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 7 in an ongoing series where I look at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.
Yes, we’ve reached a seventh instalment of this series profiling the players that only played for certain teams on the virtual hardwood! Whether it was due to an injury that shelved them for their entire tenure, an offseason move that was outdated by the time a game shipped, or some other circumstance, there are players whose stints with teams didn’t include any playing time in real life, but resulted in the opportunity to suit up for them in video games. As official roster updates became common, we’ve seen more of these on-paper/”phantom stints”, especially with journeymen.
This was originally meant to be the final instalment in this series, at least for now. However, I’ve had some more great examples pointed out to me, including a few very prominent players whose phantom stints I’ve overlooked in compiling the first seven articles. I suppose that speaks to how obscure some of those appearances were, and how easy it is to forget about them with so many games coming out over the years! I will get to them at some point – shout out to David for helping me out there – but in the meantime I’ve got five more examples, most of whom were fairly well-known role players back in their day, though younger fans may not be as familiar with them.
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