NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

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.

Being a huge Michael Jordan fan, I always enjoy seeing his virtual counterpart in the NLSC Top 10 Plays. To that end, this week’s countdown features two appearances from His Airness, including a signature layup in NBA 2K16, and a dunk on the break that also showcases NBA Live 2000 PC with maxed-out textures. There are also streetball moves in NBA 2K7, tremendous arcade action in NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, and another assortment of awesome poster dunks from a variety of games. It’s time to get hyped for a weekend of basketball gaming, 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 jams that you’d expect to see in a dunk contest that could be readily performed during gameplay in sim games.

Sim basketball games have always taken a more casual approach to realism when it comes to dunks. In the earliest NBA Live games, the flashiest dunks included 540 degree reverse jams, which could be pulled off by any player with a suitably high dunking rating. Even as dunks became more realistic over the years, players would still throw it down far more often than in real life. I’d argue that this is an acceptable break from reality, as it adds more excitement to the gameplay. A real game may only see a handful of dunks, but that’s not as fun on the virtual hardwood!

Nevertheless, while the ratio of dunks to layups and other inside shots may continue to take a more casual approach to realism, the jams themselves are ones that we’d expect to see during the course of an NBA game. With the introduction of animation packages, we’re well past the days where anyone with an above average rating could 360 and 540 in traffic. However, there are sim games that have allowed players to perform dunk contest jams during regular gameplay, and some of those releases are more recent than you might think. With that being said, here are five jams worthy of the dunk contest that we’ve been able to throw down in otherwise sim gameplay.

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With NBA 2K25 dropping next week, the latest Courtside Report provides an insight into what to expect from The City. For anyone who is unaware, The City is the open world hub of MyCAREER that was introduced in NBA 2K21 New Gen, expanding on the concept of The Neighborhood.

As someone who has been critical of The City in the past, it does appear that NBA 2K25 has made a couple of improvements based on gamer feedback. As previously mentioned in the MyCAREER Courtside Report, MyCOURT is making a welcome return. The City has also been condensed, with fewer buildings that serve no purpose.

The connected modes also feature ranked and unranked areas, with overhauled aesthetics. Classic parks will return as part of Seasonal events, and there are new stomping grounds for the Rise and Elite park affiliations. A squad finder has been added, the Streetball sidequest returns, and the Rep system is also back.

That’s just a brief overview, as I’ve summarised the key points from the NBA 2K25 Courtside Report on The City below. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and jump into the discussion here in the Forum!

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NBA Live 2005 may be turning twenty years old very soon, but we’re still seeing mod releases for it here and there, which is awesome! To that end, Lo55yboy has released a new 2025 season roster update, featuring the Class of 2024 Draftees and other offseason moves. Check it out at the link below!

Lo55yboy
2024/25 Roster

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 Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of NBA 2K8.

The tagline of NBA 2K8 was “It’s like that”. I find it extremely appropriate, though I guarantee it isn’t for the reasons that the marketing department at Take-Two intended. Instead, “it’s like that” are the frustrated words that run through my mind whenever I give NBA 2K8 a chance, and it disappoints me once again. Not to spoil the entire retrospective before I get into it, but if NBA 2K6 or NBA 2K7 had been the games to get me into the NBA 2K series – and they may well might’ve been, had I given them a fair chance back in the day – NBA 2K8 could’ve turned me off of it again.

Indeed, I’m prepared to call it one of the most overrated games in the entire series. The only reason I hesitate is because after looking at some contemporary reviews, it seems that the criticisms and unfavourable comparisons to its predecessors were being made back then, too. GameTrailers’ review even went so far as to call it a serious step backwards, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s unfortunate because the game does have a lot of good bones and enticing features, but for me, it’s been a major retro basketball gaming disappointment. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #543 of the NLSC Podcast!

After celebrating a milestone, we delve into some NBA 2K25 MyTEAM news, courtesy of the latest Courtside Report. The biggest news of course is the return of the Auction House, and while it’s a welcome development, it’s also invited a predictably cynical response. Although we’re intrigued by the details and will give the mode a try if we like the gameplay, we’re certainly sceptical; a sentiment that the community clearly shares. We also discuss the positives and negatives of community days in light of last week’s NBA 2K25 event, and recap our sessions playing NBA 2K10 and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition with the 1992 season roster and Legends On Fire Edition mods respectively.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 59:50 — 41.4MB)

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 some reflections on my 23rd anniversary as NLSC webmaster, with the age of forty looming on the horizon.

Today marks 23 years since I took over running the NLSC! I feel like I say it on every anniversary, but it’s been an extremely fun and interesting ride with its fair share of ups and downs. There have been some unpleasant moments and challenging times, but at the end of the day, I’m glad that I accepted Tim’s offer to take the reins. While there are some things that I might’ve done differently given the benefit of hindsight, I’m proud of the work that I’ve done, grateful for the friendships I’ve made, and awed by some of the opportunities that I’ve had. I’ll never regret taking the gig!

With that being said, 23 years is a long time to do anything, especially an online endeavour such as running a website. I didn’t create the NLSC, but at this point, I’ve been maintaining it for about four times as long as our founders! Of course, neither I nor the site would be here without the work of the original NLSC trio, so I’ll always give them credit for tipping things off way back in 1996. To that point though, unless you’ve been around since the black background days, you may not be aware of that era! Along with turning forty in about six weeks’ time, it only further emphasises just how long I’ve been the NLSC’s webmaster, and how quickly the years have gone by.

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As you’ve hopefully seen if you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel, Dee and I have uploaded several basketball gaming highlight reels recently. Between covering NBA 2K25 news and our other original content, I’ve neglected to share those uploads on the front page, so here’s a round-up of our latest work!

With my in-depth retrospective of 24/7 in this week’s Wayback Wednesday, it only made sense to share highlights from my playthroughs of the mode in NBA 2K6 and NBA 2K7. Both the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic and Legends Charity Tournament were fun ways to cap off a couple of modes that I was glad to finally delve into.

In my previous YouTube round-up bulletin, I shared Dee’s highlights from a game of NBA Superstars between the Celtics and Clippers. It wasn’t the only matchup that he played, as he also had a fun time showing out with Ja Morant and the Grizzlies, as you’ll see in this reel.

Dee and I have been making a point to connect on Parsec as often as possible as of late, and he’s compiled highlight reels from some extremely fun basketball gaming sessions. That includes a showdown of underdogs in NBA ShootOut 2004, and in a nod to the new Steph Era in NBA 2K25’s MyNBA Eras, a game between the Cavaliers and Warriors in NBA 2K17.

I’ve also uploaded highlights from a game of NBA Live 09 featuring the default placeholder Oklahoma City branding, and two games of NBA Street Homecourt: one between squads of WNBA stars, and one featuring the Coatesville All-Stars taking on the Baltimore All-Stars at Cloverdale.

Check out all of those basketball gaming highlight reels below! Don’t forget to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel if you haven’t already, and as always, be sure to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play! We’ll do our best to get them into the rotation and share the highlights with you all.

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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.

As is so often the case in the NLSC Top 10 Plays, a plethora of poster dunks reign supreme this week. I doubt there’ll be any complaints though, as the next best thing to throwing down a monster dunk on the virtual hardwood is seeing someone else pull off an amazing aerial display! On top of that, we’ve also got some signature moves from Hakeem Olajuwon and Manu Ginobili, and a huge clutch play in a fiercely competitive game of johnz1’s Legends On Fire Edition mod for NBA Jam: OFE. 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 basketball game intros that were in some way misleading.

There’s something special about the best basketball game intros. Sure, we often end up skipping them because we’re keen to play, but most of us will watch them in their entirety the first time we fire up a game, and probably a few times after that as well. The combination of a great song and either real NBA footage or a highlight reel created in the game itself is a fantastic way to get us in the mood to play some virtual basketball. They underscored how the games were made for hardcore hoop heads, celebrating a beautiful sport and putting the NBA in our hands.

Cynically, I might suggest that that’s why basketball game intros have been phased out over the years. As they’ve tried to appeal to a wider audience and lean into online modes starring user avatars, there’s a large portion of the userbase that probably won’t get hyped up by NBA highlights. Less cynically, the fact that intros do end up getting skipped is probably a factor as well. And of course, if we’re being honest, basketball game intros can be misleading, even deceptive. Like a carefully curated preview or back-of-the-box promotional materials, intros can oversell a game with promises of quality and features it just can’t deliver upon. Here are five examples of such intros.

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This week’s Courtside Report provides an insight into MyTEAM in NBA 2K25. There are definitely some significant changes in the mode this year, including the return of a feature that was greatly missed in NBA 2K24.

That feature is of course the Auction House, which was replaced by the Player Market last year. It’s back in NBA 2K25 however, with some enhancements to make it more user-friendly. There will also be some verification checks in place, to make sure that it isn’t being abused. 2K are warning that there will be a zero-tolerance policy in effect here.

Other key additions and improvements to NBA 2K25 MyTEAM include Breakout City and Triple Threat Park. The former is a new board-based single player mode, while the latter remasters Rivet City from NBA 2K16 to bring a park atmosphere to MyTEAM’s online modes. There will also be weekly events, and new ways to earn rewards with the MyTEAM Rep system.

Again, there’s a ton of detail in the NBA 2K25 MyTEAM Courtside Report – especially compared to the more modest preview of The W – so as always, I’d recommend giving it a read. However, I’ve also summarised the key information below, if you’d like a quick overview. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and join in the discussion here our NBA 2K25 Forum!

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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 various iterations of 24/7 mode in NBA 2K.

There are many features, modes, and concepts in basketball video games that are older than we may recall. To that point, MyCAREER has been a staple of NBA 2K since its debut as My Player way back in NBA 2K10; a game released in 2009. For that matter, the story-driven approach to MyCAREER has been the standard for over ten years now, debuting in NBA 2K14 Next Gen and appearing in almost three times as many games as the original version of the mode. In short, a single player career mode is nothing new at this point.

However, the concept is even older than that! While we didn’t get a fully-fledged NBA-oriented career experience until 2009, earlier games did experiment with single player campaign modes. Indeed, NBA 2K branched out into this area very early on in the series, introducing 24/7 mode in ESPN NBA Basketball (aka NBA 2K4). It was relatively short-lived as it was phased out after NBA 2K7, but it stands as a creative concept that undoubtedly paved the way for modern career modes. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #542 of the NLSC Podcast!

As the NBA 2K25 preview season rolls on, this week we’re reacting to reveal of the Steph Era, some of the other additions to MyNBA, the return of MyGM, and some enhancements to The W. We also read out some reactions from the community, from their thoughts on the new era to which one they’re planning on playing. Suffice it to say, opinions on the Steph Era are divided – as we discuss, there are issues with the starting point if nothing else – but we’re generally in favour of the idea. To that end, it inspired a session of NBA 2K17 where we took on LeBron’s Cavaliers with Steph’s Warriors. We recap that session as well as a game of NBA ShootOut 2004, and also touch on some more NBA roster trivia.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:10:36 — 48.8MB)

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 the lure of online team play.

I haven’t bothered putting any serious effort into levelling up a MyPLAYER since NBA 2K21 on PlayStation 5. As I’ve explained in detail before, I was fed up with the grind, and weary of the toxicity in The Rec and NBA 2K’s online scene in general. After revisiting some old favourites and giving other older releases a second chance, I realised just how much fun I was missing out on, and quit the grind. Changing my basketball gaming habits has been so refreshing, and it’s obviously given me new topics to discuss as well. I left online team play behind, and I haven’t looked back.

Well…sort of. Kenny, Leo, and I gave 3-v-3 Pro-Am and The Rec another try in NBA 2K23 on PlayStation 5, and for the first month, we actually had some fun sessions! Of course, by Season 2, the community had figured out the meta and the hardcore online gamers had levelled up their MyPLAYERs, at which point the lack of matchmaking kept throwing us in there with super serious, souped-up opponents. It wasn’t a tough decision to leave it all behind again, and honestly, NBA 2K23 dropped out of my rotation entirely not long afterwards. However, that brief return and fond memories of NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K17 demonstrate that there’s still a lure to online team play.

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PatTheHead’s comprehensive retro roster pack for NBA 2K13 continues to celebrate the history of Olympic Basketball. Indeed, the latest version takes us right back to the beginning of basketball’s inclusion as a medal sport, with rosters for the 1936 Games in Berlin!

Notably, James Naismith – the inventor of basketball, of course – was invited to the Games and presented the medals to the winners. To that end, the roster replaces Barack Obama in the White House visit cutscene in Association mode with Dr. Naismith! Accordingly, Pat would like to give a shout out to Maravich for providing a spot-on face update.

As I mentioned in the bulletin for the previous release, in addition to Olympic rosters, the pack features a host of retro season mods, including rosters for the NBA, ABA, BAA, NBL, and ABL. There’s also a 2024 roster if you’d like to bring NBA 2K13 up to date.

Head over to the release topic in the Forum for the download links and further previews! Once again, Pat also makes a point of sharing interesting historical facts and trivia about the seasons, leagues, and Olympic Games featured in his rosters, so history buffs will definitely want to check it out. As always, hats off to Pat and everyone else keeping classic games alive with new mods!