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 reflecting on five weird outcomes in my various franchise and career games over the years.

There are many ways to play franchise modes in basketball video games. I’ve always preferred a more straightforward approach: take control of a team with current rosters, leave injuries and CPU trades on (assuming they’re optional), and play through the season to create my own reality. While this may be more conventional than a fantasy draft or using a heavily customised roster, it’s not immune to weird outcomes. Sim engines are prone to producing unexpected results, from season standings and Playoff outcomes to weird league leaders. Obviously, this happens in career modes as well.

Of course, when we’re talking about realism and weird outcomes with sim engines, it isn’t easy to define what that actually means. Results and player movement may not reflect reality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re unrealistic in nature. In real life, we do see puzzling trades, bewildering awards and All-Star snubs, and teams that are surprisingly better or worse than expected. Some outcomes are unlikely, but weird things do happen practically every year in the NBA. With that being said, sim engines do produce some illogical and weird outcomes that are unrealistic and highly unlikely given the circumstances. Here are five examples that I’ve encountered.

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Murat has released a new net update for NBA Live 06 PC. Pick it up at the link below, and check out this topic in the Forum for more information on Murat’s efforts to bring NBA Live 06 up to date with further mod releases!

Murat
Net Model Patch

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 NBA 2K13.

As a 90s kid who grew up with NBA Live, that series has been the focus of several of my retrospectives. In addition to Wayback Wednesday features, I’ve also covered every NBA Live as part of our 25th Anniversary celebrations. I haven’t celebrated NBA 2K’s milestones in the same way, mostly because while I do consider myself a fan of the series now, I don’t have the same nostalgia for and experience with it going right back to the beginning of my basketball gaming. Games like NBA 2K14 and even NBA 2K11 have only become some of my all-time favourites in retrospect.

However, there are NBA 2K titles that I’ve played enthusiastically from launch, and am nostalgic for. Indeed, this year marks the tenth anniversary of the first 2K title that I was hooked on from day one: NBA 2K13. While the cancellation of NBA Live 13 was another blow for EA Sports, it opened up an opportunity for me to expand my basketball gaming horizons, and Visual Concepts didn’t disappoint. Even putting aside my personal affinity for NBA 2K13, I believe it’s one of the strongest releases in the NBA 2K series. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Today’s NBA 2K23 mod releases feature the latest jerseys from Pinoy21, and an updated scoreboard from bongo88. Check them out at the links below!

Pinoy21
New Orleans Pelicans Jersey (Pinoy21)
Indiana Pacers Jersey (Pinoy21)
Denver Nuggets Jersey (Pinoy21)

bongo88
AT&T Scoreboard v5 (Shot Clock Glow Moved Down) (Updated to v5.0)

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.

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 discussion of fixing and enhancing old mods.

It’s vital to know when to step back and stop working on a creative project. You may be familiar with the phrase “put down the brush”; the advice given to painters so that they can declare a piece finished, and avoid ruining it with unnecessary changes. The brush is quite literal there, but as a metaphor, it applies to any art or creative work. In video game and software design, it may take the form of “feature creep“. Just as extra brushstrokes can spoil a painting or stand in the way of its completion, a game or app can become bloated or delayed indefinitely if you don’t “put down the brush”.

The same goes for a creative endeavour that our community enjoys: modding. It’s all too easy for projects to be pushed back, or indeed never released, because we get hung up on minor details that aren’t a problem, or can be fixed later. It’s the reason why Version 1.0 doesn’t need to be the best and definitive version of a mod. To that point though, once the work is out there, we can always go back and try to fix a minor issue, or add further detail and content. This obviously happens quite often, but what about particularly old mods? Frankly, I’m all for it! Just because a mod is old and largely “finished”, there’s no harm in releasing new fixes and further enhancements.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #455 of the NLSC Podcast!

NBA 2K23 has been out for three months, and the game in its current state is likely what we’re going to have for the rest of its life cycle. As such, this week we’re going in-depth with our definitive review and ranking of NBA 2K23! What are its biggest pros and cons? Where does it rank among the all-time best games in the NBA 2K series? What needs to change in NBA 2K24, and how optimistic are we about the game’s direction? From gameplay to depth and accuracy, to microtransactions and fairness to the gamer, it’s a comprehensive breakdown! We also quiz the community on NBA Live 2003 dunk ratings in this week’s mailbag.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:52:50 — 77.8MB)

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!

The official NBA 2K Twitter recently posted a reminder about the NBA 2K21 server shutdown, which is scheduled for December 31st, 2022. This is in line with the promised duration for online support, which was extended to 27 months back in 2014 after the NBA 2K14 server shutdown led to much controversy.

To state the obvious, all online play and functionality will be unavailable following the NBA 2K21 server shutdown. This includes MyTEAM and MyCAREER, as an offline version of the latter mode hasn’t been available since NBA 2K19. Roster sharing will not be possible (at least on console), and official roster updates will not be redownloaded if the game is reinstalled. All unused Virtual Currency and MT will be lost, with no option to transfer the remaining balance to NBA 2K22 or NBA 2K23.

Additionally, 2K have confirmed that NBA 2K21 will be pulled from digital storefronts following the server shutdown. In the past, older titles have sometimes remained available to buy for up to a few years later. Infamously, the special editions of NBA 2K18 were still being sold as of December 2020, despite their bonuses requiring online support that had long since concluded. Since then, 2K has been quicker to pull games that are no longer supported. To that end, if you’re a collector/completionist and don’t own NBA 2K21 yet, you’ll have until January 1st 2023 to add it to your library of basketball video games.

As always, anyone who already owns NBA 2K21 on PC or console will still be able to download it again and continue to play offline modes beyond the server shutdown. Nevertheless, I’d recommend wrapping up any unfinished business ASAP, as well as downloading any custom rosters before the servers go offline. Feel free to suggest any rosters for your fellow gamers to check out while there’s still time, either in the comments below or here in our NBA 2K21 Forum.

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.

Dee promised that this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays would be a treat, and I’d suggest it’s fair to say that the countdown delivered! We’ve got gamers digging deep into the archives to find circus shots, classic games still getting a run, and an assortment of incredible passes and spectacular finishes across a variety of modes and titles. To that point, five different games are featured this week, ranging from NBA Live 96 through to NBA 2K23. I think Dee put it best when he called this week’s countdown a backboard shattering good time!

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.

Patch 3.0 has come through for NBA 2K23 on all platforms. As always, it should be downloaded automatically as long as you’re online. If you encounter any issues, try checking for updates manually, or restarting your console or Steam client.

The new patch updates the game for Season 3 in MyTEAM and MyCAREER, which is now underway. It also includes likeness updates for current and former NBA players, makes some minor gameplay tweaks, and resolves a few bugs. Notably, Player Lock has also been disabled in a few online modes in MyTEAM, due to issues with anti-competitive behaviour.

Check out the full releases notes for NBA 2K23 Patch 3.0 below! You’ll also find them in the Current Gen and Next Gen update histories for the game over in our Wiki. Feel free to share your impressions in the comments section, as well as join in the discussion in our NBA 2K23 Forum.

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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 more roster oddities in various basketball games.

I’m always trying to brainstorm interesting ideas for my weekly features, and while that’s obviously a good idea, the downside is that as new topics come to mind, others get pushed aside. This is a follow-up to a Friday Five that I published way back in 2017, and considering how many other sequel articles I’ve written since then, it’s definitely overdue! On the plus side, letting the topic breathe (and then some) has allowed me to revisit other games, and discover examples that I might not have thought of had I written Part 2 closer to Part 1!

With that being said…roster oddities! There have been a number of interesting and quirky ones over the years, sometimes due to oversight, other times due to a game’s rosters capturing a very specific moment in time. In the first instalment, I covered Clyde Drexler coming off the bench in NBA Live 95 PC, oddities with M. Williams in NBA Live 09 PS2’s rosters, Brad Daugherty’s extended NBA career on the virtual hardwood, Kobe Bryant’s premature prominence in the first NBA Courtside, and the weirdness of roster editing functionality in NBA Full Court Press. In that same vein, here are five more examples of roster oddities that you may or may not remember.

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Despite my intentions to post regular bulletins for our uploads to the NLSC YouTube channel, I’ve regrettably fallen behind again in recent weeks. As such, it’s time for another round-up of the content that Dee and I have been posting!

In addition to regular features such as the NLSC Podcast and Top 10 Plays of the Week, Dee has continued to connect with the community to play a variety of games over Parsec. He and I have connected on several occasions to play NBA Live 96, NBA Live 99, NBA Live 2000, NBA Live 2005, and NCAA Basketball 10, in the process showcasing some work-in-progress and classic mods alike. Dee has also played games with Nate Stacho and JuicyShaqMeat, and shared highlights from his ongoing MyTEAM Domination campaign.

Having sorted out my recording software and settings on PC, and picked up a new Elgato HD60 for console recording, I’ve caught the video bug as well. I’ve posted highlights of the Street Legends in NBA Street Homecourt for Xbox 360, 1-on-1 games featuring Michael Jordan in NBA Live 2001 and NBA Live 2002, and a game between the 1989 Bulls and 1989 Pistons in NBA 2K14 that will take you back to the days of recording games on VHS.

Catch up on all of the recent NLSC YouTube uploads below! There’s plenty more fun on the way, so we invite you to subscribe, enable notifications, and of course, share our videos with your friends and followers if you’re digging what we’re doing on the virtual hardwood. We’re always open to suggestions for games you’d like to see us play, so feel free to hit us up.

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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 rosters in both versions of NBA Live 95.

The interactive almanac aspect of basketball video games doesn’t begin years later when we start going wayback. Sure, that’s when we’re reminded of strange stints, forgotten returns, and other roster trivia. However, from the moment a basketball game becomes one of our favourites and we spend countless hours with it, its rosters are intertwined with our fond memories on the virtual hardwood. We remember the players on the team that we played with most often, as well as the players on the opposing squads that we faced in our most memorable, challenging, and epic games.

Those memories come flooding back when we revisit a title. However, depending on whether you spent time with the PC or console version of NBA Live 95 – or indeed, if you played both – you’ll recall two very different rosters. While the console version of NBA Live 95 featured final 1993-1994 season rosters, the PC release was updated to include the Class of 1994 rookies, as well as player movement accurate as of February 1995. As such, each captures its own snapshot of a memorable era in NBA history. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Today’s mod releases for NBA 2K16 feature NBA on NBC presentation by sticky-fingers. Check it out at the link below!

sticky-fingers
NBA on NBC Presentation for NBA 2K16

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.

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 how it’s been impossible to put NBA 2K14 MyCAREER aside for very long.

We’re approaching the tenth anniversary of NBA 2K14’s release. Not only was the PC version one of the most well-received and heavily-modded games in our community, but the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version was one of the most impressive launch titles in basketball gaming history. Of course, NBA 2K14 hasn’t been a frequent part of my rotation for the last ten years. As I’ve discussed in several articles and on the NLSC Podcast, sourness towards the brand and some iffy first impressions turned me off the game for years. Revisiting it on a whim in 2021 completely changed my mind!

Despite my burnout on MyCAREER, revisiting an earlier iteration of the mode in NBA 2K14 reminded me of why I was drawn to the career experience in the first place. When NBA 2K21 and NBA 2K22 failed to hold my attention, playing through multiple seasons in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER became a staple of my gaming habits for over a year. I put the game aside when NBA 2K23 came out, wanting to give the new release my full attention and a fair chance. Although I’ve enjoyed NBA 2K23 far more than its immediate predecessors and it remains in my rotation, so does NBA 2K14. Even if I’m not playing it every day, it isn’t long before I fire it up again.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #454 of the NLSC Podcast!

As promised last week, we revisited NBA Live 2005, and were reminded of what a great game it was (and still is)! NBA Live 2002, NBA 2K14, and NBA Street Homecourt have also been in the rotation as of late, and they’ve inspired some of our recent YouTube content. We also follow up on last week’s discussion of NBA 2K17 being the last truly great release in the 2K series with our thoughts on whether NBA 2K23 is a return to form, and thus the best game since then. In this week’s mailbag, we’re quizzing the community on the Top 5 players in the original NBA 2K. Not to go all clickbait, but at least one name will definitely surprise you!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:04:26 — 59.3MB)

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!