Tis the season for NFTs and the NBA’s Baron Davis’s is bringing all kinds of goodies to his charity-based Black Santa NFT, which dropped today!
The NBA All Star recently announced a partnership with Crypto.com NFT for his upcoming drop, which is centered around Black Santa— Davis’ intellectual property and the lead character from his multimedia content company, UWish. A portion of the proceeds from primary NFT sales to the Los Angeles Urban League, an organization that promotes economic empowerment for African Americans and others in underserved communities.
The former point guard created Black Santa after he was inspired by the reaction he received after dressing up as Santa one Halloween. The brand includes Black Santa merch, storybooks, and dozens of events throughout the season that are all designed to celebrate diversity in storytelling through engaging content and community building initiatives.
Davis sat down with The Source to talk about how his NFT is about more than just artwork, it is about experience and community.
The Source: Black Santa as a brand has been super successful. What inspired you to create an NFT around it?
Davis: It’s about access, right. We’ve been at this for like five years and so my first NFT purchase was about four years ago. We realized that it [Black Santa] has been kind of like a broad startup company, right? From the animation, the education, and everything else that we want to do with it, you have to think of it like a startup. You have to be a little broad and give this broad scope to get people to trust you and to invest in you. And so just thinking about the NFT space, we have people who love us and who believe in us now, so we thought: “how can we make them a part of our success?” We thought: “what would be the best way to have them grow with us and to have some sort of assets that also grow with us?”
We wanted to grow community, so we started thinking about the NFT. The NFT is not only a piece of art, but also like a ticket or a written receipt. Then when Black Santa has reached this peak in success, those original card holders, those original NFT owners, can now see exponential growth and value and being a supporter from the beginning.
The Source: So what exactly will your NFT drop consist of?
Davis: Well first of all, you get a cool Black Santa PSP. Then we have other things- the snow globe, books, merch. Somebody will get a speaking role in our animated show, somebody who buys the ultra rare NFT will get to be in the development room as we’re working on our animation, our movie ideas, in the studio working on the app. It just really gives our community the opportunity to be a part of the hookup, right? To see what we’re actually doing on the back end and what we’re doing behind the scenes.
The Source: What other special fun does Black Santa have coming up for the holidays?
Davis: We have some karaoke events and on the 19th, our celebrity basketball came.
The Source: Can you tell us what celebrities we can expect to see there?
Davis: Not yet, but stay tuned.
The Source: I get it, you can’t drop everything at once. So what do you, Baron Davis and NBA legend, want for Christmas?
Davis: For Christmas, I want Black Santa NFT to sell out. But more importantly, I want people to have a nice Christmas. I especially want the underserved to have love and to have joy. Other than that, there is not one thing that I want.
The Source: Who do you think Santa will bring the NBA championship trophy to this year?
Davis: Well, I’ll say the Warriors, the Lakers, and the New York Nets is where my fandom is.
