Tag Archives: Dallas Mavericks

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 return stints that ended up connecting different eras.

There have been several distinct eras in NBA history. When it comes to discussing those different eras, I don’t believe we take the full picture into account. I’m not just talking about the whole “plumbers and dentists” rhetoric that’s used to diminish the past, though that certainly is part of it. Beyond overlooking and downplaying the level of skill in past eras though, it’s also frequently forgotten – or indeed, ignored – just how much that the eras actually overlap. We can distinguish what can be called an era and devise labels accordingly, but not draw hard lines between them.

To that point, players that we consider as being from different eras have often been contemporaries, if only very briefly. Players with lengthy careers will often end up being a link between eras, both for their team specifically and the league in general. Take Don Chaney, for instance. As a rookie on the 1969 Celtics who was also on the 1980 squad, he’s the only player to have been teammates with both Bill Russell and Larry Bird. Furthermore, it only happened because Chaney returned to the Celtics in 1977, following stints in the ABA and with the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s not the only player whose return stint connected past and present, as these examples demonstrate.

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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 lineups that despite their fame, didn’t actually last long.

Just how good is your memory? I like to think that mine is pretty good when it comes to basketball and basketball video games, because those are things that I’m passionate about. However, I definitely don’t have infallible recall! Moreover, our perception of time can be a tricky thing. To that end, while I may remember players, teams, lineups, and other such roster trivia many years later, my recollection of their longevity (or lack thereof) can be skewed. After all, what may feel like a long time when we’re living it day-by-day can turn out to be a short period in the grand scheme of things!

Case in point: the lineups that I’m talking about today. It’s no surprise that they stick in my mind – and I’m sure the minds of many long-time basketball fans and gamers – because they were all memorable in their own way. However, their memorability can ironically make us forget how short-lived those lineups actually were; especially if they did have a significant impact on the league (and video games) while they lasted. Even if they weren’t particularly successful, or a Video Game Team, they may still benefit from an oddity, or simply media hype, that grants them more nostalgic fame – or infamy – than you’d expect. Here are five such lineups that come to mind for me.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #532 of the NLSC Podcast!

Which basketball video games made you fall in love with the genre? This week, we join the community in reminiscing about the titles that got us hooked on the virtual hardwood, our go-to teams and players, and some of the special memories that we made with them. This includes sharing some stories about fake articles based on our seasons, and an unlikely comeback for a Boston Celtics legend during the 1995 campaign in NBA Live 95 PC! Speaking of the Celtics, we also share a few thoughts on the 2024 NBA Finals, which leads us to recall some of the underdog Boston teams from the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s, and discuss notable moves and Draft picks the team made during their rebuilding attempts.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:16:38 — 53.0MB)

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!

With the 2024 NBA Finals underway, bratnajbolji has come through with some timely NBA 2K24 mod releases, namely Finals courts for the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks. Check them out at the link below!

bratnajbolji
NBA Finals Courts 2024

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.

With the launch of NBA 2K24, you can expect plenty of post-release coverage and content from us, including commentary and highlight reels. However, I wanted to share a couple of recent uploads to our YouTube channel that you may have missed, featuring highlights from Fantasy Teams games in NBA Live 10.

As Dee and I have discussed on the NLSC Podcast, NBA Live 10 has been a reliable go-to for us to play over Parsec. I’ve also developed a much greater appreciation for it since revisiting it a couple of years ago, and it’s now one of my all-time favourite basketball video games. The Fantasy Teams mode has been a fun way of changing up our NBA Live 10 sessions, especially when we’ve put together makeshift classic teams. That brings us to the two highlight reels that I’m sharing today.

The first game is one that I played on an actual PlayStation 3, using a work-in-progress Fantasy Sandbox roster. Using Fantasy Teams and the players available in the default rosters, I put together the 2001 Orlando Magic and took on the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers. The second game was played using the PS3 emulator with Dee hosting over Parsec, where – inspired by the Mamba Moments in NBA 2K24 – we used Fantasy Teams to re-create a 2006 season matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks. Both games were a blast to play, and produced some great highlights in a game that still holds up superbly.

You can check out both of those highlight reels below! Be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content, including the weekly Top 10 Plays, episodes of the NLSC Podcast, game retrospectives, video essays, and more.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the 1990s Dallas Mavericks, and their presence in video games of the era.

This might seem like another very esoteric idea for a Wayback Wednesday feature. After all, I don’t usually profile historical NBA teams, and when I do discuss the history of the real NBA, it’s still through the lens of video games. That’s what I’ll be doing again today, but even so, you may be wondering why I’m covering the Dallas Mavericks of the 1990s and not the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls obviously enjoyed far more success during that decade, and given that they’re my favourite team, there’s a lot of nostalgia for me there.

However, those Mavs teams from the 90s stand out in my memory, particularly when I think back to video games of the era. They’re not entirely unique in that regard, as I can remember a lot of players from the decade and am nostalgic for it general, with video games playing a significant role in that nostalgia. There were many noteworthy teams that I recall playing with and against on the virtual hardwood back in the 1990s, with several of them being far better squads than those Dallas Mavericks. Those Mavs are memorable for a reason though, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at some famous NBA What Ifs, and portraying them in NBA Live 10.

What Ifs can be fun to ponder, whether they concern the NBA or video games. There are trades and signings that, if they’d happened, would’ve changed the course of NBA history. Likewise, we can point to game-changing moments in the history of the virtual hardwood. Indeed, NBA Live 10 is an example of such a turning point. If EA Sports had elected to continue building on the base it established rather than trying to reboot the series with the ill-fated NBA Elite 11, the basketball gaming landscape would undoubtedly be very different today.

As far as NBA What Ifs are concerned though, they’re something that we can play out in video games. It’s a great concept for a roster, and while that’s not what I’m doing today, I’ve decided to mix a couple of ideas together by reflecting on some of the biggest NBA What Ifs and portraying them using NBA Live 10; a game that has an air of What If about it. Obviously there are some other historical NBA What Ifs that I won’t be touching on here because the players aren’t in NBA Live 10, but feel free to discuss those in the comments as well. Let’s wonder what might have been as we take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of jerseys appearing only once in basketball video games.

We’re accustomed to seeing a wide variety of jerseys in the 5v5 sim titles. Ever since the introduction of retro uniforms and the jersey selection screen, we expect to have plenty of choices to outfit the team we’re controlling on the virtual hardwood. The variety has fluctuated throughout the years, and recently, NBA Live and NBA 2K have taken very different approaches. NBA Live only includes the selection of current jerseys and specific throwbacks that will be worn during a season, whereas NBA 2K – in part thanks to its bevy of retro content – features a more comprehensive selection.

Of course, there are some jerseys that you won’t find among the retro uniforms in the recent NBA 2K titles. A few teams have gaps in their selection of historical primary uniforms, but there are also some alternate and special jerseys that can’t be found. This isn’t necessarily surprising though, especially when some of those jerseys have only ever appeared in games once over the years. Indeed, to the best of my research, the jerseys I’m listing here have only ever appeared in one game. Note that I’m talking about official appearances, which excludes mods and unused files. With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the rarest uniforms on the virtual hardwood!

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What’s that? A surprise edition of The Sunday Substitute to start the new year? With the next generation of consoles here, I’ve decided to reflect on my PS4 MyCAREER experiences and rank them from worst to best.

MyCAREER has been a part of my basketball video game experience ever since I first picked up the mode in NBA 2K10, back when it was called My Player. However, it wasn’t until I purchased my PS4 that I played the game annually (except for NBA 2K18). During my run on PS4, I made a conscious decision to make each MyCAREER experience unique. For this reason, I played a different position for each game.

Every situation had its strengths and weaknesses, but some stood out more than others. So, I’m going to rank each of my last five MyCAREER campaigns on PS4 from worst to best. Let’s get this show on the road!

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the infamous Dallas Mavericks alternate jersey that can be found in NBA Live 2004.

Nothing turns us basketball fans into fashion critics quite like a new NBA jersey design. It’s rare to get a uniform that we universally agree is good or bad, especially when it comes to some of the colourful designs of the mid to late 90s. There are a handful of jerseys that draw close to a unanimous reaction however, be it positive or negative. The uniforms that are reviled by almost everyone – even the most ardent fans of the teams that sport them – become infamous, especially if they somehow stick around beyond a single season.

On the other hand, negative reception can derail plans for a uniform design to become a staple of the team’s branding. Indeed, the jersey I’m talking about today – the Dallas Mavericks’ infamous “trash bag” uniform – was scrapped after being worn in just one game. It’s a jersey that’s been talked about at length, given that it’s a mainstay on most “all-time worst jerseys” lists, but it does have an interesting history with NBA Live 2004. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at an NBA Live 07 preview that we had to pull due to spoilers.

The NBA Finals often brings us our first glimpse of the upcoming sim titles, though for the moment, both EA Sports and Visual Concepts are remaining tight-lipped. I’ve previously reflected on how the preview seasons seemed longer and more exciting in years gone by, and that was certainly the case in the mid 2000s. Back then, a lot of sites (including the NLSC) were on a mailing list for preview assets from EA. As the 2006 NBA Finals began, we received a press release detailing a simulation of the series in NBA Live 07, some prior gen screenshots, and new gen gameplay.

Unfortunately, we then received a directive from EA Sports that the feature and all of the media needed to be immediately pulled, as they contained something that wasn’t meant to be seen yet. As such, it would be a few weeks before we received any media that we could publish, and that 2006 Finals simulation in NBA Live 07 was lost to time. It’s something I’ve kept in my archives though, and since the Finals are upon us, it seems like a good time to bring it out of the vault. So, what was the result of the simulation, and why was the feature pulled? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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We have some more file additions for NBA 2K17 PC today, including court updates for the Golden State Warriors and Dallas Mavericks, a Hardwood Classic jersey for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and jerseys for the San Miguel Beermen. Check them all out at the links below!

Manni Live
Golden State Warriors Oracle Arena HD

Issy
Dallas Mavericks Court

shuajota
San Miguel Beermen Jerseys
Cleveland Cavaliers #ALLinORANGE Jersey

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content.

When posting bulletins about the NBA Champions around ten years ago, I included screenshots of the winning team taken from the current NBA Live game. With the standalone Playoffs mode, it was easy enough to fire up the PC version, load up the latest NLSC roster update, and sim through a postseason. Because NBA Live’s simulation engine could be unpredictable, I usually had to place star players on the injured reserve so that the appropriate teams could make it through to the NBA Finals, and the correct team then win the championship.

I usually held off on capturing the screenshots until the series was close to being decided, so that I could make sure the teams were playing in the correct venue (and in one instance, wearing the correct jerseys). I came across those old NBA Live championship screenshots while digging through my archives recently, and I thought that they’d be fun to share for this week’s Wayback Wednesday.

Let’s take a look back…way back…

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When NBA 2K17 was released, many gamers were disappointed to discover that Steve Nash was missing from the rosters of the 2003 Dallas Mavericks and 2005 Phoenix Suns. Since Nash’s inclusion in NBA 2K16 was still covered by the NBA Players Association license, it was speculated that his absence from NBA 2K17 was simply due to oversight, or an inability to work out a deal for his likeness rights before the rosters had to be finalised and approved by the NBA. It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of respect or knowledge on 2K’s part.

Fortunately, it seems that we won’t have to wait until next year to get the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player back in the game, as Steve Nash is included in the latest NBA 2K17 roster update. Nash appears on both the 2003 Mavericks and 2005 Suns, with appropriate ratings and bio data for each season. 2003 Nash is rated 86 Overall, while 2005 Nash is rated 93 Overall.

This isn’t the first time that 2K has managed to add a missing historical player through the official roster updates. Julius Erving was originally absent from NBA 2K14, but after coming to terms on a new deal, 2K were able to add him to the game. It remains to be seen whether any more missing historical players will be added in future updates, as there are still some noteworthy players absent from historical team rosters, including Rasheed Wallace.

As per Mike Wang over in the Operation Sports forums, the latest roster update also includes Adaptive Coaching Engine updates by Da_Czar and Scott O’Gallagher, and a decrease in injury frequency to lower body parts. Contract extensions have also been updated, along with some three-point tendencies and other player attributes.

See below for a couple of screenshots of Steve Nash on the 2003 Mavericks and 2005 Suns in NBA 2K17, and as always, feel free to have your say in the comments section!

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