The X-Man Cometh

 

In the 1980s in to the 1990s the Seattle Sonics had some major talent with major personalities.

Obviously Gary Payton, The Glove, comes to mind. He is one of my mini-PCs and he ran things in the Pacific Northwest even leading the Sonics to NBA Finals in 1996, losing to the Chicago Bulls, before eventually getting a ring in Miami in 2006 and ending up in the Hall of Fame.

There was Shawn Kemp, The Reign Man, who was drafted straight out of high school (ignore his 1 semester at community college) and was a master of the slam dunk. He was also part of the 96 team that went to the NBA Finals but unlike Payton he never won an NBA Championship but he is in the running for the most kids by different mothers, currently sitting at 7 kids from 6 different women.

I do love my Suns and I love my Sonics so it is fitting that one of my favorites played for both teams, no not Tom Chambers but Xavier McDaniel, The X-Man. He was in the NBA for 12 years and had a decent career, he never won any major awards, championships and definitely doesn’t belong in any type of Hall of Fame but I dug him because he always looked so intense and his shaved head added to it.

He is the type of guy that I want to collect, not because of accomplishments but for some reason you will never be able to explain why. He is one of my “Just because” PCs, I collect him just because.

Part of the fun of collecting the X-Man is that his cards are laughably cheap, I am not joking either, this 2012-13 Leaf Metal Basketball auto #2/10 ran me .99 cents plus shipping. That is part of being a decent player on good teams, he showed up on many checklists simply because he was on the right team so now he has a number of relic and autograph options for very reasonable prices. I only have a couple of McDaniel's cards but they are all Suns and Sonics cards only.

The downside being a Leaf card is that there are no team names or logos but it is obvious which uniform he is wearing and I was drawn to the green parallel because it all connects together nicely.