Tag Archives: Season

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 my Franchise game with the Minnesota Timberwolves in NBA Live 2003.

I’ve had a number of memorable franchise and career mode games over the years. My Dynasty games with the Chicago Bulls in NBA Live 2004 and NBA Live 06 are among my all-time favourite basketball gaming experiences. Likewise, I had a blast with MyCAREER in NBA 2K13, NBA 2K17, and NBA 2K19, and I’m still playing through the mode in NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4. At the same time, I’ve had some games where I haven’t achieved completion or closure, such as my 1998 season in NBA Live 96 PC, and my Sacramento Kings Franchise in NBA Live 2002.

My Franchise with the Minnesota Timberwolves in NBA Live 2003 PC is another example of a “failed” game. Of course, labelling such games as “failures” probably isn’t the right way of looking at things. I’d actually like to delve into that topic in more depth sometime, but my Timberwolves Franchise does stand as an example of how completion is what we make it. Or, to put it another way, as long as it was fun while it lasted, it’s ultimately neither a failure nor wasted time. That Franchise was certainly memorable for me even if it wasn’t successful, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 limitations in basketball video games that actually have a sensible explanation.

It’s always frustrating when we encounter limitations in basketball video games that stand in the way of having fun with them. It’s even more frustrating when those limitations aren’t present in other games – in some cases, in the very same series – which suggests that it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. However, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t technical roadblocks when a particular game was released, or a reason for a particular feature or function being designed a certain way. Quite often, there’s a sensible and reasonable explanation for these limitations.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make it less frustrating, especially if we don’t learn the reason until much later. Furthermore, in the early days of basketball video games, we couldn’t be blamed for dreaming big as far as the things we wanted to see, and video game developers have clearly had similar visions. To that end, some limitations have been overcome as technology has improved, and programmers have found a way to make ambitious ideas work. Even so, it’s important to acknowledge that there are sensible explanations as to why those limitations were once in place, or why a mode or feature is still restrictive by design. Here are five that we’ve often grumbled about!

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #519 of the NLSC Podcast!

We’re tipping things off this week with a strange (but not altogether surprising) incident on Twitter/X. Indeed, the quality of discourse on social media is on our minds this week, as we feel compelled to respond to the latest ridiculous narrative being pushed about Michael Jordan and NBA history. We also check in with Troydan’s quest to pull a 100 Overall card in NBA 2K24 MyTEAM, and discuss the new mobile game, NBA Infinite. In this week’s mailbag/featured discussion, we join the community in reminiscing about the basketball video game modes that have kept us hooked over the years, and the titles that we played them in.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:25:28 — 59.0MB)

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!

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 the trade confirmation pop-up in NBA Live 2000’s Franchise mode.

The evolution of basketball video games has resulted in the revamping or complete disappearance of features, both big and small. To that end, if you’re a veteran of the virtual hardwood, there’s bound to be at least one feature from an old favourite that you miss in newer titles. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t take long for a useful feature or gameplay mechanic to disappear. We’ve seen numerous short-lived features, some of which are unique to the games they appear in. They may not be popular or even absolutely necessary, but our desire to see them return makes them Wishlist staples.

I have a shortlist of such features, but one of the first that always comes to mind is the trade confirmation pop-up in the very first Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000. It was such a fantastic detail, yet it was gone the very next year, and has never returned in any games since. Not only that, but the concept doesn’t seem to have ever been picked up by NBA 2K, or the Season and Franchise modes in any other series for that matter. This may seem like a very esoteric feature to cover, but if you’ve played Franchise in NBA Live 2000, you’ll know why it matters. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 how fun it can be just messing around with basketball video games.

I don’t want to harp on the horrors of grinding in basketball gaming nowadays. It’s a well-known issue, and it would be rather ironic and hypocritical of me to repeatedly grumble about something being repetitive! However, it is worth noting that one of the biggest problems in modern basketball games is the focus on the grind, whether it’s levelling up a MyPLAYER or building a MyTEAM squad. We’ve gone from a fun journey that keeps us hooked for hours on end, to needing to put in hours of work just to have fun. I’m grateful to have changed my habits in that regard!

However, while it’s been refreshing to return to NBA 2K14 PS4 for five full seasons and counting in MyCAREER, and also free up time for a potential return to franchise play, frankly I’m enjoying having less structure to my basketball gaming. Don’t get me wrong; I love the depth that keeps us hooked on franchise and career modes, with the tangible goals of playing through seasons and winning championships. At the same time, when you’re not dedicating yourself to grinding or you feel like a break from a more structured mode, simply messing around in a game can be just as engaging. It’s actually one of the things that I enjoyed the most about my basketball gaming in 2023.

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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 Team Rankings and Overall Ratings in basketball video games.

It’s interesting how we get attached to the little details in our favourite basketball video games, particularly the ones that served as our introduction to the genre! I can trace many of my preferences related to presentation and UI to NBA Live 96 PC as it was one of the first 5-on-5 sim games that I played, and it was also the very first one that I owned rather than just frequently renting. To that point, growing up with NBA Live conditioned me to expect teams to be sorted alphabetically by location. 2K’s method of sorting by team name thus felt strange at first, though I’m used to it now.

Another detail that I really enjoyed in the early NBA Live games was the rankings that appeared on team selection screens. Mind you, while I associate them with NBA Live given that it was the series that I primarily played as a young basketball gamer, many sim titles ranked and rated the teams in both individual categories and overall. These rankings gave way to Overall Ratings similar to the ones that players have, which didn’t feel as special, but are also nostalgic in their own way. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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In case you missed it, Patch 4.0 (aka the Season 4 Patch) is now available for NBA 2K24 on all platforms. As always, it should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

Patch 4.0 prepares NBA 2K24 for Season 4 in MyCAREER and MyTEAM, and also includes a few likeness updates. The New York Knicks PA Announcer audio has been improved, there are some gameplay changes including a reduction to the effectiveness of the “Cut to the Basket Pass”, and various stability and bug fixes have been made in The City, MyCAREER, MyTEAM, and MyNBA. You can find the full patch notes below. Unfortunately, no patch notes for the PC/PlayStation 4/Xbox One version are available at this time.

You can also find full update histories for the Current Gen and Next Gen versions of NBA 2K24 in our Wiki. As always, 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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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 racking up statistics, and keeping track of the virtual numbers we accumulate in basketball video games.

Grumpy Elder Millennial of 39 that I am, I have a love-hate relationship with stats. I dislike how basketball and NBA discourse has been reduced to numbers, often cherry-picked to suit an agenda. Of course, even in my 20s – when I wasn’t quite as old or as grumpy – I disliked the way advanced metrics were beginning to creep into hoops talk. Some of the statistical feats being cited these days are utterly ridiculous: “first player to have 39 points, 17 rebounds, 13 assists, three steals, two blocks, and shoot better than 54%, on a Monday, in a blue jersey”. Just stop!

With that being said, stats are still interesting, and they do factor into analysis of the sport. They’ve always been relevant to some degree, and part of the discussion. Big performances matter, and are fun to watch. After all, if a player scores 50, they’ve clearly hit a lot of shots, potentially on some spectacular plays. The same goes for the numbers we post on the virtual hardwood. Whether we’re controlling NBA players or an avatar in a career mode, most of us enjoy filling the stat sheet. Game-to-game, it keeps things interesting. Over the course of a virtual season, those numbers can be almost as fun to look at as the statistics that star players are tallying in the real NBA.

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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 my Sacramento Kings Franchise in NBA Live 2002 for the PlayStation 2.

It recently occurred to me that while I have mentioned my NBA Live 2002 Franchise with the Sacramento Kings in previous articles – including a re-creation of it for our 20th Anniversary of NBA Live content – I’ve never actually profiled it for Wayback Wednesday. Writing about it as an example of a failed basketball gaming idea, and in a handful of other features, had me thinking that I’d already covered it in detail. That really isn’t the case though, and since I’ve reflected on my other memorable season, franchise, and career mode games, it’s only fair that it gets a proper retrospective, too!

On top of that, on a recent dig through my archives, I unearthed some screenshots and an article from my “coverage” of that NBA Live 2002 Kings Franchise, similar to the story topics in our Forum. Not only is it a blast from the past to see those again after all this time, but for the purposes of a retrospective like this, they also allow me to recall some details that have slipped my mind over the years. What I haven’t forgotten though is how much fun that NBA Live 2002 Kings Franchise was, at a time when I definitely sought distractions…even when I probably shouldn’t have been! Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 my season in NBA Live 96 PC, playing with a 1998 roster update.

I’ll readily admit that sometimes it’s difficult to get my head around the fact that it’s been over 25 years since The Last Dance came to an end. To put it into perspective, in 1998, that would’ve been the equivalent of looking back at the New York Knicks’ 1973 championship season! It doesn’t feel like such ancient history when your own nostalgia is involved, and as a Chicago Bulls fan, the 1998 season is naturally quite memorable for me. Those memories also involve the virtual hardwood, as it was during the 1998 season that I made my first roster updates for NBA Live 96 PC.

It was also one of the first seasons that I tried to play along with in a video game. Not in NBA Live 98, mind you. Unfortunately, our family’s aging PC couldn’t handle that game, as I found out firsthand when I tried running the demo! Instead, I used NBA Live 96 PC and my aforementioned 1998 season roster update. Although it was ultimately another season that I didn’t complete, it’s nevertheless one of my favourite basketball gaming experiences, thanks to all of the effort that I put into it beyond simply playing the games. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 reminiscing about re-playing the 1995 season in NBA Live 95 PC, a few years after it had concluded.

As I’ve said, I was born to be a retro gamer. My introduction to gaming was through a console that was already outdated, and even in the late 90s I was sticking with and going back to old favourites. The family’s aging 486 PC and the Nintendo 64 being the console I owned were also factors, especially when it came to basketball gaming. I didn’t have much choice without the hardware to play the newest NBA Live, nor could I convince my folks that I needed yet another basketball video game (“you’ve already got plenty!”). Nevertheless, my collection began when I was a teenager.

One of the most exciting pickups was NBA Live 95 PC. The Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 had been my introduction to 5v5 sim basketball games, but it was a frequent video store rental. NBA Live 96 was the first game I owned on PC, and also one of the first basketball video games that I actually owned, period. It was by chance that I happened across a copy of NBA Live 95 PC one school holidays, and as soon as I had it, it entered the rotation of games that my cousin Clinton and I played as often as we could. We eventually decided to re-play the 1995 season, and it became one of my all-time favourite hoops gaming experiences. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 revelations I’ve had from playing multiple seasons in basketball video games.

There’s no right or wrong way to enjoy basketball video games – unless you’re doing something shady that’s spoiling someone else’s good time – and completion is what you make it. To that end, you don’t need to play through multiple seasons to have enjoyed any one title. In fact, you don’t even need to finish a single season! Playing through a season from start to finish is immensely satisfying though, and a clear sign that you’ve been hooked on a game. When you end up playing multiple seasons, it’s safe to say that you’ve had a truly special virtual hardwood experience.

Obviously, a video game can never truly capture what it’s like to play or coach in the NBA, or manage a team. Life has no adjustable difficulty settings, nor the ability to re-load from an earlier save point and try again (though, wouldn’t that be handy?). Even the most authentic games still have their limits. However, the small taste of the NBA experience that they give us from the perspectives of players, coaches, and GMs can change our mind about issues related to the real league. Sure, video games can’t truly put us in their shoes, but experiencing a simulation of the ups and downs of the NBA has led to some revelations for me, especially playing through multiple seasons.

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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 a PSA to hold on to your old saves whenever possible.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that more recently, I’ve preferred to stick with an old favourite – or new favourite old release, as is the case with NBA 2K14 for PS4 – rather than play the latest NBA 2K. It’s not just a matter of liking the gameplay better in older games, though admittedly that is a key factor. To be blunt, I’m tired of grinding and starting over from scratch every year, knowing that I won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour when the servers are shut down. And yes, the use of the word “labour” is deliberate here, because it does end up feeling more like work than play.

And so, I’ve gravitated towards games that hold up well, and I can continue to dust off and play for years to come. Reaching my sixth year in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER is far more rewarding than anything I could achieve in NBA 2K23’s mode, which will one day be inaccessible. Retaining access to my Chicago Bulls Dynasty in NBA Live 06 PC holds far more appeal than any cards that I could collect in NBA 2K23 MyTEAM. With care, I can preserve those experiences and revisit them whenever the mood strikes, which isn’t the case when live service content is involved. However, thanks to a lack of foresight, there are long-lost saves that I’ll never be able to revisit.

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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 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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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #478 of the NLSC Podcast!

Games that we wish we played more, seasons that we wish we finished, and saves that we wish we still had, are common tales among basketball gamers. This week, we join the community in reminiscing about some of our biggest basketball gaming regrets! A misconception about a job listing also prompts us to address the subject of NBA Live rumours, as well as clickbait content. Additionally, we touch on whether a theoretical future NBA Live should be sim, arcade, or a sim-arcade hybrid. We also reflect on some spectacular highlights in last week’s NLSC Top 10 that had us all buzzing, and provide an update on reaching Year 6 in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:08 — 53.3MB)

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!