We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on toxic positivity regarding basketball and basketball gaming, from the perspective of a Grumpy Elder Millennial.

I’m turning forty this year, which to be honest, is something that I’m still trying to get my head around. It doesn’t seem ten years ago that turning thirty was the milestone heralding an existential crisis! While I’m being honest though, I’ve been leaning into being a Grumpy Old Man for a few years now. Not that seriously of course, but I’ve become extremely comfortable rolling my eyes and grumbling about kids and their opinions on basketball, modern games and their microtransactions, and the state of online discourse. And let me tell you about these TikTok trends and weird haircuts…

Oops, too grumpy! Let’s dial it back a bit. The point is that I’ve recognised that despite constant misuse of the term “Millennial” to describe younger generations than mine, I’m not part of the youth of today. I’m not too old to play video games in my spare time – I’ll leave that opinion to the Baby Boomers, thank you very much – but I’ve definitely aged out of the key demographic that they’re aimed at. Whereas I once greatly anticipated the new, I’m now more inclined to indulge my nostalgia. At the same time, I’d rather not be so out of touch and close-minded that I stay stuck in the past. However, there’s one thing that I’ll stubbornly push back on: toxic positivity.

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In case you’re not aware, Dee and I are frequently uploading highlight reels to the NLSC YouTube channel, spotlighting a variety of basketball video games that are in our rotations. The latest highlights feature NBA 2K6, NBA 09: The Inside, NBA Live 2004, NBA Live 06, NBA Live 09, and NBA Live 10.

As Dee and I discussed in Episode #516 of the NLSC Podcast, we’ve been on a major NBA Live kick with our Parsec sessions recently, which has produced some really fun co-op games featuring great highlights. Dee put together the reels for those games, which saw us taking on the Hornets with the Rockets in NBA Live 09, using LeBron James’ Cavaliers against Gilbert Arenas’ Wizards in NBA Live 10, picking up a clutch win over the Kings with the Warriors in NBA Live 2004, and staging a showdown between the 80s All-Stars and 90s All-Stars in NBA Live 06.

I’ve also uploaded highlights from my solo sessions against the CPU, including a game between the Nets and Thunder in NBA 09: The Inside, and a re-creation of the 2011 NBA Finals using a custom roster in NBA 2K6 for Xbox 360. These videos represent two of my basketball gaming goals for 2024, namely dipping into my collection to play games that I haven’t spent enough time with, and creating fun scenarios using default assets and minimalist modding.

Check out all of the highlights from NBA 2K6, NBA 09: The Inside, and those four NBA Live titles below! Be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content, and as always, feel free to hit Dee and I up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play.

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Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.

It’s always fun to see oddities in the NLSC Top 10 Plays, and this week we have one in the form of an unreleased game, namely Slam: Shaq vs. The Legends. It’s a title that I’ll be covering for Wayback Wednesday, but until then, catch a glimpse of it at the number ten spot! Indeed – and with all apologies to Monty Python – the theme of this week’s countdown could be “and now for something completely different”, as eight games are on display, producing a variety of highlights from halfcourt heaves and long alley-oops to flashy dunks and a truly wild finish in the clutch. Let’s get to the action!

What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.

As Dee and I have mentioned in recent episodes of the NLSC Podcast, it’s definitely time to compile and submit a Wishlist for NBA 2K25! Obviously there are many places that send in feedback to the NBA 2K development team these days, but since Wishlists have been a tradition around these parts since we were the NBA Live Series Center, we also want to put one together.

You can find our NBA 2K25 Wishlist topic here in the NLSC Forum. Although there’s no strict format, in previous years our contacts at 2K have suggested sharing our top 15-20 suggestions across the board, or alternatively our top ten ideas in different categories (gameplay, modes, options, etc). From those suggestions, I’ll compile a list that covers a cross-section of the community’s most popular wishes.

While it’s important to provide detail (i.e. don’t just say “make the game better”; explain how), it’s best to avoid long-winded paragraphs that bury the actual feedback amidst rants and anecdotes. It’s vital to get to the point quickly, clearly, and precisely. Remember, it’s not about sugar-coating or sucking up, but rather about being civil and constructive. Consider our modding community: useful feedback and suggestions phrased politely are helpful, while snarky and rude comments tend to be tuned out.

Finally, our NBA 2K25 Wishlist will cover both versions of the game (assuming that there will still be two versions, of course). Naturally we’ll be advocating for the PC version and modding, so by all means give feedback along those lines! As always, there’s no guarantee that all of our wishes will be granted, but speaking up gives them a much better chance than if we stay silent. Please get involved, as we’re looking to submit the Wishlist to the development team ASAP. That way, we stand a better chance of seeing our feedback put to use in NBA 2K25.

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is Part 21 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

Remember when I said this series was done with Part 20? I lied! Well, to be fair, I did say that it was done “for now”. Part 20 was the last instalment that I had planned coming into 2024, as it’s been my intention to move on to other topics here in The Friday Five. However, I did leave the door open for a Part 21 at least, as thanks to David L’s help and my own research/serendipitous discoveries, there are some more examples to discuss. Even though I would like to explore some other topics, there’s no sense in delaying this postscript instalment.

Unlike Part 20, I don’t have a consistent theme for this group of players who only appeared on certain teams in games. As it stands, I was lucky that I still had five players whose phantom stints could all be found in NBA Live 2000 in order to give Part 20 an added motif. At this point, I’ve also covered the biggest names and most prominent examples of players who only appeared on certain teams in games. Of course, the more obscure names are still worth talking about, especially as they can jog the memories of long-time fans who haven’t thought about those players in years. With that being said, let’s take a look at five more phantom stints…for now…honest!

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I don’t want to prematurely declare that we’re in a modding renaissance for NBA Live 2005, but it’s heartening to see some regular mod releases for a classic game! The latest include 2024 season rosters updated as of the trade deadline, and a face for Austin Reaves. Download them at the links below!

Modders27
Austin Reaves Face

(Ice) mrjea99
2024 Trade Deadline Update

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at Tom Gugliotta and some interesting trivia regarding his career and appearances in video games.

There are some well-known examples of players whose history with basketball video games is interesting and unusual. It seems such a weird and unfathomable situation nowadays, but back in the 90s, Roster Players were frequently a necessity due to the absence of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, owing to them retaining the rights to their likenesses. Shaquille O’Neal was also briefly exclusive to NBA Live, and even David Robinson once required a stand-in. Of course, I also enjoy delving into virtual hardwood trivia concerning far more obscure players, such as Junior Harrington.

Now, on the scale of obscurity to all-time fame, Tom Gugliotta is probably closer to the likes of MJ, Chuck, Shaq, and The Admiral than he is to Harrington. That is to say, if you were to ask long-time basketball fans and history buffs, they’d be far more likely to recall Googs than Junior. With that being said, like so many players of yesteryear that were very good but not all-time greats, Gugliotta doesn’t get talked about enough. That’s unfortunate from a basketball standpoint, but his career also resulted in some fun NBA video game trivia. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #516 of the NLSC Podcast!

Suffice to say, we’ve been on a major NBA Live kick lately! To that point, we’ve got some extremely enjoyable sessions with NBA Live 97, NBA Live 2004, NBA Live 06 (both versions), NBA Live 09, and NBA Live 10 to recap. We also join the community in reflecting on the NBA Live titles that we’ve spent the most time with over the years. On a less positive note, 2K has reached a whole new level of greed with NBA 2K24 MyTEAM. In addition to expressing our disgust, we commend some content creators for (finally) speaking out about these issues. We wrap up this week’s show with a celebration of Michael Jordan’s birthday, as we and our listeners share our fondest memories of MJ on the real and virtual hardwood alike.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 2:00:17 — 83.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Today’s NBA 2K14 mod releases include 2024 Rising Stars game jerseys by Pep, and Partizan jerseys by Pasha46. Check them out at the links below!

Pep
NBA Nike Rising Stars 2024 Uniforms

Pasha46
Partizan 2024 Radivoj Korać Cup Jersey Set

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some reflections on the bygone practice of creating ourselves in basketball video games, long before we had MyPLAYERs.

When we think about creating players in basketball video games these days, it’s usually to either add a missing player to the current or historical rosters, or to create our avatar for career mode play. It makes sense, of course. Even though we have official roster updates, community rosters are not outmoded. Indeed, they’re essential as far as adding retro players that can’t be licensed. Career modes have been popular since their introduction, and have only become a bigger part of basketball gaming with the advent of the connected online team play experiences.

Obviously, we’ve been creating rosters and career mode avatars for years now. Although not everyone chooses to give their MyPLAYERs their real name and face – either via a scan or a close-enough approximation with the in-game creation tools – many of us do or previously have created ourselves for use in MyCAREER. Most of my MyPLAYERs have been “me”, aside from the fictional scenario where I’m good enough to play in the NBA! However, long before MyCAREER and its connected modes, many of us created ourselves on the virtual hardwood. It may seem like a quaint notion nowadays, but it was fun thing to do before we had these deep modes.

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If you haven’t been keeping track of PatTheHead’s topic in the NBA 2K13 modding section, you’re missing out on some fantastic roster projects! His latest release adds rosters from the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, complete with courts, jerseys, and faces. Even Pope Johannes XXIII replaces Barack Obama and the post-championship visit to the White House!

While that’s the latest release, the project also contains ABL, BAA, NBL, ABA, and decades of retro NBA season rosters. NBA 2K13 is a game that still holds up today, and while NBA 2K14 has seen more mods over the years, there are still many great updates available for its predecessor. PatTheHead’s roster pack is definitely an example of that, and I highly recommend checking it out.

The project is available to download here. More details on the 1960 Olympic Roster can be found in this post. For more previews and information on Pat’s other rosters, be sure to check out his release and support topic here. Hats off to Pat and everyone who is keeping old favourites alive, especially with so many people expressing frustration with NBA 2K24! With that being said, we welcome mods for all basketball games in our Downloads section, whether you host them here or add them as an external link. A reminder that if you have a big project like Pat’s that you’d like us to spotlight here on the front page, just send me a message and I’ll arrange a bulletin ASAP!

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.

It’s February 17th, so Happy Birthday to Michael Jordan! The Greatest of All-Time turns 61 today, so it’s only appropriate that this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features one of the greatest highlights you’ll ever see from virtual MJ; even if he is wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers jersey! You’ll also see action from the All-Star Weekend, and some of the biggest names in the history of basketball doing their thing on the virtual hardwood, as seven different games ranging from NBA Live 2005 through to NBA 2K24 are featured in the latest countdown. Let’s get to the action!

What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.

Long-time community member Murat (aka Badger) has been working on some fixes for NBA Live PC that will aid with retro gaming. They include a Widescreen Fix and Windowed Mode for NBA Live 2005, NBA Live 06, NBA Live 07, and NBA Live 08. Pick up the Widescreen Fix here, and the Windowed Mode fix here.

In addition to the Widescreen Fix and Windowed Mode Fix for the last four NBA Live games on PC, Murat has been dabbling with some other useful modifications. These include creating custom plugins for games, something that could potentially open up fantastic new retro modding possibilities. They require the FIFA Manager ASI Loader, and accordingly, Murat has uploaded both a DirectDraw and DirectX9 version in anticipation of further releases.

Helping gamers to play these classics on modern operating systems remains a goal of ours, and Murat has helped out by uploading a few more fixed executable files to the Game Fixes section of our Downloads database. If you have any retro gaming tutorials or resources to share, then we’d certainly welcome them!

A big thanks to Murat for providing these resources, and his continued research into developing mods and fixes for some classic NBA Live releases. He’s been sharing some updates in the NLSC Discord, so if you’d like to check them out, feel free to join! Be sure to head to the modding-discussion channel for the latest details.

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five additions that would’ve greatly improved specific basketball video games.

We’ve yet to see a truly perfect basketball video game. That’s not surprising since true perfection is an unrealistic goal, and we all have our own ideas as to what that would entail besides. We have had some fantastic sim and arcade basketball games though, with the NBA Live, NBA 2K, NBA Jam, and NBA Street series all offering up some candidates for the best hoops titles of all-time. However, much as many of the all-time great players have had a weakness or two, the best basketball video games are often missing a feature or mode that would’ve made them even better.

Interestingly, it’s not just the all-time best basketball video games that feasibly could have been improved by just one addition. There are some very good and even a few mediocre games whose overall quality and reputations would be greatly impacted by the addition of a key feature or mode. It might not quite push them into the upper echelon of virtual hardwood classics, but hypothetically, they suddenly become far more appealing and playable with one big addition. I’ve selected five hoops games of varying quality, and nominated a major addition – one per game – that I believe either pushes them closer to “perfection”, or results in the most significant improvement.

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The Season 5 patch for NBA 2K24 is out now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and should be available for all platforms by the time the new season tips off on February 23rd. To that point, it should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting, or checking for updates manually.

In addition to preparing NBA 2K24 for Season 5 in MyCAREER and MyTEAM, the new patch includes three player likeness updates, stability fixes for MyCAREER and its connected modes, and a few other bug fixes for MyTEAM, MyNBA Online, and MyWNBA. Please see below for the full patch notes.

You can also find complete update histories – at least to the best of our ability, given the information that 2K has provided this year – for the Next Gen and Current Gen versions of NBA 2K24 over in our Wiki. Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments below, as well as join in the discussion in our NBA 2K24 Forum.

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