Monday Tip-Off: Hooked On History & Nostalgia

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 being hooked on history and nostalgia with my current basketball gaming habits.

Many years ago, we were discussing the most recent WWE video game in the Forum. Sauru – a long-time member who had a few years on most of us – was wistfully noting the lack of wrestlers from the Golden Age/Hulkamania Era. As somewhat of a lapsed pro wrestling fan, he was far more interested in playing with his nostalgic favourites than the contemporary wrestlers. I understood his disappointment and agreed that a larger selection of Legends would be great, but noted that a majority of the userbase were more interested in the current WWE; a point that Sauru did concede.

Of course, all these years later, I find myself relating to Sauru’s disinterest when it comes to basketball and basketball gaming. His stance isn’t just understandable, but now very relatable! Indeed, it’s one of those “It’ll happen to you!” moments that The Simpsons warned us young viewers about back in the 90s. As I’ve grown disillusioned with the modern NBA and the disrespect for the history of the league – to say nothing of my issues with recent NBA 2K games – I’ve doubled down on my nostalgia. And so, these days I find far more satisfaction in going back to older titles that still hold up, discovering new favourites, and playing with Legends and other nostalgic lineups.

A lot of people – younger hoop heads and gamers in particular – would call that being stuck in the past. There’s certainly some truth to that. I’m at the age where I’m now the uncool adult that my generation made fun of back in the 90s and early 2000s. As such, I’m no longer in the key demographic that pop culture is catering to. That does make it easier to gravitate towards nostalgia, which doesn’t mock me for being an “old head”. However, by playing with Legends and classic teams, and indulging my nostalgia and love of NBA history, I’m ironically having a fairly new and fresh experience. It may come as a surprise, but over the years, I’ve greatly underutilised the historical content.

Much as I wasn’t quite as bothered as Sauru was by the lack of old school Legends in WWE games because I was watching the current product, I was enjoying playing with the contemporary rosters on the virtual hardwood. Sure, I still wanted to see historical content in basketball video games, and I always made a point of adding any missing Legends in my roster updates for NBA Live PC. When it came to my gaming habits though, I was starting franchises with the current rosters, and playing into the future of my alternate reality. Once I got into MyCAREER in NBA 2K, the grind to level up my MyPLAYER was too time-consuming to enjoy other modes, or the retro teams.

Needless to say, when I broke the habit of starting over from scratch in MyCAREER year after year – and indeed lost interest in the newer games due to my dissatisfaction with them – it freed up time to do other things on the virtual hardwood. Sure, I was drawn back into MyCAREER in the PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K14, but my newfound love of that game also led me to play with the classic teams. That in turn led to the NBA 2K14 Retro Series. Granted, that was also content for our YouTube channel and social media accounts – and a means of learning some new video editing techniques – but it was nevertheless motivation to put some classic teams on the floor.

As I came to enjoy games such as NBA 2K6 and NBA 2K7 after revisiting them, I was drawn to the historical content on offer. After all, NBA 2K took a different approach to NBA Live by featuring East and West All-Decade squads, and also included a handful of Legends that hadn’t been featured in EA’s games. To that point, the surprising inclusion of Charles Barkley in NBA 2K6 was one of the things that compelled me to give the game another look. Obviously modding has remedied Chuck’s absence in numerous releases, but whenever he has made a rare official appearance, there’s naturally an incentive to fire up that game and play with him.

NBA 2K6 also includes four All-Time squads among its unlockables: the Celtics, Lakers, 76ers, and Supersonics. Again, this allowed for the inclusion of a handful of Legends who hadn’t yet been featured in NBA Live, making those squads a novelty. That’s the content that I’m seeking out whenever I’m revisiting classic games, as well as any opportunities to create additional historical scenarios through some minimalist modding. Of course, NBA 2K6’s contemporary rosters are now a throwback in their own right, and my nostalgia for the 2006 campaign makes it fun to revisit some of those lineups all these years later. I gravitate to Legends and classic teams, though.

My habits in NBA Live 18 and NBA Live 19 Ultimate Team further exemplify how I’ve been hooked on history and nostalgia. Unless a Challenge required a modern player to appear in my lineup – and even then, they’d be at the end of the bench – I was running with a squad full of Legends. The fact that Ultimate Team was the only mode where you could play with the full complement of Legends was a significant factor, too. Still, even if the Legends were available outside of Ultimate Team in eighth gen NBA Live games – and they really should’ve been – I’d still be collecting their cards and running with historical lineups. Inaccuracies aside, they were more fun to use.

In fact, during my time with NBA Live 19 Ultimate Team, I was compelled to look beyond my own nostalgia and collect Legends spanning the breadth of NBA history. Instead of just sticking with a squad of 90s All-Stars as in previous iterations of the mode, I was mixing in greats from multiple eras. Indeed, there were times when I didn’t have a single 90s player in my lineup, instead running with squads of players from the 70s and 80s. When it came time to pay tribute to Lenny Wilkens, I took to the virtual hardwood with a squad of 60s Legends. As much as I respect the pioneers of the sport, I’ve rarely used them in video games, so that was a fun change of pace.

Once again, the freshness of that approach has heavily influenced my recent habits on the virtual hardwood. Yes, I do love nostalgia, and my fascination with NBA history goes right back to my days as a newly-minted hardcore hoop head. A combination of frustration with today’s NBA and the disrespect directed towards Legends encourages me to celebrate the past in video games. Beyond that though, it’s taking advantage of content that I’ve always appreciated, but haven’t made enough use of over the years. It doesn’t feel accurate to say I’m making up for lost time because I enjoyed the things that I was doing instead, but it’s satisfying to have new experiences in old releases.

I’ve been drawn to retro collegiate content as well. The main reason that I’ve recently dusted off the PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K17 as opposed to the PC release is the All-Time College DLC. Even though there are only ten squads – and some aren’t as complete or balanced as they should be – between the unique lineups of school alumni and a handful of players that aren’t available on any of the other classic teams, they’ve definitely captured my attention. I may not have the same nostalgia for college hoops as I do the NBA, but I appreciate the celebration of history. It’s also been fun to play with the higher-rated versions of NBA journeymen who had been stars in college.

Similarly, it’s the historical content that encourages me to revisit EA Sports’ college basketball games on PlayStation 3. Of the three titles that I own, NCAA Basketball 10 easily has the best gameplay. Unfortunately, due to EA’s hubris dancing the line with Roster Players who were far too obvious stand-ins, they had to remove the historical content that had appeared in NCAA March Madness 08 and NCAA Basketball 09. And so, while those games aren’t as strong on the sticks, I still prefer to revisit them because of the All-Time squads and classic teams. They’re more fun to use once you add real names of course, so I still have quite a bit of work to do on those rosters!

Playing with Legends and classic teams has undoubtedly been a most welcome palate cleanser from the toxic discourse surrounding NBA history and the players that I have nostalgia for. That shift in attitude and opinion is one of those rude shocks as you get older; like hearing the hits of your teenage years being played on supermarket radio! It feels like it happens in a blink, though. In the early 2010s, we were still celebrating NBA history and nostalgia, reflected by the addition of The Jordan Challenge and NBA’s Greatest in NBA 2K. Around 2016 however, the discourse made a hard left turn into tearing down the past with the disgraceful “plumbers and dentists” rhetoric.

To some extent, this is just a by-product of getting older. It’s hardly a coincidence that I noticed this shift in attitude in the mid-2010s, as I was entering my thirties. A new generation that grew up with a different NBA and different narratives was coming of age and speaking their minds, and they were the key demographic now. My nostalgia was becoming ancient history; my opinions were no longer necessarily the consensus. That’s the way it goes, but the lack of respect for history still bothers me. There was a time when ignorance of history and dismissing the greats as mere nostalgia would see you thoroughly schooled and laughed out of the discussion on most message boards!

Seeing the lack of reverence for NBA history and backlash to nostalgia reminds me of that discussion with Sauru about the selection of old school wrestlers in WWE games. Not that I didn’t sympathise with him, but it’s easy to say “get with the times” when pop culture and discourse is still catering to your generation. These days, I completely understand the desire to disengage with a product when it’s unappealing – or outright hostile – to older fans. It’s why I’m sceptically amused when I see young fans claim that they’ll never cling to the past like us, and accept that players in the future will be more evolved. I’m telling you now kids, listen to Abe Simpson: it’ll happen to you!

I will say that as much as I’ve enjoyed indulging my nostalgia and passion for NBA history by playing with retro content in a variety of titles, it’s also made me aware of how shoddily that content has been handled. Dee and I have criticised the lack of care and attention to detail in the classic teams and Eras rosters in recent NBA 2K titles, but it’s been an issue for decades in both 2K and NBA Live. So many Legends have generic copy-and-paste ratings, and are severely underrated in general. Revisiting the default rosters in NBA Live 06 PC also reminded me of how many players they’d lost the rights to by that point. The 90s All-Stars roster in particular is pathetically thin.

Just as nostalgia can smooth over the rough edges of old favourites in general, it’s easy to forget that their handling of historical content wasn’t necessarily better than modern titles. It also goes to show how we can forget what was and wasn’t originally in games when we’re accustomed to using mods that have added missing content! With that being said, my basketball gaming habits have piqued my interest in going back and sprucing up old favourites by adding missing Legends, and polishing up their rosters for an optimal retro gaming experience. As tempting as it is to bring those games up to date, I’m more interested in projects concerning nostalgia and history.

That’s what I’m hooked on right now, after all. Whether it’s the nostalgia of hooping with the players I grew up watching, or interacting with history by playing with some of the greats from before my time, that’s what’s keeping me entertained on the virtual hardwood these days. If that means I’m “stuck in the past”, so be it! Video games are meant to be enjoyed, so play how and what you want. After years of being stuck in a rut grinding away in MyCAREER, changing things up by revisiting the classics and spending time with content I overlooked has been a blast. And to Sauru, wherever you are: now that my nostalgia has become history that’s disrespected? Yes, I totally get it!