Scottie Pippen on NFT Sneaker Collection Launch: 'We're the Trailblazers'

Our next guest is no stranger to the challenge and feels the metaverse has great potential. Please welcome to the studio, six time NBA champion, two time Olympic gold medalist and New York Times best selling author Scottie Pippin, joined by NT producer and promoter Dave Broom Ceo of Orange Comet. Welcome, Scottie. Thank you. Welcome to the spaceship. We love the spaceship. It's a nice set. You guys did a beautiful job. Well, we love what you created. Now, you have this exclusive and limited sneaker collection, which takes inspiration from Scott's career from his early years into his legendary days with the Chicago Bulls. Tell us what we're seeing right here. Well, what you're seeing are, are meta wear shoes that Orange Comet, the company, I'm the CEO of created and inspired everything by Scottie and the legendary iconic athlete that he is. And the cool thing about what we're doing is we're doing 1000 unique, one of one, you know, sneakers, NF sneakers, but there's real utility, which is the buzzword as we all know, and there's real purpose to these shoes, you know, besides holding them as a collector and being an enthusiast or a fan of Scotty's, you're actually able to use these shoes in many ecosystems that we've developed them for. So, for example, you, if you're one of the lucky ones to get it because we're only doing 1000 of them, you can put it on your avatars in Fortnite, you can use it in roadblocks, you can use it in Grand Theft Auto and we're developing more and that is where I think by the way N fts in general need to go. We're looking to do, you know, the best content in the world in this space. You know, my background is in Hollywood and television and film and 3D digital design. And so if you want to know where I think the rut gets out of, it's understanding that we're doing that this is a content play, not a speculative play in the world of N fts Scottie. I think everyone really wants to know though. How did you get into N fts? And what was your journey into crypto? Well, I was curious, you know, I've been in a shoe game for a long time, having a long career in for 17 years. So just keeping up and staying in involved and just curious, I guess trying to, you just didn't get involved. You, you just got involved recently, six months ago when everything was crashing. I mean, I was studying a little bit about the NFTS being out of the game. You find a lot of time to, you know, study and do research about different things. So I wanted to learn about the NFTS and really learn about your story and digital and things. So, um once I got the nerve up to say, hey, I want to be in this space, I just really threw it on my agent and say, hey, how do we get involved? But you don't own any coins. No, I don't have any. I'm a little bit scared. I, I guess you could say, but more skeptical and just being careful, I didn't think that, um, I knew enough to get involved with, with Bitcoin. That, that's a smart move. I, I Scottie. So just saying, I, I mean, let's be realistic. I mean, he's, he's, he's, he's right. Um, so are you looking at the shoes? Are they based on actual shoes you've worn? Uh, do you still have the original physical shoes? Do you like, what, like, keep it in the closet? How far back are we going in your career here? I mean, like, is it like when you're a kid? I mean, do you have like little size six shoes? Kind of, uh, he never had a size six Lawrence. I'm pretty sure he was born with size 13, uh, or like out of, out of, uh, from birth. Well, I, I think this, this shoe will be totally different from any shoe that I've ever worn. This is totally a digital deal. Our guy Dante is a great designer. So these, all these designs are new. No one has ever seen these before. And uh, and I'll tell you something on top of that Lawrence, the, they're inspired by lots of pieces of Scottie's career and a lot of the shoes that he's worn over his career. As he said, they're new, they're new, they're futuristic. They actually have, you know, designs that are street based future based. But I do want to say that in the 1000 that we're putting out 33 of them at random, lucky random people will actually get a real shoe, a real life prototype that we're making. So that digital world of blending, you know, physical shoes or physical product and digital product is very much what Orange Comet is doing. I asked because my son is a size 12 kids size. So if you got something that size, I can, you know, but there are also prizes attached to this and one of the prizes I I saw was uh golf Scott. You play golf? How long you been playing golf? Wow. I've been playing about 25 years. You wouldn't know it if you saw me on the course. Yeah, I think just retirement, you know, during my career, I had a couple back surgeries. So I never got into golf during my playing days. But as my career started to wind down, I really got into the game and very passionate about it. Wish I would have played earlier, take his back surgeons, that phone number because I need, I got to, you got to go. I'm really curious about the timing because, you know, it's not the greatest time to enter NFTS and the markets in general. Just wondering what your thoughts are. I'll kick that off and I'll let Scottie, you know, give it two senses. Look, I actually, I don't agree with that necessarily believe it or not. It's not that I'm a fan of a bear market, but I want the junk out. This is a growing nascent space. This is, we're in an exciting time. There's a lot of people who should not be in the world of NFTS as makers because they're not in it for the long run. They're not understanding or appreciating the technology of the Blockchain and Web three and for us and for me and at orange it, this is about the best content wins. People don't, they don't think that this is a content game yet, but it is Christine and you have some thoughts on FX and the whole club. I have a lot of thoughts on FX. You know, look, it's an unfortunate black eye in general, but the truth is that it's like we were saying it's a good old fashioned scam. It looks like it looks like it's a good old fashioned, you know, securities fraud maybe. And I don't want the public and I don't want general market media to confuse what a crypto exchange is and how that marries to a web three, you know, Blockchain technology really is evolving this world. They're off on one side, but there are some great companies and great creators in this space and FX needs to be looked upon as a completely separate entity from what the bigger purposes of went three. Well, where do you see things Scottie? Because you just told me you were a little scared of crypto and yet we're seeing, you know, another cycle of, you know, collapses in the crypto market right now. Well, I, I have the confidence more so in myself, but with my team as well, we think that we're bringing something different, something special, something awesome to the marketplace. So we feel like that we're the trail blazers, even though we're not the first one out of the gate, we feel that. So he knows he knows how to win. You know, I'm with the winner. That's the way I look at it. You know, the, the, the big thing of course is these days I, I look, I have two small Children. All they do is they watch e sports there. They sit down, I don't know how my five year old figured this out, but she's watching people on youtube playing video games along with my others with my son. So I'm wondering how exact, you know, you, you dave you, you were in the entertainment business for a long time, reality television, obviously, Scottie and sports and that's all all like live TV, if you will. Or, or at least it's, it's unscripted television, things are moving into this unscripted world. How does this all fit in? How do you see the future of entertainment, uh, down the road when you have kids? People like my kids when they grow up and they're watching e, and they're playing all these games and they're, you know, buying Scottie's shoes and putting it on their, their characters. What do you think is gonna happen in the next 5 to 10 years? Laws have, we've been in this digital world that we all live in, right? I mean, just think about it. We've been in the social media Web two for so long where we're attached to our phones, we're part of Twitter, Facebook, you know, insta. So now we're just in the next iteration of that. And for us in Web three, I think it's, look, if you want to say to me, my girls, I've got two daughters are 29 and 27 at this point. Do, would I want kids to get outside and get away from their computers and enjoy some fresh air? Sure. But I think that there are exciting times, times with NTS and taking Web Three technology and taking assets like what we're building on the Scottie Pippin project and having real purpose to it. And that is where I think this can continue to grow where there is real meaningful. We're not again looking for this thing to be purely speculative. I don't think the future in, in NF or web three should be about how much money can I make on this? I think it needs to be about fan engagement. Is there, is there something that I get excited about? There's no difference with, as Lawrence mentioned about my background in TV and film, you know, about creating a great movie or a great television show or a great, you know, listening to a great song or reading a great book, why shouldn't we be emotionally engaged in a great nt project? And that's what we're looking to do. Where do you see that relationship between Hollywood and Crypto headed the relationship? Listen, we have 40 projects at Orange Comet and most of them are attached to Hollywood. I'm dealing with all of the studios. You know, The Walking Dead is a project. We have a multi year partnership with AMC. We're about to launch the Ann Rice interview with the Vampire next week. She's only sold 150 million books. So for us, we're looking to take global audiences around massive IP or massive celebrity and iconic legendary people like Scotty Pippin and find that audience and appeal to that web three enthusiast appeal to crypto enthusiasts, but also expand it out. How do we on board? New people that have never ever purchased an N ft before but as a Scottie Pippen fan. Mhm. All right. I am curious Scottie with, with, you know, your friends, like, are there former players you talk to about crypto or, you know, do you see your, like, who's the one that got you into it or that you talk to about it? You mentioned like, you know, your kind of, you know, dancing around it at first six months ago, like who's the one that kind of was your not role model but the one that was playing around it. Yes. Rope you in. I mean, I think these guys, I mean, I, I looked at all the guys like Steph Curry, Shaq, those guys are getting into that space as well. They've been in it. So, you know, you don't wanna follow exactly what they, they did but you want to come out and be bigger and be better. And why didn't you, you know, and at least in the beginning, start playing around with the cryptocurrencies, at least buying a couple and see, as I said, I was a little scared. So if I'm not going big, I'm not going at all. Scottie. Uh my friend Sophie is a, is a basketball player and, and coach down in France and she, she found out I was interviewing you and she had this one question, she definitely had to ask you. She said, who would you have wanted to play with instead of against during your career? Well, that's easy. Shaquille o'neal. He was the biggest and the most forceful guy that I've ever seen play in the game. And, uh, if I had a chance to play with Shaq, I would have definitely extended my career. You had more than the Six Rings or seven championship. You could play with him in the Metaverse. Shaq, Shaq and Scotty in the Metaverse would be fun. A fun collab.