NBA star Dwight Howard’s Avalanche NFTs are a huge miss

Late last week, with little prior fanfare, Howard — who last played in the NBA in 2022 — abruptly announced he was putting a collection of 3,000 NFTs on the market. Avalanche network.

‘This is Dwight Howard from [the] NBA,” the veteran athlete wrote. “Until this weekend on the chain.”

Days later, the 3,000-piece profile photo collection (PFP), “Ballers by Dwight Howard,” debuted to miserable results. The NFTs, which each cost 2 AVAX to produce (about $60 at writing), attracted only a handful of buyers. After one day, barely 10% of the collection had been sold.

Times had clearly changed since the heyday of 2021/2022 celebrity-endorsed NFT collections flying off the shelves. The result was clearly not what Howard expected; the NBA star immediately tried to change and save the situation.

Less than 24 hours after the collection opened for minting, Howard announced that, in light of widespread public backlash against the collection’s art quality and underlying value, Ballers would undergo a substantial redesign.

The former All-Star center tried to attract more collectors promise that every time 100 additional Baller NFTs were minted, he would personally send 1 AVAX (approximately $30) to ten different Ballers holders. Additionally, Howard also pledged to purchase one NFT from the popular Dokyoworld project for every 100 Ballers NFTs minted, in an apparent effort to encourage that NFT community to support Ballers’ success.

Shortly thereafter, Howard reduced the total supply of Baller’s NFTs from 3,000 to 1,500. Howard has since tweeted that he is “leaning, building and evolving.”

The tactic apparently didn’t help much. At the time of writing, 457 Ballers NFTs have been minted to date, representing about 15% of the original supply. In addition, the bottom price of the collection has dropped to 1,735 AVAXbelow the project’s coin price – a death blow for struggling new NFT collections.

On Sunday, the negative buzz surrounding Ballers became so loud that representatives from Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche Network, felt the need to intervene and distance themselves from the project.

“We at Ava Labs had no involvement in it [Ballers],” Jake Cvengros, director of business development at Ava Labs, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Gone are the days when individuals/brands with large followings can just drop IP-related NFTs out of the blue and expect it to do well.”

Declutter contacted Cvengros about any subsequent discussions between Howard and Ava Labs, but did not immediately receive a response. Howard also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward