues to drive fan engagement.

While interest is across a broad range of sports disciplines, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has been particularly progressive in the digital asset space.

The NBA Is Set to Launch “The Association” NFT Collection

Later today, the NBA will launch its new Ethereum (ETH) based NFT collection, titled The Association.

The collection will consist of 75 NFTs per player for all teams in the 2022 NBA playoffs. That’s a total of 18,000 NFTs.

According to the announcement,

“The Association is a collection of dynamic NFTs that change in appearance over time based on team and player on-court performance.”

The announcement goes on to say,

“The Association NFTs are being issued in a blind-mint, meaning that nobody will know which 2022 NBA playoffs player they will receive prior to the reveal on April 22.

Players will be assigned randomly and transparently using Chainlink (LINK) VRF so everyone will have a fair and equal chance of minting any player of the 16 playoff teams.”

The Association is an innovative project, with the NFTs “connected to live data feeds and computations for each respective team and player via Chainlink Oracle.”

The link supports the automated appearance change of players based on “pre-set achievements that are written into the Galaxis smart contract.”

The NBA Top Shot NFT Marketplace Gets Strong NBA Support

In 2020, the NBA and Dapper Labs launched the NBA NFT marketplace Top Shot, built on the Flow (FLOW) blockchain.

Going into the NBA playoffs, the NBA expanded its Web3 allegiance to drive community engagement.

This week, the NBA launched NBAxNFT, an NBA Discord to engage with NBA fans on everything Web3.

The launch coincided with the playoff team, the Golden State Warriors (GSW), launching a 2022 playoff NFT collection on the FTX NFT marketplace.

The Golden State Warriors 2022 Playoff NFT Collection is a limited collection of 2,000 NFTs, randomly assigned when minted on the Solana (SOL) blockchain via FTX. Each design has a unique level of rarity with its own utility and benefits.