This is a guest post from creator Vladislav Lakshe, courtesy of Starly.io.

Hello Flowverse, my name is Vladislav Lakshe, and I wanted to share my passion about basketball with the community ahead of my upcoming drop on Starly.io featuring the Titans of our Time.

I've been playing basketball since my childhood. When I was 11, my father took me by my hand and we went to a basketball academy. He said, “someday you will be at the NBA and will buy my mother and me a house outside the city." Back then, I didn't even really know what the NBA was. 

I fell in love with basketball immediately. I saw in this game the grace of ballet, the power of martial arts, and partly, the way of a samurai. I played a lot, trained hard, and dreamed of hooping in the NBA like a real baller. At the same time, I was constantly drawing, and it was just as important for me as basketball. Already in my childhood I set the goal of combining sports and art for myself.

Art and Sport don't need to be mutually exclusive

I started my studies at Art Academy and played for the student basketball team. There I began my first experiments with the design of tournaments, drawing posters and other stuff for games that everyone really liked. A few years later, my friend and I organized a street basketball tournament where I first saw my dream of combining basketball and art to make something great. 

The tournament quickly became one of the prides of the city and even the country. People from all over the world noticed me, and I am the first artist in the world to start arranging design for basketball tournaments and world championships.

The Moscow Open and CSKA Cup, amongst many others, are examples of my work. I am very proud that I developed and influenced this direction culturally.

Now, basketball and art has become a trend over the years.

NFTs - enabling fans to have a piece of my art 

Over the time I have formed a large fan base on social networks and elsewhere. With the advent of NFTs, I got the opportunity to satisfy the desires of my fans by giving them the opportunity to buy what I have been working on so fanatically. I sell what has essentially become my life, what I have dedicated my whole life to in the past, and will devote my future to. 

Collaboration with Starly

While I have placed and sold some stand-alone NFTs on different platforms, Starly's approach to the collectibles seemed interesting to me - the full collection consists of 4 Legendary, 6 Rare and 11 Common cards, which are distributed in sealed packs. Collectors who gather full sets in 30 days get extra specially minted cards.

As a huge fan of LeBron James, I had created a series that reflected all the most important moments of his career. The work of a lot of years has been gathered in my first collection More Than a Hero, giving an opportunity for all fans of LeBron and basketball in general to collect it. Extra cards for this collection will be distributed on November 10, so true fans can still complete the sets.

My second collection Titans of Our Time is dedicated to all the best NBA players and their accomplishments. It will be dropped on Starly on November 9. 

Both collections have been drawn over the years and are absolutely unique in terms of style and concept. I will continue to work on my basketball art, no doubt, and there might be more original collections in future.

Thank you, and I hope everyone gets a chance to check out my art on Starly.

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