NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

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 reasons to mod old games.

I remember a conversation with a long-time member of the community many years ago, when we were reflecting on the earliest NBA Live games fading into obscurity. This was around the turn of the millennium, and modding for titles earlier than NBA Live 99 was definitely slowing down and going out of vogue. With that being said, I did release a 2001 season update for NBA Live 96 PC, which at the time was meant to be a farewell to an old favourite. Little did either of us know that retro gaming would one day see a number of old releases find their way back into people’s rotations!

Granted, it’s not for everyone, but I’ll always advocate for retro gaming, basketball or otherwise. Moreover, I’ll also encourage anyone to mod old games if they’re inclined to do so. I can understand if some gamers balk at that idea. While there are people that turn their nose up at the suggestion of playing anything other than the latest release, they can at least see the nostalgic appeal of quickly throwing on a classic game. A modding project can take a lot of time and effort though, and mods for an old title may not seem worth all that trouble. I understand that point of view, but I strongly disagree! In that spirit, here are five reasons why it’s a great idea to mod old games.

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Patch 4.0 has come through for NBA 2K25. As of writing, it’s available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S version of the game, with the PC patch set to drop in time for Season 4 tipping off this Friday. As always, the patch should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console, or checking for updates manually.

In addition to preparing NBA 2K25 for Season 4 in MyCAREER and MyTEAM, Patch 4.0 includes more player likeness updates, cosmetic updates to jerseys and courts, and bug and stability fixes across all of the game modes. A few minor gameplay tweaks have also been included, as “Light Pressure” has been separated into three bands, trailing defenders can no longer force skill dunk attempts into layups with a bump from behind, and rim physics have been adjusted to reduce long rebounds.

Check out the notes for Patch 4.0 below, as well as in the update history for NBA 2K25 here in our Wiki! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum. Also tune in to Episode #562 of the NLSC Podcast, where Dee and I join the community in giving our “final review” of NBA 2K25.

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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 the retro jerseys in NBA Live 16.

Retro jerseys were hardly a new feature by the time NBA Live 16 was released in 2015. Of course, it was a feature that was bewilderingly and frustratingly lost when NBA Live made the jump to the seventh generation, before finally returning in NBA Live 10. Following the series’ extended hiatus in the wake of NBA Elite 11 and NBA Live 13 being cancelled, the eighth generation NBA Live releases all included retro jerseys. Indeed, this was something that they definitely did better than their seventh generation counterparts.

With that being said, NBA Live 16 stands out as having the best array of retro jerseys among its eighth gen NBA Live brethren. Granted, it still fell short of NBA 2K16 and other eighth gen NBA 2K titles in that regard, but upon revisiting the game last year, I was nevertheless surprised and impressed by the inclusion of certain uniforms. They have appeared in other releases, but considering that they weren’t part of designated Hardwood Classics nights during the 2016 campaign, including them went above and beyond what was essential. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #562 of the NLSC Podcast!

Now that 2025 is underway and NBA 2K25 has been out for a few months, what are our ultimate thoughts on this year’s game? This week, we join the community in giving NBA 2K25 a final score, and running down the various pros and cons across the board following ample time on the sticks. We also reflect on the unwritten house rules that we employ to make our multiplayer basketball gaming sessions fair and enjoyable, and ideally civil with minimal fights! Finally, we react to a bewildering story about a former top draft pick being utterly clueless when it comes to basketball history. Of course, given the player in question, we’re not entirely surprised!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:19:31 — 55.0MB)

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!

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 an attempt at crafting a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest mode in a future NBA 2K.

Although the original Jordan Challenge was the catalyst for a new era of historical content in NBA 2K, NBA’s Greatest was an innovative follow-up. Many of the classic teams that were added as part of NBA’s Greatest are still in the game today, setting a precedent for expanding the roster of retro squads to celebrate a variety of players. It wasn’t the first basketball game to feature throwback presentation – NBA Jam 2004 had utilised the concept almost a decade earlier – but NBA 2K12 did a spectacular job with it, ultimately paving the way for what we now have with MyNBA Eras.

As a game released in 2011, NBA’s Greatest celebrated fifteen of the most prominent players in league history to that point: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Oscar Robertson, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Scottie Pippen, and Isiah Thomas. Needless to say, those players still deserve to be celebrated today, but after all these years, there’s a new class of all-time greats that a future NBA 2K could build a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest around. With that in mind, here are fifteen players that should be celebrated in such a mode, as well as my picks for their games.

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Bassman58 continues to update the Magic-Bird era courts in NBA 2K25, as you can see from today’s mod releases. Check out his update for the Milwaukee Buck’s MECCA below!

Bassman58
Milwaukee Bucks Magic-Bird Era Court

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 Dee4Three! 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, or hit up Dee on Twitter.

Welcome to a brand new year for the NLSC Top 10 Plays! As you might expect, we’re picking up right where we left off, as the community has come through with the goods as usual. That means an assortment of rim-rattling poster dunks, flashy layups, nifty passes, and rejections that the late Dikembe Mutombo would be proud of! A total of six different games are featured in this week’s countdown, ranging from NBA Live 2000 right through to NBA 2K25. You know what the Top 10 is all about by now, so 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 staples of bad basketball video games.

What makes a bad basketball video game? Well, in a nutshell, it’s neither a fun video game, nor is it a good representation of basketball. Now, there are obviously different ways to represent basketball in video game form, with simulation and arcade being the two main subgenres of hoops titles. Within those subgenres, there are different styles with varying amounts of realism and wackiness according to their concept. To that end, just because a particular approach isn’t to your liking, it doesn’t objectively mean that it’s a bad game. Indeed, this goes for basically anything we care to critique!

However, as is the case with all other genres of video games – not to mention other media – there are bad basketball titles. These bad basketball games tend to have some common traits; some staple drawbacks and design choices, if you will. Not every bad game will have all of these staples, and admittedly they can also show up in mediocre and even good games to a small extent. It’s just that bad basketball games err really badly in these areas, to the point where they’re practically unplayable outside of some ironic enjoyment. I know it’s become popular to call anything you don’t like “trash”, but if a basketball game ticks some or all of these boxes, then it’s earned that label.

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The NBA 2K23 servers have been shut down, bringing an end to MyTEAM in the game, but today’s mod releases demonstrate that the mode’s assets can still be put to good use. RayRay_953 has released a roster that features all of the MyTEAM-exclusive players, complete with their proper faces and announcer audio. Pick it up at the link below!

RayRay_953
MyTEAM-Exclusive Players in Free Agents Pool

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 taking a look back at the three locations for our MyCOURT in NBA 2K17.

Look, I’ll be one of the first to agree that MyCAREER, and career modes in basketball and sports video games in general for that matter, doesn’t need an open world. As I’ve explained before, it misses the point of the open world approach, essentially being a glorified loading screen and vehicle for advertisements rather than a true extension of gameplay. Conversely, I will advocate for and admit to enjoying having MyCOURT as a player hub. Sure, I scoffed at it when it was announced for NBA 2K15, but it’s now something that I really miss when I’m playing MyCAREER in NBA 2K14!

It was MyCAREER in NBA 2K17 that really sold me on MyCOURT. I’d spent quite a bit of time on MyCOURT in NBA 2K16 – both mine and my friends’ – as it was the method of squadding up for 2K Pro-Am games. It was fun shooting around during those sessions and customising the area for our mutual enjoyment, but I truly came to appreciate MyCOURT during my playthrough of NBA 2K17 MyCAREER. From its integration into the story and overall journey, to the different courts that we could unlock, it absolutely added to the experience. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #561 of the NLSC Podcast!

With the 2024 holiday season drawing to a close and a new year almost upon us, this week we’re joining the community in sharing the basketball and basketball gaming gifts that we gave and received for Christmas, as well as listing some of our resolutions for both real hoops and the virtual hardwood in 2025. We also recap a couple of co-op games with the PC versions of two titles released some twenty years apart: NBA Live 95 and NBA 2K15. In addition to reflecting on two very different but nevertheless enjoyable sessions, we discuss how great of a sim game NBA Live 95 was for its time, and the ruthless AI that makes NBA 2K15 suitably challenging.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 55:24 — 38.4MB)

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 a few thoughts on what it would take to get me to play online again.

From NBA 2K16 through to NBA 2K20, I was invested in playing the connected experiences in MyCAREER. I wasn’t exclusively an online gamer of course, as I got great enjoyment out of playing the NBA side of MyCAREER too, including making it to the Hall of Fame in NBA 2K19. However, one of the reasons that I kept returning to the mode every year was to level up a MyPLAYER so that I could join the rest of NLSC THRILLHO for some online games. As the grind became more of a chore and the rest of the crew’s enthusiasm waned, I too lost interest in MyCAREER.

Long gone are the days when I’d consider jumping into The Rec every night of the week, just to see what it was like! Indeed, outside of playing through the story in NBA 2K21 and occasionally jumping online, and a very brief return in NBA 2K23, I’ve stuck to the offline MyCAREER experience in NBA 2K14. Of course, it’s not just disinterest in the online scene that’s turned me off MyCAREER in recent years. From gameplay gripes to frustration with grinding and quests, I’m weary of the NBA side of the mode as well. Considering my willingness to change up my basketball gaming habits though, as we enter 2025, could anything persuade me to play online again?

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Today’s NBA 2K14 mod releases feature the College Hoops 2K25 project by nick15, which in the spirit of so many college basketball video games, includes fictional players for all 358 Division I NCAA teams! Pick it up at the link below, and check out the release and support topic here in the Forum for more previews and information on the project.

nick15
College Hoops 2K25 // FICTIONAL

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 Dee4Three! 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, or hit up Dee on Twitter.

It’s been an incredible year for the NLSC Top 10 Plays, and we’re certainly wrapping up 2024 with a bang! The countdown begins with a throwback to Grant Hill’s rookie season in NBA 2K13, and only gets more exciting with a signature Kobe Bryant dunk in NBA 2K25, an incredible buzzer beater from Vince Carter in NBA Live 2005, and an assortment of vicious dunks and jaw-dropping moves from a total of six different basketball video games. Thank you to everyone who submitted highlights these past twelve months! We’re looking forward to another spectacular year in 2025, but for one last time in 2024, 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 lineups that despite their fame, didn’t actually last long.

Just how good is your memory? I like to think that mine is pretty good when it comes to basketball and basketball video games, because those are things that I’m passionate about. However, I definitely don’t have infallible recall! Moreover, our perception of time can be a tricky thing. To that end, while I may remember players, teams, lineups, and other such roster trivia many years later, my recollection of their longevity (or lack thereof) can be skewed. After all, what may feel like a long time when we’re living it day-by-day can turn out to be a short period in the grand scheme of things!

Case in point: the lineups that I’m talking about today. It’s no surprise that they stick in my mind – and I’m sure the minds of many long-time basketball fans and gamers – because they were all memorable in their own way. However, their memorability can ironically make us forget how short-lived those lineups actually were; especially if they did have a significant impact on the league (and video games) while they lasted. Even if they weren’t particularly successful, or a Video Game Team, they may still benefit from an oddity, or simply media hype, that grants them more nostalgic fame – or infamy – than you’d expect. Here are five such lineups that come to mind for me.

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