The Friday Five

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 teams that were fun to use in video games, despite being unsuccessful in real life.

Unless you’re a diehard fan of them – or looking for a challenge – you’re probably not going to choose to play with a bad team in a video game. Mediocre teams can be more enjoyable as long as they have some talent at their disposal, but they’re generally not our first choice either. We tend to gravitate towards the teams with the top stars and talent, with whom we can win games and make spectacular plays. They’re far more appealing choices in franchise modes as well, since their deeper lineups facilitate a wider variety of trades, without having to completely gut the rotation.

Of course, many unsuccessful teams throughout the years have been much better on paper. Injuries may have derailed their season, or their players might’ve been a poor fit with no chemistry. Some years the competition is particularly tough, or they’re a young team that’s still developing. Whatever the case, these teams are actually fun and interesting to play with in video games, despite their lack of success in real life. In the hands of gamers, they can overachieve well beyond the most optimistic predictions. Here are five unsuccessful teams – which for the purposes of this list, means missing the Playoffs – that were exciting and intriguing options to play with in video games.

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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 reflecting upon five types of basketball memorabilia that I’ve collected over the years.

Although I’m still passionate about basketball, there’s nothing quite like your first foray into a new hobby or interest. When I first got hooked on hoops, I couldn’t get enough! I needed to read every magazine and learn everything I could about the NBA and its history. I eagerly devoured highlights and any full games that I was able to watch. If I saw a basketball player on a cover or poster, heard their name on the news, or simply caught mention of the word “basketball”, it grabbed my attention. I can’t imagine how much it must have bugged my parents, but they supported my interest.

Needless to say, there’s a ton of basketball and basketball-related memorabilia that one can collect. Over many years of following the sport, I’ve indulged my passion with a variety of collectibles and keepsakes. Of course, I haven’t sought to get my hands on absolutely every bit of basketball memorabilia that I can find. I’ve never been to an NBA game, so I don’t have any ticket stubs or programs, and I’m not looking to buy anyone else’s. I’ve also never been into figurines or pop vinyls, so they’re not in my collection. There are other things that I’ve enthusiastically collected though, and they represent many fond memories as a long-time hardcore hoop head.

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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 12 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

As I noted in Part 11 last month, in addition to bigger names, there are some lesser-known and remembered role players, journeymen, and bench warmers who ended up with phantom stints. I’ve gone back and forth on whether they’re worth profiling or not, since the prominent players that we all remember tend to be more interesting examples. Not only is there usually more to say about them, but as I also pointed out in Part 11, players who move around a lot and aren’t locks to be retained beyond training camp are more likely to have phantom stints captured in video game rosters.

Still, why should that disqualify them from being profiled? Besides, when you’re an NBA junkie, you’ll find that you remember some obscure names, even several years later! Video games undoubtedly help with that, from updating the rosters to making your own trades and signings in franchise modes. Indeed, my own memories of these players are definitely more closely tied to video games than the real NBA, with the exception of the one noteworthy name. Even then however, he’s been present in several of my franchise and career mode games over the years. Enjoy this list of role players, journeymen, and a notable name, whose phantom stints were made tangible!

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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 times that basketball games featured fictional content.

Authenticity is the name of the game when it comes to sim basketball titles. There are acceptable breaks from reality, of course. MyTEAM allows us to construct lineups that span multiple eras, with everyone in their prime and ignoring that some players have passed away. It’s a fantasy mode, after all. We can also choose to have classic teams from different eras square off, play with teams featuring all of the best players in club history, or even have a team face itself. Even in a sim game, there’s fun to be had doing things that can’t be done in real life.

Fictional content is something else altogether. It’s usually the mark of an arcade game, such as the Stickmen and other bonus teams in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, or the inclusion of Mortal Kombat characters in the arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Most of the fictional content in sim titles comes from our own modding and roster customisation. With that being said, there are some times when fictional content appeared in sim basketball games, beyond the obvious examples of Roster Players filling in for unlicensed names. From placeholders and bonus content to questionable design choices, here are five times that sim basketball games had fictional elements.

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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 concepts that must never return in future basketball games.

One of the benefits of revisiting older basketball games is rediscovering features that have since disappeared, and would make a welcome return in new releases. Over the years, we’ve seen a number of features and mechanics brought back due to popular demand, which has always been a cause for celebration. To that end, I’m sure we all have further suggestions for aspects we’d like to see again. Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of those concepts will return at some point. Some of them just aren’t feasible, while others are outdated ideas and no longer relevant to modern design.

And then, you have the concepts that must never return in a future basketball game. These are the bewildering ideas and design choices that didn’t just fail to make their games better, but in many cases made them actively worse. Even if those concepts didn’t entirely ruin a game, they unquestionably impacted the fun, or displayed a complete lack of goodwill. Some of the concepts that I’m discussing here do seem unlikely to return, but we can never be completely sure of that, as some games have revisited undesirable ideas that we hoped were gone for good. You may disagree with one of the below examples, but for the most part, I think we’ll all be on the same page.

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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 fun details that could be found in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story.

Since their introduction in NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, MyCAREER stories have been controversial. Some of them have been intrusive, poorly-written, or both. Others have been more enjoyable to play through, though many gamers still opt to skip the better ones. This ability to skip the story was first implemented in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER, but that wasn’t the only good addition that year. Indeed, some of the fun details in NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story made it worth playing through at least once, if not twice. I personally played through it on both PC and PlayStation 4.

Unfortunately, NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story is no longer playable, as the server shutdown has left the game with the stripped-down offline version of the mode. As such, these fun details are now permanently lost. It may not be a big deal to everyone, but it’s a shame that the single player portion of MyCAREER is now so intertwined with the connected experience that it’s limited – or completely absent – following the servers being shut down. NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER story had some fun details that could’ve potentially made it an enjoyable retro gaming experience, but I’m glad I was able to enjoy them when I could. Here are five of those details that stand out to me.

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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 11 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

At this point, I’ve covered many of the noteworthy names that became examples of players who only appeared on certain teams in video games. As I’ve said before, I originally planned to stop this series after seven instalments, believing that I had exhausted all of the notable examples worth discussing. Thanks to the efforts of David L however, I discovered that I’d overlooked quite a few prominent players with a phantom stint or two to their name. I discovered some more examples myself, and it seemed a shame to waste our combined research.

I’m taking a slightly different approach this week, however. Apart from one player who was an All-Star and therefore more memorable, I’m focusing on a handful of role players who only appeared on certain teams in games. Of course, I’m sure that I’m not alone in remembering them, though their phantom stints may well fly under the radar. It’s not necessarily surprising they have them, though. NBA journeymen usually have a more tenuous grip on their roster spots, meaning there’s a good chance that some of them will be released by the time a video game launches, thus preserving a snapshot of a phantom stint. I’m sure you know the drill by now, so let’s get to the examples!

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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 annoyances in basketball video games that ended up becoming novelties.

I’m still a sim gamer at heart. When I play franchise games, I prefer to start with real rosters, and allow the alternate reality to develop “organically”, rather than hold a fantasy draft or create fictional scenarios. I want to see sim games strive for a realistic depiction of the sport and its players, with acceptable deviations such as the precise number of dunks. To that point though, I’m not so inflexible that “realistic” means everything is accurate and true to life, down to the last detail. I’ve had fun attempting to play as realistically as possible, but I’ve also enjoyed a looser approach.

With that in mind, there are some things in basketball video games that were once annoyances for me, but now I don’t take them so seriously. Indeed, some of them are now novelties, and nostalgic in their own way. That’s not to say that I’m necessarily walking back on my criticism of them, but my stance has changed from “Ugh, this is awful” to “Actually, this is kind of fun”. It definitely helps that basketball games have improved in many ways throughout the years, with the best ones achieving things that once seemed impossible. When I do go back to some of the older games though, I will see novelties where once I had gripes and annoyances, such as these five examples.

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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 lists five intriguing ideas that are sadly unlikely to work in practice.

If you glance back at Wishlists over the years, it’s fair to say that we’ve all had some great ideas for the basketball games we enjoy. I don’t want to sell the developers short either, as many of them are likewise creative and passionate basketball fans with an eye for detail, and they’ve come up with ideas that we’ve never thought of. Not all ideas are feasible of course, but imagination has allowed the genre to continually innovate and expand far beyond the earliest classics. It pays to think big, and then work out what is and isn’t possible, and how the possible can be implemented.

Of course, some ideas are technically possible, but nevertheless impractical. They’re great concepts and potentially useful features, but implementing them simply wouldn’t be a good move. There might be a major drawback that would make an idea divisive, and detract from the experience if it’s not optional. An idea may seem like a great solution on paper, but would be too reliant on goodwill and the honour system in order to work effectively. That’s not to say that all of these ideas absolutely couldn’t ever work, but sadly I don’t think they would without closing a bunch of loopholes and detoxifying the userbase, particularly online. They’re intriguing, but unfeasible.

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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 lists five decisions that burned goodwill with basketball gamers.

As a fanbase, we basketball gamers have demonstrated that we’ll put up with a lot. There have been a number of decisions and debacles with hoops gamers over the years that should’ve cost companies dearly, but most of us are back the very next year, buying the new release. In our defense, we do have an interest in getting a new game for the latest season, and unfortunately we don’t have the variety in the space that we once did. At the same time, we’ve become far too tolerant of issues that other fanbases would protest far more passionately.

With that being said, there have been decisions – particularly from EA Sports and 2K – that have burned goodwill. Quality was obviously a problem for NBA Live that ended up eroding significant trust in the brand, but to that point, it also squandered goodwill that it established in its heyday. NBA 2K has maintained a higher quality and sold far better, but there are gamers who do follow through on their insistence that they’ll boycott future releases. Even if the bottom line isn’t affected, these decisions that burn goodwill still damage a game’s reputation, to the point where we don’t feel the same brand affinity as before. In short, this is how publishers have lost face and fans alike.

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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 10 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

When I posted my first list of players who only appeared on certain teams in games – or “phantom stints”, as I really should’ve called it – I didn’t realise that it would turn into a series with ten parts and counting! I thought I’d discovered some rather unique examples while dusting off games for Wayback Wednesday features and my own retro gaming sessions, but the names kept on coming. Once I reached the seventh instalment, I believed that I’d covered all of the examples who were noteworthy names. David L quickly proved me wrong, though!

As such, this series continues, and there are some more examples that I’ll be getting to beyond today’s feature. Once again, these phantom stints occur for the same basic reason: a player’s tenure with a team is more or less on paper only since they never officially tally a minute in real life, but because the stint is represented in at least one video game, it can actually play out on the virtual hardwood. Whether it’s due to leaving soon after a transaction that’s included in the default rosters or an official update, an injury lasting their entire tenure, or a trade or signing that was nullified, a number of players end up only appearing on certain teams in basketball video games.

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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 details that made NBA Live 10 a special game.

As you may recall, in 2021 I went on a major retro gaming kick with NBA Live 10! It’s a game that I played with some enthusiasm when it was new, but I did end up putting it aside when the second patch introduced some annoying issues. However, after revisiting NBA Live 10 through Parsec sessions with Dee, as well as playing solo on my Xbox 360, I found that I had a much greater appreciation for it. In addition to following up on my 25th Anniversary of NBA Live retrospective with further thoughts, I also used the game to create a variety of Wayback Wednesday features.

I’ve put NBA Live 10 on the backburner to bring other classics into the rotation, but I still hold it in extremely high regard. Of course, there’s a bittersweet aspect to it. NBA Live 10 was the last game in the series to be widely regarded as a great release, and as such, it’s difficult to revisit it without wondering what might’ve been if not for the ill-fated attempt to reinvent the wheel in NBA Elite 11. Great gameplay and solid modes are responsible for NBA Live 10’s reputation among long-time basketball gamers, but what makes it a candidate for the best game in the NBA Live series is the attention it paid to the little details. These five details in particular made NBA Live 10 special.

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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 poses five questions regarding historical teams for both the community and developers to consider.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the historical content in NBA 2K is one of the series’ biggest triumphs. Sure, it isn’t perfect, as missing players and inaccurate ratings and data do impact the experience of playing with and against historical teams. Still, NBA 2K has managed to break new ground as far as including retro content. Older games may have included a handful of playable Legends, with NBA Starting Five 2005 even featuring a small selection of classic squads. However, as far as overall depth and scope is concerned, the NBA 2K series has done it the best.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t critique the historical teams and content in NBA 2K, and suggest feasible improvements. In determining how this content could be better, we need to ask some important questions. There are different approaches and standards that can be applied here, and while it’s unlikely that gamers will ever be in complete agreement, I believe there might be more common ground here than we think. Additionally, some of these questions may be pertinent to modders who are working on their own historical roster projects. So, with that in mind, what are some of the most pressing questions to consider regarding historical teams in NBA 2K?

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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 ways that the NBA 2K modding scene is better than what we had with NBA Live back in the day.

So, last week I discussed five ways that NBA Live modding was better than the NBA 2K modding scene. It’s always difficult to write an article like that without sounding like a grumpy old man yelling out clouds, and lamenting bygone days that were far from perfect if we’re being completely honest. As I acknowledged, there were issues in the NBA Live modding community, too. Some of them remain problems with NBA 2K modding, but there are others that we no longer have to deal with. It certainly isn’t all doom and gloom when it comes to tinkering with NBA 2K.

While the different approach to design and file structure has presented us with some new challenges, there are aspects of NBA 2K on PC that make modding much easier. As a community, we’ve also been able to build upon what we established, and take advantage of new technology to help each other out. I stand by what I wrote last week, because there are aspects of NBA Live modding that would be great to have when creating work for NBA 2K. However, there are exciting possibilities with NBA 2K modding, and it’s why I’m interested in getting more involved with it. Here are five ways that the hobby has improved since we started modding NBA 2K on PC.

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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 ways that NBA Live modding was better than the NBA 2K modding scene.

It’s no mystery as to why I was far more involved with modding NBA Live than I am NBA 2K. NBA Live, and in particular the PC version, was the game that I grew up with. It’s the series that this site was founded upon – the NLSC did officially stand for the NBA Live Series Center, after all – and it was tinkering with my favourite hoops titles that got me into the hobby of modding. By the time NBA 2K came to PC, I was beginning to get burned out on creating mods, and it also took me a few releases to really warm up to the series.

With that being said, I am interested in creating mods for NBA 2K, and have been trying my hand at various roster projects. There have been several barriers that have stood in the way of releasing work, including free time to complete those projects, and the need to learn new methods and file formats. It’s been an interesting journey, and I hope that I can release some NBA 2K mods in the future. There are undoubtedly some aspects of NBA Live modding – or patching, as we used to call it – that I prefer. It’s why I’ll always have some desire to tinker with old favourites, as the heyday of NBA Live modding was a special time in our community. Here are five reasons why.

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