User Lists

The early to mid-2000s is the most nostalgic era in basketball for me. Even though I grew up in New England, I was and still am a diehard Lakers fan. Especially given the current state of the team, I can't help but relish in the memories of the Shaq-Kobe dynasty. Over the years the Celtics did rub off on me and I have a bit of an identity crisis in cheering for both. Anyways, it was also an exciting era for the Cs with the Pierce-Walker duo (the shimmy!!). A shame they didn't make the Finals for a Lakers-Celtics matchup. Regardless, it was a great period for both of my teams.

There are so many other memorable events from this timeframe too. Future Hall of Famers' were near retirement and finding themselves on oddball teams - most notably Michael Jordan on the Wizards - but also Patrick Ewing on the Sonics/Magic and Hakeem Olajuwon on the Raptors. Vince Carter had an insane dunk contest performance in 2000. Yao Ming entered the league in '02 and aided internationalization of the sport. Oh, and I suppose there was a good rookie class in '03.

For all of these reasons and more a lot of my PC is focused on this era. It also happened to coincide with a great time in the hobby. There was a plethora of sets coming from multiple manufacturers, i.e., Fleer, Topps, and Upper Deck (the good 'ole days). While higher value sets like Topps Chrome and SP Authentic arguably garner the most attention, there are so many others that are appealing. So here is my list of exactly that - the top ten underrated early/mid '00s basketball sets (ranked in order). Note that TCDB requires you to pick a single card for a list, so I have selected the first card of each set for simplicity sake.

Honorable mention:

1999-00 Upper Deck HoloGrFX
2001-02 Fleer Maximum
2001-02 Topps High Topps
2002-03 Hoops Stars
2003-04 Fleer Platinum
2005-06 Topps Big Game