2010-11 NBA Panini Threads

Panini's newest NBA release is 2010-11 Threads. Here is the wrapper. It's got Derrick Rose on the front. Inside you'll find 10 cards. Let's see what they look like.

Not bad. We've got full bleed photos at the top with a band of gray crisscrossing bars at the bottom. The bars include the Threads logo and player name and while they are the neutral colors we've come to expect from Panini, it looks just fine to me since it's a pretty small portion of the card anyway. However, if they had used team colors here like on the wrapper, I think it would look even better. No biggie though. The first 6 cards included some pretty nice players including Kevin Love who is having a great season so far this year. I'm just glad he's proving that there are still some American white guys who can play in this league.

The next 4 cards include a nice insert of Bill Russell along with the crazy mop top of Robin Lopez. All in all I really like this set, though again there are not enough players represented from each team. Panini has got to put out a "flagship" set with at least 10 players from each squad. I do have one other complaint though, and that is the backs.

The design of the backs is fine, my problem is with the photos used there. The majority of them are better than the fronts! Look at these 6 for example. On each I think the back photo would make a more interesting card if it were on the front. Panini tends to use some pretty bland photos at times and I even wonder if they have decent photos to use. Then I see something like this and just wonder what is wrong with them. The same thing happened last year. They used a lot of blah photos in most of their sets but then Studio shows up with some really nice shots. Problem there was they were all used for the second smaller black & white photo in the background and appeared to be an afterthought. Come on Panini! If you've got great shots, put them on display proudly.

Like I said, I like the set but Panini still has some design issues they need to work out. I really feel like they are holding back and just being lazy a lot of the time, but they're getting better. Sorta. In some ways. Later.