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The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 17)

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 Part 17 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

Many of the examples of players who only appeared on certain teams in games go back a number of years. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not just my love of retro basketball gaming (though yes, that is a factor!). With decades of basketball video games capturing a snapshot of the NBA when they were released, there have been tons of older examples to cover. On top of that, official roster updates were once uncommon, preserving a number of phantom stints. With active players who are potential examples, I obviously need to wait until their phantom stints are “official”.

However, there are indeed players who only appeared on certain teams in more recent video games too, and are safe examples to cover at this point. To that end, in Part 17 of this ongoing series, there are three players whose phantom stints are preserved in games that were released within the last five years. With that being said, the first two examples are much older, including one that I’ve somehow neglected to mention in this series until now, despite noting it in other features. Once again, I must shout out David L, as his research has been invaluable in compiling examples for this second run of articles about players who only appeared on certain teams in video games!

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Flavor Flav, NBA 2K14 Blacktop, NBA 2K10 Legends, More

Flavor Flav, NBA 2K14 Blacktop, NBA 2K10 Legends, More

That’s not a headline I ever anticipated using here on the NLSC, but it sums up the recent uploads Dee and I have made to the NLSC YouTube channel! From battling Flavor Flav in NBA 2K6 to some awesome 90s action in NBA 2K10 PC, we continue to have a blast with a variety of titles.

My 1-on-1 game with Flavor Flav in NBA 2K6’s 24/7: Road to the EBC mode was definitely something different! The game has been in my rotation for a while now, and after unlocking Flav’s Rucker Park challenge while getting some screenshots, I knew it would be something fun and unique for the channel. It definitely was a different time in basketball gaming!

Dee’s Blacktop game in the Next Gen version of NBA 2K14 features an array of high flyers, with Gerald Green throwing down a nasty jam that was featured in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week. It’s some of the best streetball action that you’ll find in a sim game, in a title that holds up superbly a decade later. Meanwhile, our co-op session with NBA 2K10 PC was a showcase for my recently-released fixed official roster. It was a joy to create highlights with some of our favourite stars of the 90s, including of course Michael Jordan.

Finally, with the 2024 season tipping off, I updated the rosters in NBA 2K14 PS4 – as much as possible – to stage a showdown between the Golden State Warriors with Chris Paul, and the Milwaukee Bucks with Damian Lillard. It was an exciting battle that ended in dramatic fashion, though perhaps not the way I would’ve liked!

Catch up on all of our recent uploads below! Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content, and as always, feel free to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play.

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Wayback Wednesday: The Class of 2003 & Video Games

Wayback Wednesday: The Class of 2003 & Video Games

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 Class of 2003, and their impact on and connection to basketball gaming over the years.

Somehow, it’s been twenty years since the Class of 2003 – widely considered to be one of the best NBA Draft Classes of all time – debuted in the NBA. Only one player from that Draft – LeBron James – is still active, and now playing in his 21st season. With the retirement of Andre Iguodala and Udonis Haslem, he officially became the league’s oldest player. This is something I’ve been trying to get my head around and make peace with. After all, I’m a couple of months older than LeBron, which means I’ve reached the point where I’m older than all active NBA players. Old head indeed!

This day was bound to come, of course, but it’s not something you really think about when you’re a hardcore basketball fan in your late teens or early twenties. However, the entry of the Class of 2003 into the NBA two decades ago was one of my first “Oh, I’m not exactly a kid anymore” moments. More than starting to go out to clubs and pubs, staying up as late as I wanted, or any other rites of passage, realising that there were now NBA players who were my age made me feel…well, not that I was grown up, but definitely in the next stage of life! Let’s take a look back…way back…

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NLSC Podcast #500: NBA 2K10 & A Huge Milestone

NLSC Podcast Logo

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #500 of the NLSC Podcast!

We’re celebrating a huge milestone this week, as it’s the 500th episode of the NLSC Podcast! To mark the occasion, we’re dipping into the archives to find some classic clips from over eleven years of shows, from the original test pilot in 2010 to interviews with a couple of fantastic guests. We’ve had a ton of fun over the years, and we promise that we’re not done yet! We also recap a couple of sessions with NBA 2K10 PC that we played with the recently-released fixed official roster, and reflect once again on how the game is often overlooked due to the brilliance of NBA 2K11 the very next year.

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!

Monday Tip-Off: Transparency, Goodwill, & Mutual Respect

Monday Tip-Off: Transparency, Goodwill, & Mutual Respect

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 how important it is to have transparency, goodwill, and mutual respect when it comes to gamers and developers.

A point that I’ve frequently made in articles and on our podcast is that we should stand with each other, rather than shill for games and companies. Support your fellow gamers, be fans not fanboys, and be critics not haters. As such, whenever I see a developer or someone in the industry mocking or disrespecting gamers, it does bug me. It doesn’t happen constantly, but there are times when criticism is dismissed out of hand with the declaration that gamers don’t know what they’re talking about. To me, that’s demonstrating great disdain for your core audience.

At the same time…yeah, sometimes we bring those responses on ourselves! I’ve also seen unnecessary hatred spewed at developers, and comments that suggest the person doesn’t know as much about video game development as they may think. I don’t claim to be an infallible source of knowledge on that front, but dabbling with programming, and talking to people who do have experience with game development and software design, has been illuminating. I absolutely don’t condone the nastiness, either. The bottom line is that when it comes to the relationship between developers and gamers, there needs to be mutual respect and goodwill. Transparency helps to foster that.

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NBA 2K19 Classic Seasons Project Now Includes 1997

NBA 2K19 Classic Seasons Mods

The Classic Seasons project for NBA 2K19 by Stildo33 and company is ongoing, and to that end, it now includes a 1997 season roster! As previously noted, the project stretches back to 1987, meaning that it now covers over a decade of NBA history, and some very memorable campaigns at that.

Like the previous releases, the 1997 roster is a comprehensive total conversion mod. It features all 29 NBA teams from the 1997 season, complete with faces, jerseys, courts, and logos. Both it and the previously released 1996 mod have been reworked so that they’re compatible with MyLEAGUE. They also include the Dream Team and Dream Team II, as well as historical Draft Classes. Once again, the level of detail in the Classic Seasons project for NBA 2K19 can easily make you forget that you’re playing a game that was originally set in the 2019 season!

Note that both the rosters and art pack are distributed the old fashioned way, so the servers being offline isn’t an issue. However, if you picked up the project prior to June 2023, you’ll need to download both packs again. You can find it here in the NBA 2K19 Modding section of the Forum, along with previews, installation help, and news on further updates. Congratulations to Stildo33 and company on another outstanding release!

NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week: October 21st, 2023

NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week

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.

Although there are some mixed feelings about NBA 2K24, many people are enjoying it, as you can see from a few of the entries in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays! As always however, many others are getting their virtual hardwood fix from older titles, which also continue to provide great moments for our countdown. On top of wild buzzer beaters and lobs, this week’s Top 10 spotlights some mods, including my recently-released fixed roster for NBA 2K10, and one of my favourite short-lived Atlanta Hawks jerseys in NBA 2K19. 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.

The Friday Five: 5 Revelations From Playing Multiple Seasons

The Friday Five: 5 Revelations From Playing Multiple Seasons

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 revelations I’ve had from playing multiple seasons in basketball video games.

There’s no right or wrong way to enjoy basketball video games – unless you’re doing something shady that’s spoiling someone else’s good time – and completion is what you make it. To that end, you don’t need to play through multiple seasons to have enjoyed any one title. In fact, you don’t even need to finish a single season! Playing through a season from start to finish is immensely satisfying though, and a clear sign that you’ve been hooked on a game. When you end up playing multiple seasons, it’s safe to say that you’ve had a truly special virtual hardwood experience.

Obviously, a video game can never truly capture what it’s like to play or coach in the NBA, or manage a team. Life has no adjustable difficulty settings, nor the ability to re-load from an earlier save point and try again (though, wouldn’t that be handy?). Even the most authentic games still have their limits. However, the small taste of the NBA experience that they give us from the perspectives of players, coaches, and GMs can change our mind about issues related to the real league. Sure, video games can’t truly put us in their shoes, but experiencing a simulation of the ups and downs of the NBA has led to some revelations for me, especially playing through multiple seasons.

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NBA 2K14 Mod Releases: Updated Classic Uniforms

NBA 2K14 Cover Art

Today’s mod releases for NBA 2K14 feature an updated pack of 2024 season Nike Classic jerseys by Pep. Pick it up at the link below!

Pep
NBA Nike Classic Uniforms 23/24 (Updated)

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.

Wayback Wednesday: Players From NBA 2K14 Still Active in 2023

Wayback Wednesday: Players From NBA 2K14 Still Active in 2023

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 players in the default rosters of NBA 2K14 PS4/X1 who are still active as of 2023.

Can you believe that NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is coming up on ten years old? As I’ve discussed in previous articles and on the NLSC Podcast, it took me a while, but I’ve certainly warmed up to the landmark release! However, while the game itself still holds up extraordinarily well, the snapshot of the NBA that it captures is naturally now quite outdated. A recent perusal of the default rosters made it clear just how much turnover there is in the league over the span of a decade. In fact, some sweeping changes occurred not too long after NBA 2K14’s release!

How many players from the default rosters of NBA 2K14 PS4/X1 are still active as of 2023? Just 73 as of writing, though others were still active as of last season, and may still find a spot in the NBA. When I made a similar comparison with NBA Live 10 back in 2021, only 44 players from the 2010 campaign were still in the league. On top of that, less than 20 players had stints that spanned from the launch of the PS4 and X1 through to the arrival of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Indeed, including a couple that I forgot, only five players are still with the same team a decade later. As we prepare to tip off another NBA campaign, let’s also take a look back…way back…

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NLSC Podcast #499: How Not To Make A Basketball Game

NLSC Podcast Logo

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #499 of the NLSC Podcast!

Last week, we imagined the ideal gameplay for NBA 2K and NBA Live by combining our favourite mechanics from previous games. This week, we’re imagining the worst possible NBA Live and NBA 2K by cobbling together our least favourite mechanics; in other words, we’re describing how NOT to make a basketball game! We also revisited NBA Live 07 and NBA 2K18 ahead of that exercise, and suffice to say, that helped us with some of our selections! On a more positive note, we reflect on some fun sessions with NBA 2K6, Blacktop in NBA 2K14, and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition using the Legends On Fire Edition mod, and a recently released fixed roster for NBA 2K10 PC.

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!

Monday Tip-Off: Assorted Cover Player Trivia

Monday Tip-Off: Assorted Cover Player Trivia

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 assorted cover player trivia.

I’m sure that it’s apparent from my various features, as well as comments I’ve made on the NLSC Podcast, that I really enjoy trivia about my passions. I love discovering new “fun facts” about my favourite hobbies and interests, and of course, discussing them in the content that I create. Of course, the downside of being passionate about trivia is that it’s easy to come off as a know-it-all, or a bore. Still, I imagine that if you’re here to consume content about basketball video games, you enjoy these facts as well! It’s always my aim to share something that hopefully not everyone will know.

So, cover player trivia. It seems only appropriate, since in the grand scheme of things, there aren’t too many aspects of basketball video games that are as trivial as the cover player! The face of the game doesn’t necessarily indicate its quality, and there have been some out-of-the-box choices on the front of the box throughout the years. It’s still a point of interest, of course. We admire creative cover art, and while it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) impact our enjoyment of a game, we also appreciate a worthy cover player. With so many basketball games and a multitude of players appearing on their covers, there’s some interesting trivia we can dive into as we tip off another week.

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Fixed Final Official NBA 2K10 Roster Released

Fixed Final Official NBA 2K10 Roster Released

After hinting at it in Episode #497 of the NLSC Podcast, I’ve finally released my fixed version of the final official roster for NBA 2K10 PC! It’s taken longer than I would’ve liked thanks to juggling other projects and our regularly scheduled content, but at long last, V1.0 of the roster is done!

The roster adds missing Legends to the All-Decade teams, including Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and John Stockton. All players have proper faces, sourced from old roster projects. On top of that, I’ve gone through all of the original Legends and fixed their ratings and tendencies, a majority of which were copy-and-paste, or in the case of the tendencies, flat out missing/not properly assigned. All of the lineups and rotations for the All-Decade teams have been updated to accommodate the new Legends. I’ve also cleared all of the injuries, and fixed a couple of ratings for the current players. Full release notes can be found below.

Download the fixed final official NBA 2K10 roster here! You can also find a release/support topic here in the Forum. This project is intended to enhance NBA 2K10 for retro gamers who like to dust off old favourites, as well as potentially facilitate some new retro modding projects by serving as a base. All I ask is that you give credit for the roster, as well as leave the credits for the included faces intact. I hope that you enjoy this fixed roster for one of the earliest NBA 2K releases on PC!

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NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week: October 14th, 2023

NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week

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.

You can tell how much the community is into the NLSC Top 10 Plays each and every week, because the countdowns just keep getting better and better! The result is some truly spectacular virtual hardwood highlights that – as Dee noted in the YouTube description this week – presents a worthy challenge when it comes time to rank them all. Every play in the countdown will get you fired up for some basketball gaming this weekend, but the top five were in very close competition for the #1 spot. Once again, a variety of games are being spotlighted, from NBA Jam right through to NBA 2K24. 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.

The Friday Five: 5 Basketball Game Collecting Regrets

The Friday Five: 5 Basketball Game Collecting Regrets

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 regrets I have regarding basketball game collecting.

Generally speaking, basketball game collecting is something that I don’t regret. I’ve enjoyed building up my collection, playing some games that I overlooked back in the day, and having a variety of titles to fall back on if I’m not enjoying the latest release. I’ve aimed to be a savvy collector with a sensible budget, so I don’t really have any regrets as far as the money I’ve spent. Well, sort of. In the past, I’ve carelessly bought the wrong version of a couple of titles, as well as a manual instead of the actual game, because I didn’t pay enough attention to the eBay listing. Rookie mistakes!

Fortunately, I wasn’t out of pocket for those erroneous purchases. Beyond that, adding to my collection has been fun and exciting, especially when I’ve been able to track down a rare game at a great price. I am, for the most part, quite satisfied with the games that I currently have at my disposal. However, I do have some regrets when it comes to my adventures in basketball game collecting. I’ve missed out on a few opportunities over the years, and at this point, I’m not going to get a second chance. There were understandable reasons that I passed up those opportunities of course, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally grumble at myself for letting them slip by.

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