Hoops Hobby

I’m not used to opening a bunch of card mail at one time. Usually it’s a card here, a card there, once every few weeks maybe. I’m also not particularly patient. When a card arrives, it’s not long before I open that mailer.

So when after getting back from being out of town for a week or so, when I realized I had five or so envelopes to open, it was pretty exciting.

It’s not every day you add an autograph of a starting center on an NBA Championship team. Nesterovic won a ring with San Antonio in 2005, starting in all 70 games played that season alongside Tim Duncan in the frontcourt during the regular season. He was supplanted by Nazr Mohammed during the playoffs, but still played key minutes off the bench.

Nesterovic played in 70 games, starting 19 for the 2008-09 Pacers. By the end of the season, rookie center Roy Hibbert was the starter.

He appears as a Pacer in 2009-10 Topps, with a great image shooting a hook shot over Drew Gooden. Would love to have a copy of this card signed, but for now, this SAGE autograph will do for the autograph binder. This was an eBay purchase for a good price.

The other certified autograph is of a player I hope will be a part of the Pacers long term, rookie Johnny Furphy. He’s looked like he could be a rotation NBA player during his limited minutes on the NBA Finals Pacers team. I held out on purchasing an autograph card from some of the early releases, but I finally caved and bought one from Revolution. This is a Impact parallel out of 100.

The remaining are TTM (Through the Mail) autograph returns, all of which I mailed out pretty recently.

Point guard Byron Dinkins signed with the Rockets as an undrafted free agent for the 1989-90 season. He played in 45 games over two seasons with the Rockets, Spurs, and Pacers. He also played several years in the CBA and many more playing professionally overseas, including in Germany and Greece.

He currently serves on the UNC Charlotte Men’s basketball coaching staff as Director of Player Development. Dinkins played his college basketball career at UNC Charlotte as well.

Dinkins is a great TTM signer and returned our card signed in less than 10 days.

I also tried some more custom Pacers cards and both of those came back signed as well.

Dave Robisch played collegiately at Kansas and started his ABA career with the Denver Rockets, where he averaged nearly a double-double as a rookie. The Rockets rebranded as the Nuggets for the 1974-75 season, under coach Larry Brown. The team went 65-19, fishing first in the Western Division. They lost one stop short of to the finals to the team he would ultimately join the following season, the Pacers.

He briefly played for the San Diego Sails after a dispersal draft, and then when that franchise folded, he moved to the Pacers, where he was a part of the last ABA season with the team, as well as the first few NBA seasons.

Robisch played for a handful of other NBA franchises, including a return stop with the Denver Nuggets where he continued to be a productive big man.

I received this custom Pacers card signed in less than 10 days. Was glad to find some nice Pacers images to use for a custom card.

Very pleased with the image on this Greg Kite custom card. I would argue Kite is best remembered for his time with the Magic. Here though, he’s defending Shaq in the 1995 Eastern Conference Finals, game 5, a game that the Magic won by 2 points and Shaq put up 35 and 13.

Kite came over to the Pacers during the 1994-95 season, appearing in 9 regular season games and 8 playoff games. He won two championships with the Celtics in 1984 and 1986.

Kite is also a very generous TTM signer, and he responded to our note as well.

What have you opened in the mail lately?