LeBron Just Broke the NBA Scoring Record—Now His NFTs Are Flying

LeBron James broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record on Tuesday, scoring his 38,888th point and surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 39-year-old mark in the process. Since then, LeBron hype is apparently fueling increased $NFT sales on NBA Top Shot—including packs that could win buyers an $NFT of the record-breaking shot.

Dapper Labs tells Decrypt that sales of LeBron James NFTs have surged since Sunday, February 5, as the expected moment drew near. The platform registered nearly $234,000 worth of LeBron $NFT sales via its secondary marketplace from Sunday through this morning.

That sales tally represents nearly 2,500 individual $NFT sales for James, marking the largest total for the Los Angeles Lakers star on NBA Top Shot since May 2022. One of those moments sold for $13,500, making it the largest Top Shot sale this week, per data from DappRadar.

The Waiting Room is now open.

The final 25,000 packs go on sale at 2pm ET.

Starting Feb 23, anyone who bought a pack will get an airdrop that could have one of 99 Legendary Record-Breaking Moments.

This is just the start of a star-studded February: https://t.co/5rJnHCBTRP pic.twitter.com/qMmxpY9ySW

— NBA Top Shot (@NBATopShot) February 8, 2023

LeBron’s impact hasn’t been solely on secondary market sales, however. On Wednesday, Dapper Labs held a new drop of 100,000 packs of $NFT collectibles for $9 apiece. Each buyer will be airdropped a free additional pack with a single $NFT beginning on February 23—and some of those buyers will receive an $NFT of the record-breaking moment.

Just 99 editions of LeBron’s shot will be minted on NBA Top Shot. Already, 25 of them have been reserved for the top overall collectors on the platform based on their user score—which is accumulated by trading NFTs and completing gamified challenges.

Up to 25 more will be awarded to the top LeBron collectors on the leaderboard by February 16. The rest will be distributed amongst those who bought this week’s $9 $NFT pack.

NBA Top Shot launched in 2020 and was one of the key drivers of the $NFT market boom in 2021, although sales and $NFT prices have fallen sharply since then. Overall, the platform—which lives on the Dapper-created Flow blockchain—has generated about $1.05 billion worth of marketplace trades to date, according to CryptoSlam.

Marketplace sales are up over the past week, likely driven in part by the LeBron bump, tallying just over $1 million in trades over the last seven days. That’s a 35% increase over the previous seven-day span, per CryptoSlam.

Increased momentum around LeBron James may be extending to other $NFT platforms, as well. Sorare NBA, an officially-licensed Ethereum $NFT fantasy basketball game, is currently auctioning a single-edition James trading card. The current top bid is 5 $ETH, or about $7,600, with nearly four days left in the auction.

Last weekend, Sorare NBA set its own all-time record for an $NFT sale when a one-of-one Giannis Antetokounmpo $NFT was auctioned for 113.9 $ETH, or over $187,000 at the time. That tripled Sorare NBA’s peak sale price to date, as measured in $ETH.

By contrast, NBA Top Shot’s all-time biggest sale is a LeBron James $NFT moment that was sold via an off-chain auction for nearly $388,000 in April 2021 amid Top Shot’s peak.