Anyone know anything about these players? I'm not a basketball fan.

@Norikins:
They're all retired? I mean, these came out over 17 years ago, after these three players had already played long enough to establish themselves as stars (or they wouldn't have been included in this set), so it's a pretty safe assumption. Even if they started the NBA the day before this set came out, straight from high school, they'd still be 35-36 by now. Add in a college career, and you're looking at a minimum of 39-40 in a sport that does not treat age kindly.

@Schmopiesdad said:
" @Norikins said:
"Anyone know anything about these players? I'm not a basketball fan."

Excellent summary, except you sold Gary Payton short - he’s considered one of the best point guards of the last 30 years, took Michael Jordan & the record-setting 72-10 Bulls to 6 games in the NBA Finals, and is already in the Basketball Hall if Fame.
Nowitzki and Carter will join him there, the moment they are eligible (only recently / just retired, so have to wait a couple years)

Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks was among the best power forwards ever to play in the NBA, and likely the greatest European NBA player to date, who has enjoyed a full career. He led Dallas to the franchise's only championship in 2011, defeating the Miami Heat with Lebron James.

Vince Carter was a walking highlight reel out of UNC, who played an extraordinarily long time for an explosive player, having just recently retired in this year. In his 22-year career he played for more than a half-dozen teams and had an impact up until the end. He will always be remembered for his ability to "jump out of the gym."

Gary Payton was a scrappy, tenacious point guard for Seattle and several other teams afterwards. He was an excellent defender, who never backed down from anyone. He won a title with the Heat in the latter part of his career in 2005.

All three of these players excelled in their own way.
"

@lemish34
@Schmopiesdad

Both excellent summaries. The only thing I would add (besides go watch a Vince Carter highlight reel) is that Gary Payton was nicknamed “The Glove” because of his defensive skills.
I’ll also add that you should go watch a Vince Carter highlight reel to see some of the nastiest, high-flying dunks of all time.
Vince is a favorite of mine not only because we’re the same age and he just recently retired, but because we also went to UNC at the same time (although he’s *slightly* better at basketball than I am). Did I mention you should check out some of his highlights?
And go Tar Heels!

I believe that Vince Carter would've been the last of the 24 players in this series to retire – except that Pau Gasol apparently hasn't officially retired, just wasn't on a team this season.

Also @Huw the minifigure tag has Gary Payton's name misspelled.

Didn't Gary Payton have a cameo in Lego Movie 2, alongside Sheryl Swoopes from the Houston Comets?

@TeriXeri said:
"Those were the first flesh toned human minifigs

Bib Fortuna from set 4475 released at the same time, but technically that's a Twi'lek , not a human as most human figures except cloud city lando used yellow skin.

I don't know what month 10123 released, but this set came out in January 2003."

These released early in the year and I actually bought one to make a custom Lando figure, and then 10123 was released later.

Not one of the packs that I own, but these were pretty cool!

I thought the clone wars faces were bad

Oh yeah the basketball minifigs...with their odd stretched faces, elongated arms with unmoving wrists and spring loaded legs. Slightly Frankensteinian, the lot of them

I think they did it too much caricatured. Maybe these minifigures are fun for making stop motion animation but it just look weird. Look on 8389, the set from 2004. These minifigures of M. Schumacher and R. Barrichello look pretty good. They could just have torso prints instead of stickers...

@TeriXeri said:
"Those were the first flesh toned human minifigs

Bib Fortuna from set 4475 released at the same time, but technically that's a Twi'lek , not a human as most human figures except cloud city lando used yellow skin.

I don't know what month 10123 released, but this set came out in January 2003."
4475 Bib Fortuna actually uses Tan as a skintone, so not even really flesh, and they do the same for the Mirialans, Luminara Undili and Barriss Offee. Although LEGO would use Tan for June Sato from Rebels, the first ever human with that color for their skin in LEGO Star Wars. Bib Fortuna does use a light flesh for the remake from a few years ago. Kind of a disappointment actually because the tan gives him this eerie pale quality that he has in the movies.

I'm a big NBA fan so these are very cool to me despite all the weird features. Right now I'm trying to get hold of any of the NBA figs that I can and switch out the heads for more modern ones. Vince Carter is one of the ones I want most. He's one of my favourite retired players, along with Steve Nash, Tracy McGrady and Allen Iverson.

I'm not fro the USA,
I have no interest in the NBA,
so I don't have a clue who these 3 guys are, or the 3 in each of the other 7 triple packs,
but I still collected all eight of these sets when they were released in 2003!

...so that's a lot of strange looking basketball players on my shelf!

I don't know all the BB players, but I have a couple of them and I like them a lot.

@Norikins said:
"Anyone know anything about these players? I'm not a basketball fan."

Same here.
Why do these guys have such huge lips?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

These sets should return.

Too bad they didn't do a better job on these guys.

By the way, I saw this one while looking at the other basketball stuff. 7917-1

Kinda wanna see these return with current players and current lego designers

@stevbrix said:
"Didn't Gary Payton have a cameo in Lego Movie 2, alongside Sheryl Swoopes from the Houston Comets?"

Yes he did. Although he wasn’t nearly this ugly in the movie.

These are cursed.

Horrifying... just in time for Halloween.

My son, then seven, loved all of these NBA figs, which he would play in the arena 3433 , but I always did really dislike how they designed the faces with such exaggerated characterization compared to the more traditional Soccer/Futbol sets, which he also loved.

Does make me want to go play some NBA Jam on the arcade machine, tho...

@Darth_studious:
After looking over the full range of Basketball minifigs (not just the real NBA players), the only minifig that _doesn't_ have an exaggerated mouth is NBA Player 6...and he looks like a pirate. I suspect they wanted to give every minifig a cartoony look (similar to what they did with Clone Wars), and that this restricted the low end of the range. The high end would have then been the result of trying to maintain some consistency between the facial features, so that people with smaller mouths in real life had smaller mouths on their minifigs.

I also suspect that each player had to sign off on their likeness. This could explain why Shaq, who has fairly large lips in real life, as a minifig has one of the smallest mouths, even smaller than most of the white players have.

Another factor that may be in play here is that we don't know who designed the minifig faces. If one person did all of them, then where some players fit into the range doesn't make sense. If multiple people designed the heads, then some designers may have pushed deeper into caricature while others tried to stick closer to reality.

At least the Clone Wars faces, for the most part, didn’t highlight any racism.

I’m sure LEGO didn’t intend for this to happen, but two of these players look like they have comic relief roles in a Michael Bay film.

@TheWackyWookiee:
Just because something seems racist to you doesn't mean it is racist. Look through the full range, and you'll see that _ALL_ of the NBA players have grotesquely oversized lips. That includes all of the white players. Lots of things seem racist until you put them in context. Different facial expressions also impact the final look of these minifigs. Some of them have neutral expressions, while others appear to have wide grins that just emphasize the size of their lips.

I had a different set of three ballers; but it wasn't this one. All I can say is that, again, human likenesses don't often lend themselves well to the basically cylinder of a minifigure head. And then the fact that these are highly caricaturized doesn't help. Should've stuck with the slightly more standardized look most licensed minifigs have.