1998-99 Skybox Premium Smooth #9 of 15 SM, Damon Stoudamire

I was excited to add another Damon Stoudamire card to my collection, but everyone, this card’s terrible! If you disagree, please talk me down in the comments, but here me out first. I think the team at Skybox phoned it in for this set. Let’s just take a pictures of 15 solid players, black out the background, and add the word “Smooth” on the bottom. I don’t disagree that you can call Damon Stoudamire “smooth,” but consider the other cards in the set. He’s a different smooth than Tim Duncan, who’s a different smooth than Antoine Walker, who’s a different smooth than Allen Iverson. They’re all over the place with this “Smooth” theme. They sprinkled some glitter on these gummy hand shapes who also make an appearance on the reverse, and I can’t imagine they would be too smooth at basketball. This effect creeps into the word “Smooth” on the front though, making it look like there’s a smudge on the card.

And what’s this text on the back? I’m sure if the mouse left your arm it would play like you, racking up 17.3 points and 8.2 assists per game? No, it probably wouldn’t. It’s a cartoon mouse and Stoudamire is a great guard. But let’s indulge Skybox. If Mighty Mouse jumped off that arm, why not a full 18 points and 9 assists per game? Heck, a fictitious cartoon mouse coming to life could probably go for 100 points per game, why not? This is a forced and poorly worded sentence that tries to combine information about a tattoo with stats.

The only redeeming thing about this card is that we get a fleshed out version of the photo on the back. The 15 cards were inserted 1:6 Series I packs, so they’re not too hard to come by, meaning they’re weak in terms of value too. Look, I’m still happy about adding another Damon Stoudamire card, but I don’t really know about this insert set. I’m thinking it’s one of the strangest we’ve done a video on…