If I put “LeBron James” in quotes, at least half of you can hear the meme I’m referencing. The King is The King for a reason, after all.
But with the NBA’s Conference Finals featuring a new generation of stars, and superstars, we’re getting an idea of how the Hobby is reacting to the passing of the torch. If the eBay search bar is any indication of who’s heating up, who’s hot, and who just helped someone retire, there are few players more valuable than the one and only Victor Wembanyama.
Fresh off of his 41-point, 24-rebound, 3-block masterpiece in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, a winning performance that handed the Oklahoma City Thunder their first loss of the entire postseason (!), the hobby has responded accordingly to Wemby’s otherworldlyness: On May 18, “Victor Wembanyama” was searched for more than 5,300 times per hour on eBay.
While the Alien is leading the charge, he’s somehow not the most-searched player on eBay this postseason. Take a look at the data provided by eBay below:
The Playoff Search Leaderboard
From the start of the NBA Playoffs (April 18) through May 17, the top-five most-searched NBA players on eBay are:
- Cooper Flagg: This year’s #1 draft pick…whose Dallas Mavericks haven’t played a single playoff game this season after finishing with just 26 wins. That’s what winning ROY will do for you.
- Victor Wembanyama: He’s got next, and all 29 other teams should be terrified.
- LeBron James: The Lakers’ run ended early, thanks in part to Luka Doncic’s injury, but The King’s gravitational pull on the hobby did not.
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: The reigning, and now back-to-back, MVP, who just put up a real stinker in Game 1 against Wemby, and will be looking for redemption in Game 2.
- Anthony Edwards: The Ant-Man might not’ve been able to get it done against the Spurs, but his playoff performances further bolstered Minny’s hope for the future.
On the team side, the San Antonio Spurs led the league in eBay searches from May 1-17, with the Detroit Pistons (shoutout Cade and them) and the New York Knicks (my goodness, Brunson) rounding out the top three.
The Moments That Moved the Market
Sometimes a stat line is louder than a series, and it appears that a few stellar playoff performances sent search bars into orbit:
- April 25: Ayo Dosunmu’s 43 off the bench in the Wolves’ 112-96 Game 4 win over the Nuggets spiked searches for the new Minnesota guard more than 25x the prior week’s daily average, the biggest single-game spike of the postseason.
- April 30: OG Anunoby’s 29 points that helped closed the door on the Raptors in Round 1’s Game 6 cranked his eBay traffic up 180% vs. the prior week.
- May 17: Donovan Mitchell dragging the Cavaliers past the #1-seed Pistons and into the Eastern Conference Finals pushed Spida’s search rate 80% above his prior-week average.
- May 17: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s second straight MVP more than doubled (+100%) his daily search rate vs. the week before, on the same night Wemby led his team to victory over the Thunder.
Read the Search Bar
The clear takeaway is that the hobby is chasing moments more than anything else. A 40-20 outburst in San Antonio, a closeout-game 29 in Toronto, a 43-bomb off the bench in Denver, every one of them moved the eBay needle. The names that help their teams win in the playoffs win the hobby, and with the NBA Finals just a few weeks away, we could see cards from Wemby, Brunson, Spida, and Shai reach insane new heights.
In the meantime, make sure to use Mantel’s SLAM score to monitor the liquidity of your collection throughout the Playoffs.
Who are you buying ahead of the NBA Championship? Let us know on Mantel.
