Tag Archives: Jason Kidd

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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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #614 of the NLSC Podcast!

Who are the most dominant players when they’re controlled by the CPU in basketball video games? This week, we join the community in discussing some of the most unguardable players that we’ve encountered on the virtual hardwood over the years, at least when they’re in the hands of the AI. Whether it’s an issue with the engine, or their ratings are slightly overdone or completely inaccurate, these stars and role players alike have given us fits on the sticks. We also reflect on the frustration of not always being able to light it up with those same players ourselves, and mention a few players who haven’t been as dominant in video games they really should be.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:03:25 — 43.9MB)

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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 an attempt at crafting a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest mode in a future NBA 2K.

Although the original Jordan Challenge was the catalyst for a new era of historical content in NBA 2K, NBA’s Greatest was an innovative follow-up. Many of the classic teams that were added as part of NBA’s Greatest are still in the game today, setting a precedent for expanding the roster of retro squads to celebrate a variety of players. It wasn’t the first basketball game to feature throwback presentation – NBA Jam 2004 had utilised the concept almost a decade earlier – but NBA 2K12 did a spectacular job with it, ultimately paving the way for what we now have with MyNBA Eras.

As a game released in 2011, NBA’s Greatest celebrated fifteen of the most prominent players in league history to that point: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Oscar Robertson, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Scottie Pippen, and Isiah Thomas. Needless to say, those players still deserve to be celebrated today, but after all these years, there’s a new class of all-time greats that a future NBA 2K could build a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest around. With that in mind, here are fifteen players that should be celebrated in such a mode, as well as my picks for their games.

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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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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 recalls five times that my franchise games and the real NBA imitated each other.

Last week, I recalled five times when real moves made their way into my games, thanks to trades and signings that were initiated by CPU-controlled teams. They were special because obviously, I had nothing to do with them. The AI just happened to make moves that placed players on teams that they’ve played for since those games were released. Conversely, when I don my virtual GM suit in a franchise mode and mimic trades and signings that occurred in real life, it isn’t nearly as remarkable. It’s a situation where we gamers have greater control and influence, after all.

However, it’s still fun to inject some realism into your franchise gaming by taking cues from real life transactions. Indeed, before I made a blockbuster deal to acquire Kevin Garnett in my memorable NBA Live 2004 Dynasty, I considered making the trade that brought Jalen Rose and Antonio Davis to the Chicago Bulls, even testing it out to see if the CPU would accept (as it happens, it did). There have also been times where real life has imitated what was once a fictional move in one of my franchise games, which has been entertaining to see. These five examples of times where my franchise games and real life imitated each other comprise both of those scenarios.

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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 cover players that made the NBA Finals in the same season their game came out.

The 2022 NBA Finals are upon us! Fittingly, in this 75th Anniversary season, the two teams squaring off are the Golden State Warriors, and the Boston Celtics. Not only are they two of the original three BAA/NBA teams – the New York Knicks being the third – but the Warriors and Celtics have plenty of championship history between them. The Warriors were the inaugural BAA champions, and have gone on to win another five titles since. Boston, meanwhile, were long-time record holders for total NBA championships, and are currently tied with the Los Angeles Lakers with 17.

While there’s plenty of real life history involved with this year’s Finals matchup, it is lacking a tie-in with the virtual hardwood, namely involving cover players. There was only one game on the market for the 2022 season – NBA 2K22 – and while it boasted a few different covers, none of them featured a player that will be competing in this year’s championship series. Popularity and marketability are obviously the deciding factors when EA Sports and Visual Concepts choose their cover players, rather than likelihood of winning or at least competing for a title that year. Of course, it’s quite fortuitous when they do! Here are five cover players that made it as far as the Finals.

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It’s time for another Fantasy Teams Showdown in NBA Live 10! Every so often, Dee4Three and I will jump into a game of NBA Live 10 using Parsec, and use the Fantasy Teams mode to create some fun matchups. These include makeshift retro squads, utilising the players who are available in the game’s rosters. This time, we had the 2006 New Jersey Nets (me) taking on the 2006 Phoenix Suns (Dee).

As always, the challenge is to find retro squads where we can fill all ten roster slots for a Fantasy Teams game. At the very least, we aim to have no less than seven or eight real players that were still available in NBA Live 10’s rosters. The 2006 Suns had ten players in the game, while the 2006 Nets still had nine. It produced a fun matchup filled with spectacular highlights, as Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion clashed with Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, and Richard Jefferson. Dee has compiled a highlight reel, which you can check out below!

You can find more of our NBA Live 10 Fantasy Teams Showdowns over on the NLSC YouTube channel! Got any suggestions for matchups you’d like to see? Check out this list of retro teams that can feasibly be created in NBA Live 10, and let us know! If you have any other suggestions, we can give them a try, too. For more information on how to use Parsec to play basketball video games head-to-head, check out this video tutorial.

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 another collection of players that became familiar faces in strange places.

Yes, it’s time for a fifth instalment in my ongoing series profiling familiar faces that ended up in strange places! In case you missed the previous articles, or the title is a bit too esoteric, this series looks back at well-known players that are generally associated with a particular team, and their stints wearing unfamiliar jerseys that looked strange at the time as well as in hindsight. Because video games capture these unusual stints, I’m also looking at them through the lens of the virtual hardwood. As I’ve said before, I love the “interactive almanac” aspect of old video games!

The ten familiar faces in strange places that I’m profiling this time around feature a mix of several big names, as well as some prominent role players from back in the day. Although it’s more jarring to see All-Stars and future Hall of Fame inductees wearing unfamiliar uniforms, we can still come to associate long-tenured role players with a certain team as well. As such, it’s similarly strange when they move on to a new club, both in real life and in video games. 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 ten more familiar faces who found themselves back in familiar places.

Just as there are have been several familiar faces that ended up in strange places, there are more familiar faces who made it back to familiar places than I can possibly fit into just one list of ten! To that end, I’m also making this spinoff topic an ongoing series for Wayback Wednesday. As I previously noted, these homecomings can be just as interesting as the strange stints of well-known players, as they can also end up flying under the radar and being forgotten due to being unremarkable returns. In other cases, it’s the original stint with a team that is overlooked.

Either way, they’re fun to look back on. We can obviously do that by going back and watching old games, but it’s also possible to revisit these tenures through the virtual hardwood. I’ve grown quite fond of referring to basketball video games as interactive almanacs and time capsules to the point where I’m probably overusing the expression. It is quite apt though, and with that in mind, I’m using video games to demonstrate these examples of familiar faces back in familiar places. Let’s 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 lists five times that basketball games noticeably messed up player appearances.

Developing basketball games – or any video games, for that matter – is harder than a lot of people realise. It bears mentioning, as some gamers do go overboard in their criticism and suggest that making a flawless game is a simple task. In our modding community, we have a bad habit of denouncing the art teams in particular. It should be noted that it’s a lot easier to mod a finished game than it is to create one in the first place, and that individual modders aren’t under the same restrictions when it comes to spending a lot of time on a single player face, or other art assets.

With that being said, there are times when there have been notably unusual mistakes or unimpressive results, particularly when it comes to player appearances. I’m not just referring to player faces that don’t look as realistic as we’d like, though there certainly have been some noteworthy examples in that vein over the years. However, there are times when player appearances have been messed up in ways that go well beyond a cyberface that looks a little off. Be it an oversight in development, some kind of technical limitation, or another cause entirely, here are five times that we looked at a player in a hoops game and noticed that something definitely wasn’t quite right.

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