NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #643 of the NLSC Podcast!

After an unexpected week off, we’re back to discuss skill gaps in basketball video games, specifically what that truly means. In response to Mike Wang’s post on X polling the community for feedback regarding shooting percentages when Badges are involved, we note the detrimental effects of such artificial boosts, and how they and other mechanics often run contrary to the idea of encouraging more skilful play. We also once again discuss how concepts designed around the online scene end up negatively impacting the sim gameplay for offline gamers. On a happier note, we also recap a couple of fun co-op sessions with NBA 2K14 and NBA Live 18, played using Parsec and the Xbox App.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:16:04 — 52.6MB)

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!

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 what inspired me to mod NBA 2K10, and continue to explore ways to update that roster.

When NBA 2K10 was released, it didn’t become an instant favourite. A couple of the other members of the NLSC Team at the time encouraged me to pick it up, since we were making inroads into covering the NBA 2K series following its arrival on PC the previous year. While I understood the benefits of expanding our content and wanted to facilitate that, I hadn’t been able to get into NBA 2K9 myself, and honestly wasn’t optimistic that NBA 2K10 would win me over either. Sure enough, I didn’t like NBA 2K10 much more than its predecessor, owing to controls that just didn’t click with me.

I was also still flying the flag for NBA Live; perhaps less enthusiastically than before, but it remained “my brand”. Mind you, between it being a console-only release and a couple of quibbles with the gameplay following the official patches, I wasn’t entirely keen on NBA Live 10 either. Since then of course, I’ve developed a new appreciation for NBA Live 10, and it became a major retro gaming kick for me. Likewise, NBA 2K10 is now a game that I greatly enjoy. I was even motivated to mod NBA 2K10, creating a fixed roster that added missing Legends and a few other enhancements to the game’s final official update. You may fairly ask though: why, after all these years?

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News about NBA 2K27 is coming next week, but in the meantime, people are still hitting the virtual hardwood in NBA 2K26, and we’re also seeing new mod releases for the game. To that end, Daex has recently uploaded some conversions of KyotoCarl’s retro All-Star courts for NBA 2K25, ranging from 1992 through to 1998. Check them all out at the links below, and a big thanks to Daex and others who continue to provide free mod releases for NBA 2K26 and other titles!

Daex
1992 All Star – Orlando
1993 All Star – Salt Lake City (ver A)
1993 All Star – Salt Lake City (ver B)
1994 All Star – Minneapolis
1995 All Star – Phoenix
1996 All Star – San Antonio
1997 All Star – Cleveland
1998 All Star – New York

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

With one exception, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays is all about the dunk. We know you won’t mind though, as the vicious posters and exciting aerial creativity will definitely get you pumped up to hit the virtual hardwood this weekend! As for the lone highlight that isn’t a dunk, it’s still a breathtaking acrobatic finish that’ll also make you want to jump on the sticks and get fancy. Six different games are featured this week, from College Hoops 2K8 through to NBA 2K26. Let’s get to the action!

What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.

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 in old games that I miss.

Even though I’m nostalgic for my earliest basketball gaming memories and believe that many old titles are still extremely enjoyable today, I won’t pretend that the genre hasn’t come a long way. Indeed, even within the first few years of being a basketball gamer, I was seeing and reaping the benefits of some impressive innovations. While I haven’t been entirely satisfied with the on-court experience in the current generation of NBA 2K titles – to put it mildly – the games are as deep as they’ve ever been, with some cool features that I could’ve once only dreamed of.

With that being said, there are some details in old games that have disappeared over the years, and I certainly miss them. In all fairness, I can’t argue that all of them are absolutely vital, or that their absence actively detracts from my enjoyment. In fact, some of them had already fallen by the wayside by the late 90s or early 2000s, so they’re absent from many of my all-time favourite games over the past two decades. Of course, while they may not be necessary for a basketball game to rank among the all-time great releases, they were still special. They undoubtedly helped establish my love of basketball gaming, so I do miss seeing these details from those old games.

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August has brought us another patch for NBA The Run, featuring an assortment of updates to gameplay, visuals, and more. It should come through automatically on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

Key gameplay updates in the August 2026 patch for NBA The Run include reductions to goaltending, increased difficulty stealing the ball after a pump fake, a bigger speed boost when In The Zone, and a decrease in the amount of missed dunks. Various players have had their ratings, dribbling tricks, and In The Zone abilities changed. Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball are now sporting the Minnesota Timberwolves’ new 2027 jerseys, and Devin Booker’s jersey number has been changed to #15. Players who switched teams during the offseason, such as LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, are also now wearing their new teams’ jerseys.

You can find the full notes for the August patch below, as well as in the update history for NBA The Run in our Wiki.

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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 reflecting on the Legends in NBA Live 19 Ultimate Team.

When the NBA Live 19 servers shut down back in January, naturally Ultimate Team became unavailable. This was unfortunate for me, since along with completing The Streets World Tour, playing the mode’s challenges was a big part of developing a greater appreciation for a flawed but fun release. As with the rest of the eighth gen NBA Live titles, it was also the only way to play with Legends. I’d previously had a blast playing with squads of my favourite 90s Legends in NBA Live 15 and NBA Live 18, so I’m glad that I had the opportunity to do so in NBA Live 19 as well.

In fact, I ended up venturing beyond my own nostalgia when playing with Legends in NBA Live 19 Ultimate Team. Not only did I hit the virtual hardwood with the stars of the 90s that I grew up watching, but I mixed in greats from the 80s, as well as the 60s and 70s. Indeed, I played a handful of games with lineups that were completely before my time, and enjoyed it immensely! As I began to collect jerseys, I made a point of capturing screenshots of Legends in their teams’ 2019 uniforms. In celebration of the fun I had with the mode and those NBA greats, let’s take a look back…way back…

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If you’re looking to spruce up the visuals in NBA 2K26 PC, today’s mod releases feature a new Reshade by John. Check it out at the link below!

John
Reshade

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 how in 2026, offline play still matters in basketball video games.

Look, I don’t want to fall into the same trap that many of my fellow Elder Millennials appear to be; that is to say, focusing too heavily on the “elder” part! With that being said, at this point we’re not in the core demographic for pop culture. I’ll readily admit that some of my hobbies and interests have changed in ways that I don’t like. Once again, I’m reminded of that Grampa Simpson quote that tried to warn me as a kid: “I used to be ‘with it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m ‘with’ isn’t ‘it’, and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you!”

At the same time, other things haven’t changed as much as some people like to claim. When it comes to basketball video games, offline play is a great example. A very loud minority of gamers – and the occasional gaming industry pundit or executive – will try to tell us that single player games and offline play in general are a thing of the past. It’s all about online play, and claiming otherwise is to be behind the times. Except, that clearly isn’t true! There’s plenty of evidence that single player campaigns and local co-op and head-to-head play are still extremely popular. To that end, basketball video games can’t ignore offline play, and they’re destined to be weaker if they do.

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Exciting progress continues to be made with PlayStation 4 emulation. More and more games are becoming playable with updates to the shadPS4 emulator, and that includes NBA 2K14. It does require a compatibility fix to avoid some issues however, and to that end, SexCurryBeats has created a runtime that will get the game working in Quick Game, Practice, and Blacktop.

Please note that in order to play NBA 2K14 on shadPS4, you’ll still need your own backup of the game and dumped libSceNgs2.sprx file. These are not included in this download, and for legal reasons, they won’t be distributed here! This runtime only assists in getting everything working with those resources in place. Please also note that this isn’t an official shadPS4 release, but rather an independently-developed resource.

Download the runtime at the link below! If you need to grab the shadPS4 emulator, you can do so here. It’ll definitely be interesting to see further developments with PS4 emulation, as it could open up modding possibilities for eighth gen NBA Live and NBA 2K titles.

SexCurryBeats
NBA 2K14 PS4 on PC

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

Once again, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays combines past, present, and future to provide an assortment of impressive highlights that include a little bit of everything. There’s LeBron James in his new Philadelphia 76ers jersey, and Vince Carter rising up to throw down a honey dip. Both of those plays demonstrate how modding enhances our virtual hardwood experience. A couple of NBA 2K14 highlights show how it’s fun to revisit classics with their contemporary rosters. The countdown culminates with an impressive re-creation of a clutch moment for Carmelo Anthony. On top of that, seven different games are on display. Let’s get to the action!

What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.

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 oddities that you’ll find in the SNES version of NBA Live 95.

In light of this week marking 30 years since I rented NBA Live 95 SNES for the first time, I’m doubling up on my nostalgic reflections by spotlighting some of the oddities you’ll find in that version of the game! I’d earmarked both of these topics as possible ways of celebrating the anniversary of one of my most significant basketball gaming milestones, and with the date looming, I was tossing up which one I wanted to run. I realised that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to choose between the two. To reference a couple of popular reaction GIFs: why not both? Both is good!

As is the often the case when it comes to oddities in video games that we grew up with, we definitely noticed some of them at the time, while others went overlooked for many years until we revisited those games, or someone else pointed them out. Our nostalgia is admittedly quite adept at smoothing over rough edges, and when a game is a blast, we can easily tolerate and outright ignore quirky moments. Obviously, in the early days of basketball gaming, we simply didn’t know any different! As such, glitches and weird moments are often part of our nostalgia, too. For me, these oddities in NBA Live 95 for SNES only add to its charm and the affection that I have for it.

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For those who’d like to try their hand at tinkering with the PC version of NBA Bounce, wiscard_rush has updated his modding tool for the game! The latest version features some bug fixes and new functionality, including the ability to modify save files. Check it out at the link below!

wiscard_rush
NBA BOUNCE Modding Tool (Updated to V2.1.1)

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 reflecting on it being 30 years since I first rented the Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95, shortly after getting my SNES.

Since 1996 was the year that I really got into basketball and basketball gaming, 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of several firsts in my hoops fandom. As such, I’ve felt inspired to reflect on those memorable milestones in becoming a hardcore fan of both real basketball and the virtual hardwood. Back in January, I reflected on it being 30 years since I bought the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Come June, I reminisced about the 1996 Chicago Bulls, and how seeing my favourite team win an NBA Championship solidified my love of them and the sport.

That brings me to the 30th anniversary of a couple of other memorable moments for me back in 1996: my acquisition of a Super Nintendo, and subsequent rental of the SNES version of NBA Live 95 from my local video store. NBA Jam Tournament Edition had been a great introduction to the virtual hardwood with its pick-up-and-play arcade gameplay, but after playing NBA Live 95 SNES, I fell in love with the simulation style as well. Again, hitting the 30th anniversary of all these milestones definitely has me feeling nostalgic, so let’s take a look back…way back…

Read More »

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #642 of the NLSC Podcast!

The NBA 2K27 Gameplay Trailer dropped last week, giving us our first glimpse of this year’s game in action. Unsurprisingly, that glimpse consisted of carefully curated highlights from cinematic angles! We also received a roadmap for the rest of the preview season – which is set to be rather different from previous years – along with a handful of early details about modes and gameplay. The news that’s caught everyone’s attention is the confirmation of a controversial change to dunking, namely that all dunks will require timing. As such, this week we’re joining the community in reacting to the trailer, the expanded use of a Dunk Meter, and everything else that we know about NBA 2K27 so far.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:02:50 — 43.5MB)

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!