Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! This is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to basketball video games, the real NBA or another area of interest to our community, either as a list of five items or in the form of a Top 5 countdown.
Around this time each year, we generally start speculating about the cover players for the next edition of NBA Live and NBA 2K. Last week, a report from Polygon gave us something to think about, as leaked images have fuelled rumours that NBA 2K16 will feature three different cover players – James Harden, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant – as well as involvement from filmmaker Spike Lee, presumably in this year’s MyCAREER mode. As of writing however, no official announcement has been made.
Although the cover is ultimately inconsequential as far as the quality of a basketball video game is concerned, it remains a popular talking point, so I thought I’d write a Friday Five or two about previous cover players. I’ve been thinking about some of the best and worst cover players, and have some lists to post in the not too distant future, but I’ve also been thinking about superstitions and supposed “cursed” cover players. Basketball players have generally fared better than NFL players who have graced the cover of Madden, but misfortune has befallen some players who have appeared on the covers of various hoops titles. Here are five such players that come to mind.
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