🏀 Swiper no Swiping
(originally published 2/25/22) — Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox is in hot water after shutting down his NFT project after a little over a month. If you don’t know Fox, he earned the nickname “Swipa the Fox” at University of Kentucky where he was known as a scrappy playmaker. He was drafted 5th by the Kings in the 2017 NBA draft and has played in Sac-town ever since. (check out this poster dunk he had this season)
Back in January De’Aaron sold 6,000 NFTs for .085 Eth. That’s a haul of $1.5 Million dollars overnight. On the project’s roadmap were ambitious goals including a basketball metaverse app, free tickets, and a scholarship to the University of Kentucky. Now look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t blindly trust NBA players. But I wouldn’t bet on a 24-year-old NBA starter to develop a successful Metaverse app in-season. Here is Fox’s Twitter apology.
I want to address an NFT project we launched recently. The project launch was ill timed. I delegated certain aspects to the launch of the NFT in an attempt to partner with professionals. We weren’t happy with the execution & demand on my time and attention during the NBA season.
He goes on to promise signed jerseys to holders but only if they hold at least 5 NFTs. Community members weren’t thrilled with this development. But I want to stress, these are the same people who were getting project updates from someone named “AlbanianMarauder”. This was an easily avoidable situation.
This isn’t the first time an NBA player has hastily dropped an NFT and not followed up. Last year John Wall released this horrendous NFT.
It’s still unclear why the background is Fortnite
John Wall should have known better, but we should give Fox the benefit of the doubt here. Suckering young, competitive NBA players into shady investments is a tale as old as time. These days there is the added expectation of being a business mogul in addition to a full-time athlete. I don’t blame Fox for taking a stab at a hot new business segment.
NBA agents if you’re reading this, tell your clients they probably can’t lock down the paint 5 days a week AND develop the future the metaverse.
