After the debut of NBA Hoops in 1989-90, they returned in 1990-91 and began increasing the size of the set. Design-wise, Hoops kept the main elements the same. The basketball-key border remained from 1989-90, but the white background was changed to gray. Series I is 336 cards, 36 cards larger than the prior year and Series II is 104 cards, an increase of 52 cards. In total, the Hoops set grew by 88 cards to 440 in 1990-91. And the All-Star subset remained (these had a gold background to stand out from the gray), and so did cards of coaches. But everything was more organized. Teams and players were alphabetized by city and last name, All-Star cards were kept in a group at the very start of the set, even the coach cards were grouped together. This was much needed after the scattered organization from 1989-90. The larger number of cards is easy to explain by all of the new additions. Checklists were integrated into the set this year (recall that the checklists from 1989-90 Hoops were only available by special request).
And in the second series, Hoops began experimenting with a variety of additional cards. Six playoff cards were present. Twelve coach-as-player cards were a nice historical touch. An art card for each team was added, plus other small additions.
Also, current-year rookies of the eleven lottery draft picks were present (as well as a Danny Ferry current-year rookie card). These eleven cards appeared in the order that the eleven lottery picks were selected in the draft. The Gary Payton rookie that appeared here is an important rookie in the set. In addition to the large variety of the cards, it has to be mentioned that there was large quantity in overproduction as well. Cards during this time period are often called “junk wax” and there were lots of 1990-91 Hoops cards printed. Also of note, NBA Hoops and Skybox were under the same parent company, Impel Marketing, which comes as a surprise to many. The classic design of Hoops and the futuristic graphics of Skybox seemed worlds away to many unsuspecting collectors. The addition of so many series II cards meant that cards from series I were pulled to make room during the printing process. These cards are short prints and are a bit harder to find than other cards.
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