NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

With last week’s NBA 2K16 news, the 2015 NBA Finals ready to tip off, a few coaching changes, and some more topic suggestions from the community, Arcane and I have plenty to talk about in Episode #119 of the NLSC Podcast. Tune in now!

• Last week’s episode of NBA 2KTV delivered the goods as far as NBA 2K16 tidbits are concerned. We give our thoughts on what we’ve learned so far.
• We’ve gotten a second wind for binging on NBA Live 15 and NBA 2K15, so we share a few of our recent basketball gaming experiences, including some thoughts on the value of Ultimate Team packs.
• In some breaking news, we have new details on Spike Lee’s involvement with NBA 2K16’s MyCAREER mode. What do we make of it?
• We give our thoughts on a topic Kenny discussed in his latest column: direct passing into the backcourt, and vision/awareness “cones”.
• What are our experiences playing real basketball? We reminisce fondly.
• E3 is quickly approaching, and should bring details on NBA Live 16 and NBA 2K16. Oh yeah, and Fallout 4. One of us is rather excited about that.
• It’s our last chance to change our 2015 NBA Finals predictions. Have we had a change of heart?
• What do we think of the criteria for flagrant fouls?
• The Chicago Bulls have fired Tom Thibodeau, and brought in Fred Hoiberg. We comment on the change, and other coaching hires around the league.
• Is Dwyane Wade looking to move on from the Miami Heat?

Click Play to listen to the show!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:30:20 — 44.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Have some thoughts on the latest episode? Sound off in the comments below, or here in the Forum. Also, if there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss on the next episode of the NLSC Podcast, feel free to hit us up in this thread.

Some more NBA 2K16 news has dropped today, as the cover players for the game have been confirmed. It seems that three separate covers will be available, featuring Stephen Curry, James Harden, and Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans. A previous leak suggested that Kevin Durant would grace one of three covers, in addition to Curry and Harden.

Spike Lee’s involvement with the game has also been confirmed, and as expected, he’s had a hand in crafting the storyline for MyCAREER in NBA 2K16. This year, rather than creating your own character, you’ll assume the identity of a player called Frequency Vibrations, with the mode exploring his life on and off the court. Needless to say, contrary to much of Lee’s filmography, the story will be family friendly, owing to NBA 2K16’s E rating.

Further details are likely coming very soon, especially with E3 2015 right around the corner. What do you think of this year’s cover players, Spike Lee’s involvement, and the current direction of MyCAREER? Sound off in the comments section below, and join in the discussion here in the Forum!

We’ll be recording Episode #119 of the NLSC Podcast in a little under twelve hours, so we’re putting out a last call for any topic suggestions for this week’s show. Needless to say, we’ll be discussing the NBA 2K16 information revealed in last week’s episode of NBA 2KTV, Tom Thibodeau’s firing, a few other recent NBA news items, and a couple of basketball gaming related topics that are on our minds, but if there’s anything else you’d like to hear us talk about, please let us know ASAP.

If you do have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below, in this thread in the Forum, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter, as we’ll be checking for them right up until we start recording. Once again, we’ve been getting some great suggestions and feedback these past few weeks, so please keep it coming! We very much appreciate it, and are glad to know that people are enjoying tuning in to the NLSC Podcast every week.

Additionally, we’re looking to introduce some new original content here on the NLSC in the near future, and will be looking to reorganise our schedule. As such, if you have any preference as to when you’d like the NLSC Podcast to come out each week, please let us know, and we’ll take all suggestions into consideration. As always, thanks for your support of the NLSC, and the NLSC Podcast!

Here are today’s file additions for NBA 2K14 PC, which include faces for several upcoming Draft prospects, a new Golden State Warriors court, a custom title screen, and new shoes. Download them all at the links below!

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Fictional Golden State Warriors Court
Allen Iverson Title Screen

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Karl-Anthony Towns Face by big-shot-ROB
Jaylen Brown Face by big-shot-ROB
Ben Simmons Face by big-shot-ROB
Stanley Johnson Face by big-shot-ROB

2KShiftLeader
NBA 2K14 Version Cam Gods

Over and Back calls are the bane of my existence in NBA 2K games. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for completely abolishing the rule. It’s definitely there for a reason and sometimes it’s beneficial when you’re playing good defence. However, the annoyance comes on offence when you make that accidental pass into the backcourt.

It’s one thing to pass it to a player who is marginally behind the half-court line – I can accept that – but throwing a Hail Mary pass to a player who is almost under the opposition hoop is beyond infuriating. It’s a mistake I tend to make with great frequency and it all has to do with icon passing.

Read More »

Wrap up your weekend with the latest file additions for NBA 2K14 PC! Today’s new and updated files include arena updates for the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors, and the latest current rosters. Check out all three releases at the links below.

Mythbuster
BMO Harris Bradley Center 2015
Air Canada Centre 2015

2KShiftLeader
2KShiftLeader’s Real 2015 Roster (Updated to v2.7)

As previously teased, this week’s episode of NBA 2KTV Postseason has provided us with some details on NBA 2K16. After re-capping the announcement of the release date and pre-order bonuses, Rachel “crashes” the development team’s headquarters to chat to Scott O’Gallagher. Scott talks about watching the Playoffs, liaising with players and coaches, and meeting with his engineer to work on implementing realistic strategies in the AI.

Notably, three new retro teams have been confirmed at this juncture: the 2000 Toronto Raptors featuring Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady, the 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics, and the 2001 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers, who went 15-1 in the postseason that year. From the sounds of it, a few more new retro teams may be revealed in time.

Rachel also chats to Rob Jones about the shoes. Shoes in NBA 2K16 will be 3D scanned, and 2K are working on getting some additional brands and signature shoes into the game. Meanwhile, Asif Chaudhri talks about improvements to the crowd, which includes brand new animations this year.

Mike Wang also makes an appearance, offering up some information on player movement and animations, and the goal of achieving authenticity. Mike mentions they’re working on “something big” that they’re not ready to talk about yet, but they’re expecting it to make NBA 2K16 look better than any previous basketball game. You can also catch a glimpse of a few work-in-progress animations in the background. Finally, we got a new Locker Code for NBA 2K15 (#2K16NEWSon2KTV), for those interested in another freebie.

What do you think of the details that have been revealed so far? Sound off in the comments section below, and join in the discussion here in the Forum! If you’d like to catch the episode yourself, you can watch it in the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions of NBA 2K15, or embedded below.

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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.

And then, there were two. After a rather uncompetitive Eastern Conference Finals, and a Western Conference Finals series that was only marginally more exciting and hard-fought, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers will take on Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors in the 2015 NBA Finals. The stage has been set for a fun and exciting championship series between an all-time great who has returned home, and a rising star who has led his team to their best season in decades.

As it stands, we have a little under a week to speculate, make our predictions, and consider all of the questions surrounding the 2015 NBA Finals. Who will win? Will the Warriors run out of steam? How banged up are the Cavaliers? Can LeBron do it by himself? What are some of the other interesting subplots this year? Like every other NBA fan, I have a few thoughts on the matter, which I’m sharing with you in this week’s edition of The Friday Five. Without any further ado, here are five thoughts ahead of the 2015 NBA Finals.

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A couple of days ago, the release date and pre-order bonuses for NBA 2K16 were revealed. It appears that more news is on the way, as the official NBA 2K Twitter account has posted a teaser for this week’s episode of NBA 2KTV, promising information on NBA 2K16 that we “don’t want to miss out on”.

In tomorrow's #NBA2KTV Postseason episode, we talk exclusive #NBA2K16 features, unbox Sprite's Lebron's Mix, & more!https://t.co/LRFWbVd1iY

— NBA 2K 2K18 (@NBA2K) May 28, 2015

Which “exclusive NBA 2K16 features” do you think will be revealed in tomorrow’s episode? Feel free to speculate in the comments section below, as well as take the discussion to this thread in the Forum.

A new roster has come through for NBA Live 15, containing line-ups that have been updated through May 28th, 2015. It also contains around 500 ratings changes, and seven player accessory updates. You can check out a full breakdown of all the changes in the May 28th roster in this spreadsheet.

The Cleveland Cavaliers’ J.R. Smith has been spotlighted again this week, along with James Harden of the Houston Rockets. Smith’s fine play off the bench has continued through the Eastern Conference Finals, and as such, he’s now rated 82 overall in NBA Live 15. Despite a couple of stinkers in Game 3 and Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, Harden’s play throughout the rest of the series including his stellar performance in Game 4 has also earned him a boost, and he now sits at 90 overall.

As always, feel free to add any thoughts on the rosters in the comments section below, as well as in this thread in the NBA Live 15 section of the NLSC Forum.

Tune in to Episode #118 of the NLSC Podcast, hosted by Arcane and myself! The NBA Finals are upon us, the first real piece of NBA 2K16 news has come out, and we received some more great topic suggestions from the community, so we’ve got some fun stuff to talk about this week.

• The release date and pre-order bonuses for NBA 2K16 have been revealed. What do we think?
• We give our thoughts on a couple of suggested features for NBA Live 16.
• With FIFA 16 adding female players, might we see WNBA players in NBA Live 16 or beyond?
• We revisit the topic of what would be included in our ultimate NBA video game. Spoiler: lace physics alone are not enough.
• Has the NBA 2K15 modding season been comparable to what happened when NBA 2K9 came out? We also make a few comparisons between modding tools for NBA Live and NBA 2K.
• Were this year’s Conference Finals boring? What should we make of the Hawks, Rockets, and James Harden?
• Because we do so well with predictions, we make our picks for the 2015 NBA Finals. Of course, on paper there’s a safe pick, but never underestimate our ability to jinx teams.
• Putting all of our Australian bias aside…do we think Matthew Dellavedova is a dirty player, or just scrappy?
• Should Paul Pierce hang it up? We discuss the possibility of a farewell tour with the Boston Celtics.
• We end the show by recapping some outstanding trolling by the Nike Shop Twitter account.

Click Play to listen to the show!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:25:18 — 43.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Have some thoughts on the latest episode? Sound off in the comments below, or here in the Forum. Also, if there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss on the next episode of the NLSC Podcast, feel free to hit us up in this thread.

This is a last call for any and all topic suggestions for Episode #118 of the NLSC Podcast, which Arcane and I will be recording in about 12 hours time. We’ve had some great suggestions the past couple of weeks, and although we do have some news and topics of interest to talk about in Episode #118, we’re still keen to get a few more ideas for this week’s show, as well as future episodes of the NLSC Podcast.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments section below, this thread in the Forum, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. We’re also looking to post segments from each week’s show over on our YouTube channel to spotlight certain discussions, and give everyone a taste of what they can expect from the NLSC Podcast. Check out a snippet from last week’s show, in which we paid tribute to the retiring David Letterman!

If you haven’t caught Episode #117 of the NLSC Podcast yet, check it out here. Thanks again for all the feedback and topic suggestions so far, and please keep them coming!

After teasing some NBA 2K16 news yesterday on Twitter, 2K has announced today via their social media pages that NBA 2K16 will be released on September 29th, 2015. However, customers who pre-order the game will be able to play it on September 25th – four days early – with 2K dubbing it an “Early Tip-Off Weekend”.

Gamers who pre-order NBA 2K16 will also receive in-game bonuses in the form of 10,000 Virtual Currency, and MyTEAM VIP. According to Chris Smoove, MyTEAM VIP is comprised of bonus packs for MyTEAM, such as gold and emerald booster packs. Thanks to samardzicnba for the heads up on that.

What are your thoughts on NBA 2K16’s pre-order bonuses? Are they enough to encourage you to pre-order NBA 2K16? Sound off in the comments below, and join in the discussion in this thread in our Forum!

Today’s new files for NBA 2K14 PC include a handful of fictional courts, an authentic arena update for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and a new face for Jae Crowder. Download them all at the links below!

PrinceJohn
Jae Crowder Face

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Fictional Cleveland Cavaliers Court
Fictional Detroit Pistons Court
Fictional Indiana Pacers Court
Fictional Milwaukee Bucks Court

Bliss
Cleveland Cavaliers Arena

We’re way, way overdue for a new poll here on the main page, so I’ve just added one which asks “How long do you play basketball video games?” When you get a basketball video game, do you play it all season long, or do you burn out on it sooner? Cast your vote now, and if you have any additional thoughts you’d like to share about your habits when it comes to playing basketball video games, feel free to post them in the comments section below!

Our previous poll asked “How often do you win championships in basketball video games?” It seems most people are winning virtual championships fairly often, as 34% indicated they win every season they play, while a further 29% are winning in most of the seasons that they finish. 14% of voters win championships after a few seasons of rebuilding, 9% rarely win championships, and a final 14% said that they never finish seasons in basketball video games.