Brad Pitt

Chances are if you’ve bumped around online enough you’ve come across the photo of a 14 year old bowl-cut Brad Pitt in basketball jersey that reads “Rejects” holding a little trophy that surfaced some years back. Well, there’s a pretty fun backstory to that image. Brad didn’t make the cut for his Springfield, MO eighth grade basketball team in 1977 so he banded together five other kids that also failed to make the Cherokee Middle School team and they started their own team with Brad’s dad coaching them. Brad came up with the tongue-in-cheek name Cherokee Rejects. It wasn’t so much that he was disgruntled about not making the school team, young Brad just wanted to hoop. The team would practice at a church the Pitts attended and played their games at the local Boys Club. I couldn’t find any recollection as to what the little trophies were for.

Persistence paid because I read that Brad did make his high school team, and then went on to do other stuff in life too.

Coach Reeves

If you’ve read through this blog at all you’ve probably picked up my affinity for The White Shadow. It’s my favorite-favorite. I kicked off this blog with a post about some of my first Ken Howard cards. It was just instinctual that if I’m messing around with making my own trading cards I’m going to make some White Shadow cards.

When I first started making custom trading cards I made a template that was inspired by the 1985 Topps baseball cards. Then I would just plug in the right image and make the colors match the theme. That was fun for awhile but being as detail oriented as I fancy myself it wasn’t good enough. I wanted to coordinate the subject of the card I was making to a trading card design of the same vintage. So, a card of Ken Reeves, for example, doesn’t make much sense as a baseball card from 1985 when The White Shadow was a TV show centered around basketball that ran from late 1978 to 1981. I decided to revisit my Ken Reeves Bulls card in order to do it the justice it so rightly deserves.

1977-78 Topps basketball

I went with a design inspired by the 1977-78 Topps basketball card set. I figured this would make good sense. If Ken Reeves is accepting his old college teammate’s offer to take up the head coaching position at Los Angeles’ fictional Carver High School in the fall of 1978, then this card would serve as his last card as a pro ball player.

The image is a screen capture from the show’s Season One opening credits. Just seeing it I can hear that funky saxophone theme song.

I’m very happy with the end result, and it instantly became one of my favorites I’ve done. I wish Ken was still with us I would have loved to have sent him a copy because I think he’d get a kick out of it.

This is not the last time Kenny Reeves will be featured on one of my cards as I’m still working on adding on to The White Shadow set I’ve started.

Sinbad

I wanted to do this post before Christmas to coincide with people watching Jingle All The Way as a perennial holiday watch, but I had a lot going on so I didn't quite make it.

While looking for a photo for the Kevin Nash college basketball card I did I came across this photo above of David Adkins, better known as the comedian Sinbad.  Unbeknownst to me the 6'5" Sinbad played college basketball for the University of Denver.  I couldn't find too much on his college basketball career.  There's not a lot on his time as a Pioneer forward but I was able to find out that he was there from 1975 to 1978, and that average 4.5 points and about as many rebounds in the 50 games he appeared in.

I used the same same 1977-78 Topps basketball inspired design seeing as the year fit.

Own a copy of this card from the PCb online store.

Big Daddy Cool

Here's one I've been sitting on for a little bit.  I came across the picture in an unrelated image search, which seems to be a pretty standard way for me to get inspiration for new custom trading cards.

Kevin Nash is a name that is recognizable to even the most casual of wrestling fan with him being part of some of the biggest story lines in the 1990's when professional wrestling was white hot.  Nash went through a number of gimmicks in the the two biggest promotions: Steel, Oz, Vinny Vegas, and Diesel. Then he found his greatest success as big bastard named Kevin Nash who was one half of "The Outsiders" that invaded the WCW, and later a founding member of the NWO stable.

1977-78 Topps basketball

What may not be so well known is that Nash played "Super Shredder" in 1991's Teenage Mutant Ninja II: The Secret of the Ooze.  What may be even less well known is that "Big Sexy" played division-one college basketball.  The 6'10" Motor City native played center for the Tennessee Volunteers from the 1977-78 season through 1980.  Due to a physical altercation with the Vols head coach there wasn't a senior season for Big Kev.  From there he went over to play ball in Europe where an ACL injury ended his hoops odyssey.  A couple various careers later he would try his hand at pro wrestling and the rest is history, as they say.

This card was inspired by the 1977-78 Topps basketball card set.  I got really all the elements down with the exception of how the text ramps upwards on top.  Not exactly sure how that is achieved.  I tried a couple of different things that just didn't look clean enough for me.  I would have liked to make it more exact, but I don't feel like the level text doesn't take too much away from the over all optics.

I was stoked to add another basketball card to the proverbial Phantom Cardboard card binder.  I just love the funky look of vintage basketball card designs.

**A very special thanks to Kristian from kcdesignz for helping me clean up the Nash photo a bit.