Article: Once Collectors Themselves, These Rookies Are Glad to Be Traded
MooseDog
Posts: 1,948 ✭✭✭
0
MooseDog
Posts: 1,948 ✭✭✭
Comments
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
Published: July 29, 2007
GREENBURGH, N.Y., July 27 — Although Greg Oden no longer collects basketball cards, he arrived here Friday eager to add to his collection.
Oden was one of 44 N.B.A. newcomers at the Knicks’ training center who posed for rookie-card photographs that were taken by Topps and Upper Deck. It was not long ago that many of the grinning players spread across the gymnasium floor were collecting cards with other people’s pictures on them.
“It’s really amazing to think that some kid out there is going to open a pack of basketball cards one day soon and see my face on one of them,” said Oden, a 7-foot center from Ohio State whom Portland selected No. 1 over all in last month’s draft.
“I wasn’t very good at keeping my cards in good shape,” Oden, 19, said. “I always managed to jack them up somehow by bending them and getting big creases in them.”
Will he be more careful with his own cards?
“Oh, that’s different now, these are mine,” said Oden, managing to spare one more smile after a long photo shoot. “My mama will be taking good care of them for me.”
Kevin Durant, a 6-9 forward from Texas who was picked second over all by Seattle, focused on the significance of having his photograph taken, as a way of celebrating a milestone.
“Just to get to this point, every guy in here has had to work really hard on their game,” Durant, 18, said as he played a video game on one of two large screens set up to keep the rookies entertained while they waited.
“When a kid out there gets my card, I want him to be excited about it,” Durant added. “When I was a little younger, I got Allen Iverson’s rookie card and I was ecstatic. But then I’d get other cards, and I’d be like, Oh, man, why did I get this guy? I remember getting a Howard Eisley card and not being too thrilled about it.”
Mike Conley Jr., a 6-1 guard from Ohio State who was drafted fourth by Memphis, said that he grew up idolizing Iverson, Steve Nash and Steve Francis, and that he still owns each of their rookie cards.
“I was big into the rookie cards, and now I’m a part of my own collection, which is kind of weird,” Conley, 19, said. “I only hope I can have the kind of career those guys have had, and that people cherish my rookie card the way I still cherish those.”
Brandan Wright, a 6-9 forward from North Carolina who was drafted eighth by Golden State, said that he once rooted for players like Michael Jordan and Kevin Garnett to be inside his packs of basketball cards, and now he wants collectors to root for finding him.
“I want to build a legacy, like those players did,” Wright, 19, said of Jordan and Garnett. “I want my card to make a kid’s day, and to maybe be worth something someday.”
D. J. Strawberry, son of the former Mets slugger Darryl Strawberry, was selected in the second round (59th over all) by Phoenix. The younger Strawberry, a 6-5 guard who played at Maryland, said he was thrilled the first time he saw a picture of his father on a baseball card.
“I told him that one day I would be on my own card,” Strawberry, 22, said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be baseball or basketball, but I was determined to do it.”
Joakim Noah, a 6-11 forward/center who starred at Florida and was drafted ninth by Chicago, still has a scrapbook “somewhere in a closet,” filled with his favorite trading cards.
“I grew up a Knicks fan, and I loved Charles Oakley,” Noah, 22, said. “But the card everybody wanted was a Michael Jordan card.”
Basketball fans and card collectors alike should know that there will indeed be a Jordan rookie card in these Topps and Upper Deck sets: Jared Jordan, a 6-2 guard from Marist who was selected 45th by the Los Angeles Clippers.
“I hope they don’t get us Jordans confused,” Jared Jordan, 22, said as he autographed a basketball for a young fan. “I’m no Michael Jordan, but I’ve done the best I could on the basketball court. And getting drafted and being here to take my rookie card tells me that there are people out there who recognize and respect what I’ve accomplished.”
E-mail: cheers@nytimes.com