1993-94

The 24th season of the Portland Trail Blazers was not to be their finest as they were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round in what would be Clyde Drexler's final playoffs as a Trail Blazer.  The Sonics and the Rockets would rule the West in this season.

In the world of basketball cards, this year would mark the introduction of Topps' Finest set.  The surface of the cards was protected by a protective coating.  This always seemed silly to me as serious collectors would always want these cards with the peel in tact which means you always have to look at the cards with the stupid peel wording on it...but i digress...

Finest also included a parallel refractor set with refractor cards in approximately 1:18 packs.  Refractors are basically what they sound like - cards with a special coating that refract the light.  These have always appealed to the lady in me who likes shiny things.

Fleer's Flair set was also nice this year, featuring again thick card stock and a boarderless image on both the front and back.  The Flair brand may to this day consistently remain my favorite card line.  They're always so neat and clean.

And then there's Fleer, which had an improved design this year.  More pictures, less clutter.  Did anyone actually recall that James Edwards was ever a member of the Trail Blazers?  He spent this second to last season of his career with the Blazers.

Fleer's All-Star insert set featured Blazer stars Clyde Drexler and Cliff Robinson. This insert set had a ball background that was textured to feel like the bumps on the ball.  Pretty cool.

Additional Fleer insert sets included League Leaders (Tracy Murray for 3 point shooting) and Team leaders (Rod Strickland for assists).

Blazer rookie James "Hollywood" Robinson out of Alabama was featured on a Rookie Sensation card. He also competed in the Dunk Contest at All-Star weekend in this year but alas, came in last.

ProMags - I admittedly don't know much about these but this magnet set was produced featuring 3 Blazers - Williams, Robinson (pictured below) and Drexler.

This year Fleer introduced their oversized "Jam Session" cards.  Again assuming that basketball players are tall, sport cards should be too, Fleer produced this set of featured players from each team.  These cards are sort of cool in that they're different but a pain to deal with in that they don't easily fit into card pages or holders and as a result are easily damaged.

Hoops was back again with a nice boarderless set of their own.  They also made sure to designate rookies so that there would be no doubt.

They also decided to commemorate their 5th year in business with anniversary stamped parallel cards.

Their insert sets included Power Predator cards...

and regular Hoops Power cards featuring star players from each team.

Skybox had a rather unmemorable entry into this year's card world, but they are still highlighting the ball in yellow...and apparently the rookies.

The did include a nice draft set featuring blazer draftee Aaron McKee along with Ragin' Rookies (huh?) James Robinson.

They did come out with a few other nice inserts including Skytech Force (again - I have no idea what that means but they look nice)....

and Slammin' Universe which I always enjoyed.

Upper Deck introduced their SP line.  I'm assuming SP stands for "short print" but I've never actually heard definitively.  SP cards came with die-cut parallels and represented another premium brand.

Not to mention a number of different styles.

The rookie set featuring yet another Hologram.  Upper Deck loves their holograms.

Back to Topps.  The regular set of Topps included a gold parallel set as well.

Stadium Club went very 90s for their 1993-94 edition which is to say ugly backside design.  The front is in keeping with the popular boarderless design made famous by the 1992 Skybox USA set.

The Dynasty insert set was also nothing to write home about, though it's always nice when a Blazer is included in something with the word dynasty involved.

Topps went crazy with parallels to this set - shown below is the base card, 1st day issue, Member's only, and SuperTeam version of the Mark Bryant card.  The 1st day issue cards were insert sets.  The Member's only and SuperTeam cards were redemptions.

The Super Team Blazers team card.

Other inserts from Stadium Club included the Beam Team and Clear Shot cards.  The clear cards are interesting, though they're only as good as what's behind them really.

Franz continued with their annual Blazer card bread pack inserts. They too got the boarderless message.

And yes, another boarderless design...Ultra.  The 3 picture montage on the back is pretty nice.

Upper Deck decided to not go completely boarderless like everyone else but rather 3 side boarderless.  Again, it's an okay card design but nothing particularly memorable.

Upper Deck included insert Predictor game cards.  It was some sort of game to play card wise throughout the NBA season.  In actuality, it requires team collectors to try to hunt down more random parallel cards.

Insert cards including a rookie set (because rookies rule the card collecting world) and a Shawn Kemp slam dunk set.  This was when Kemp was still young and athletic and actually capable of getting off the ground and dunking the ball.

Upper Deck had their separate set which included a gold parallel.  The silver actually dulls down the color in the picture a bit making it pop less.  There is also a lot of clutter in the design.  They should have really not bothered with this one.