Will we get a decent retro set this year in basketball?

First off, let me say that I'm a Bowman fan.  I love the parrallel chase.  I love how a good blue chrome card done right is just a great cornerstone of a RC collection.  That being said, Bowman this year decided to go retro.  I'm not sure why.  This year had a wonderful draft class, and I'm not sure that retro was the way to go.  Principally because Bowman is great for what it is.  And it is most certaintly not a retro set.  It's almost like Topps knew that it was going to stop doing basketball, so it decided to mate Bowman and Murad to try to please two groups of buyers with one release.  And what you got was something like this:

Forgive B Roy's sig.  It truly is one of the worst autos for an All-Star caliber player.  But this card just doesn't work.  I love retro, and I love Bowman, but this card took the worst of both themes and stuck them together.

Bowman base cards typically have better than average action shots.  And Bowman, let's be honest, is about collecting as many parallels of your favorite player as possible.  The card better look good to collect multiple versions of it.  This B Roy card doesn't inspire me to seek out it's multi-colored cousins.

And for the retro stance, it's just a card without meaning.  An action shot devoid of any point of reference for the action.  It's surrounded by quasi-Blazer red coloring and just feels empty to me.  It reminds me of baseballs Goudey, without being quite so gawdy. 

Now, the only other retro realease due up is from Upper Deck Greats of the Game.  And Upper Deck just decided to steal a line from Press Pass basketball.  The only way to get around the logo issues was to do a complete college release.  Example, the great MJ:

Now I wouldn't be one to throw away many of the auto's that will be found in this set.  But I'm not going to buy a college release.  Well, I mean I might if I'm creating a basketball card blog...but you know what I mean.  I'll probably end up reviewing it because I collect basketball cards, and because it's looks to be one of UD's last releases in this sector of the hobby.  But college?  I'm not even looking forward to it.

It looks to me like a glorified sticker dump.  Which, any kind of a sticker dump will be better than Topps Signature release of last year.  So we're kind of stuck with Panini to come up with something that will entice collectors of retro themes to come back to basketball.

The retro market is too huge for Panini to ignore it at all.  So it's just a matter of time.  But c'mon Panini, we need something better than this.  Chances are, to fulfill my retro fix, I'll get a couple boxes of A&G this year, but it sure would be nice to have something in basketball.  A Nic Batum auto'd retro mini?  I can only hope.