From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #644 of the NLSC Podcast!

The big NBA 2K27 infodump has come and gone, which means it’s essentially a wrap on what has been one of the shortest (and honestly, underwhelming) preview seasons for a Triple-A basketball video game. Nevertheless, we do have some details to discuss, as well as some more gameplay footage courtesy of a recent event for content creators. As such, this week we join the community in reacting to what we’ve seen and learned, while also sharing a few thoughts on influencer culture and a disappointing lack of accountability for content creators nowadays. We also share some thoughts on the impending shutdown of NBA Live Mobile, and seemingly the end of NBA Live as a brand.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:03:32 — 44.0MB)

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 some reflections (and a few untold stories) as I mark 25 years of running the NLSC.

On August 25th 2001, Tim officially announced that I’d be succeeding him as the NLSC’s webmaster. It was already August 26th here in Australia, so that’s the date of my first post on the site. Whichever date you want to use, this time of year marks my anniversary of taking the reins here at the NLSC. It’s mind-blowing to think that at this point, I’ve been running the site for more than half of my life! To that point, it’s truly surreal to be able to say that as of this week, I’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century now.

As the years have gone by, I’ve made it a point to mark my anniversary in some way, whether via a social media post or a feature here on the site. Just to be clear right out of the gate: this isn’t a retirement announcement! As I’ve said before, it’s tough to say how long I’ll do this, or to even consider the end of my involvement with the site and what will happen thereafter. It’s very much a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” situation, because as long as I’m willing and able to channel my enthusiasm for basketball gaming into content creation, I’m going to keep having fun doing so. That’s why as I celebrate 25 years at the helm of the NLSC, I believe I still have work to do.

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Today’s mod releases for NBA 2K14 feature an assortment of jerseys from SlippyG, including 2013 season jerseys for the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers, as well as a fictional pink Lakers uniform. Check them all out at the links below!

SlippyG
2012-2013 Phoenix Suns Jerseys
2012-2013 Phoenix Suns Latin Nights Jerseys
Los Angeles Lakers Noche Latina Jersey
Los Angeles Lakers Pink Jerseys

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.

NBA 2K27 will be available next week via Early Access for gamers who pre-ordered the special editions, so we should be seeing some highlights from it in the NLSC Top 10 Plays very soon! In the meantime however, people are still playing NBA 2K26, along with a selection of all-time classics and personal old favourites. To that end, there are nine different games in the countdown this week, from NBA Live 2001 all the way through to NBA 2K26. Whether you’re looking forward to NBA 2K27 or you intend to keep retro basketball gaming, as always these highlights will fire you up to hit the virtual hardwood this weekend. 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 interesting facts about Wilt Chamberlain.

Today would’ve been Wilt Chamberlain’s 90th birthday. As an Elder Millennial, Wilt was obviously before my time. However, as a newly-minted basketball fan some 30 years ago, he was unsurprisingly one of the first Legends that I learned about. When you score 100 points in a game, average 50.4 ppg, and play an “impossible” 48.5 mpg – all in the same season, no less – future generations of hoop heads will know your name! I was fascinated to hear about those records and his legendary rivalry with Bill Russell, not to mention tales of his incredible athletic feats.

Growing up as a basketball fan in the 90s, Wilt Chamberlain was to me what Michael Jordan is to younger fans nowadays. In fact, from the way that older fans insisted that he was better than MJ to remarks on the subject from Wilt himself, the discourse and debates involving LeBron James nowadays feel very familiar! It’s why I understand where younger fans are coming from, though I do feel that there used to be far more reverence for NBA history. In any case, I enjoyed learning about Wilt Chamberlain back in the day, and I’ve been delighted to learn even more since then. With that being said, here are five interesting Wilt Chamberlain facts that you may or may not know.

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For those who are interested in tinkering with NBA Bounce, wiscard_rush has uploaded a new version of his modding tool for the PC version. The new release adds support for mesh editing, with a new tab that allows you to view, export, and replace the 3D models. Download it at the link below, and check out the tool’s Github page for more information!

wiscard_rush
NBA BOUNCE Modding Tool (Updated to V3.0.0)

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 another look back at a fictional comeback for Larry Bird that took place in an NBA Live 95 PC Season game.

Yesterday marked 34 years since Larry Bird announced his retirement from the NBA, just ten days after winning a gold medal with the Dream Team. While Larry Legend may not have been completely ready to retire, his ailing back wasn’t up to the rigours of another NBA season. As it was, he’d missed a combined 57 regular season games in 1991 and 1992, sat out the All-Star Game both years, and played only four of the seven games in the Boston Celtics’ second round loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in what would be his final NBA Playoffs series.

Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that unlike Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, Larry Bird never made a comeback after hanging up his Converse sneakers. Whereas the MJs were fit enough to resume their NBA careers, Bird’s health simply didn’t allow it. Of course, even simulation basketball video games can take a break from reality. To that point, as my cousin Clinton and I played further into our Houston Rockets Season in NBA Live 95 PC, we sought to keep things interesting with silly ideas, including having Larry Bird make a comeback for us. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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.