
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 another list of five brief stints that were captured for posterity in video games.
Yes, it’s time for another Five that underscores once again that basketball video games end up being interactive almanacs! Last June, I recalled five brief stints that made it into the official rosters of basketball video games, from Rasheed Wallace’s unlikely appearance as an Atlanta Hawk in NBA Ballers to Anfernee Hardaway’s frequently forgotten comeback with the Miami Heat, as seen in NBA 2K7. A combination of late releases, revised editions, and official roster updates have preserved a number of these odd stints for players that we generally picture in a different uniform.
To that point, if we’ve spent a considerable amount of time with a game – especially in the days before official roster updates – we may come to think of these brief stints as lasting much longer than they actually did. That’s definitely the case for me when it comes to at least one of the examples that I’m covering here today. As for the other brief stints, while I do remember them and that they didn’t last long, it’s still thanks to unusual and fortuitous circumstances that they were preserved in the official rosters of video games. Long-time readers will know how much I love trivia like this, so let’s not delay any further; here are five more brief stints that were captured in games!