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NBA 08 Highlights: SuperSonics vs. Bobcats

NBA 08 Highlights: SuperSonics vs. Bobcats

As I’ve previously noted, one of my basketball gaming goals for 2024 is to dip into my collection every week, and play a game that I haven’t spent much time with before. Last week’s title was NBA 08 for PlayStation 3, and I’ve posted the highlights from a Seattle SuperSonics vs. Charlotte Bobcats game on our YouTube channel.

Obviously a contemporary of NBA Live 08 and NBA 2K8, as I mentioned on Twitter/X, NBA 08 was probably the third best sim title of the 2008 season. It’s lacking some of the polish of 2K and EA’s games, though the looseness on the sticks does make it surprisingly fun at times. Naturally, I had to use the Seattle SuperSonics – then in their final season in the Pacific Northwest – and take on the Charlotte Bobcats. It’s tough to go past two technically defunct teams (or at least, ones with branding that’s no longer being used) when revisiting old games! Fittingly, Kevin Calabro is on the call as I put up 56 points with rookie Kevin Durant. Check it out!

As you can probably guess, these NBA 08 highlights are a precursor to me covering the game for Wayback Wednesday in the not too distant future. Stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content! As always, feel free to hit Dee and I up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play.

NLSC Podcast #512: NBA 2K25 Gameplay Wishlist

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #512 of the NLSC Podcast!

It’s Wishlist season once again, so this week, we join the community in listing our top three gameplay wishes for NBA 2K25! Not surprisingly, many of us have similar thoughts on what we want to see out of this year’s game. Following our recent sessions with them, we also discuss NBA ShootOut (aka Total NBA ’96) and Sony’s NBA 08, and compare them to their contemporaries. We’ve also got an injury update to share, and spend some time reflecting on past-their-prime players still having something left in the tank in real life, as well as being fun to play with in video games; especially when they’re familiar faces in unfamiliar places.

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!

Wayback Wednesday: NBA 07 by Sony Retrospective

Wayback Wednesday: NBA 07 by Sony Retrospective

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 PlayStation 3 version of NBA 07, the 2007 season entry in Sony’s first party NBA series.

With the lack of options in the basketball gaming space nowadays, I’m often wistful for a time when several NBA titles were on the market year after year. Of course, not every game was available to me. Some were North American exclusives, unavailable to those of us in PAL regions unless we had the hardware to play imported games. This included a majority of Sony’s NBA series, making it both a region and console exclusive. In hindsight, that was never going to realistically allow it to challenge the dominance of NBA Live and NBA 2K!

Developed by San Diego Studio – probably best known for MLB: The Show – the NBA series only saw one official worldwide release, namely NBA 08. Mind you, given that the PlayStation 3 was region-free, that didn’t have to be a barrier for anyone who was willing and able to import games! Since adding a PS3 to my collection, I’ve been able to pick up some games that I never had an opportunity to play when they were new, such as college basketball titles. This also includes a few games from the NBA series, and today, I’m profiling NBA 07 with an in-depth retrospective. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 7)

The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 7)

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 7 in an ongoing series where I look at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

Yes, we’ve reached a seventh instalment of this series profiling the players that only played for certain teams on the virtual hardwood! Whether it was due to an injury that shelved them for their entire tenure, an offseason move that was outdated by the time a game shipped, or some other circumstance, there are players whose stints with teams didn’t include any playing time in real life, but resulted in the opportunity to suit up for them in video games. As official roster updates became common, we’ve seen more of these on-paper/”phantom stints”, especially with journeymen.

This was originally meant to be the final instalment in this series, at least for now. However, I’ve had some more great examples pointed out to me, including a few very prominent players whose phantom stints I’ve overlooked in compiling the first seven articles. I suppose that speaks to how obscure some of those appearances were, and how easy it is to forget about them with so many games coming out over the years! I will get to them at some point – shout out to David for helping me out there – but in the meantime I’ve got five more examples, most of whom were fairly well-known role players back in their day, though younger fans may not be as familiar with them.

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NLSC YouTube Highlights Round-Up

NLSC YouTube Highlights Round-Up

In addition to the Top 10 Plays of the Week and full episodes of our podcast, we also upload other basketball gaming videos to the NLSC YouTube channel! I’ve fallen behind on sharing the uploads here on the NLSC itself, and to that end, I’ll be making a better effort to post bulletins featuring new videos moving forward.

That’s because in addition to curating the weekly Top 10 countdown, Dee4Three has been very prolific in uploading excellent gameplay highlights for a variety of titles, in addition of course to NBA 2K23. This includes his MyTEAM Domination highlights, as he’s currently working his way through the mode. You’ll also find playlists featuring our Parsec tournaments, co-op and competitive sessions, and more.

I’ve also put together a highlight reel from my first session in The Rec in NBA 2K23, in which Valor and I squadded up with a number of random teammates; some better than others! Kenny also joined us for some 3v3 Pro-Am games, and I’ll have a highlight reel from that session uploaded very soon. In short, please subscribe to our channel for some fantastic basketball gaming content, and in case those YouTube notifications don’t work, keep an eye out here for bulletins about our future uploads! For now, you can catch up on the most recent uploads to the NLSC YouTube channel below.

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NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week: September 10th, 2022

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.

NBA 2K23 is out now, and it didn’t take long for this year’s game to make its debut in the NLSC Top 10 Plays! As always though, this week’s countdown isn’t just about the newest release. We still have NBA 2K22 highlights coming through, including another jaw-dropping poster from LookyDaGamer. Appropriately enough following last week’s NLSC Podcast, a couple of Virtual Hardwood Legends also produced some entertaining plays in old favourites. On top of that, there are a couple of clutch plays which aptly demonstrate that you should never stop competing until the final buzzer.

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 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 5)

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

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 5 in an ongoing series where I look at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

As much as I enjoy talking about the gameplay experience and all the ins and outs of modes in basketball video games, I also love player-related trivia. Forgive me for dusting off a phrase that I probably use way too much, but old sim games do act as interactive almanacs. Just as re-watching old games and highlights can trigger our memories of unusual and forgotten stints, so too can browsing the rosters in video games from many years ago. It’s one of the fun parts of retro basketball gaming for me, and it can lead down a rabbit hole of researching old lineups and transactions.

I have several features where I reflect on unusual and noteworthy stints for players, be they stars, journeyman role players, or benchwarmers. It’s fun to look back at familiar faces in strange and familiar places through the lens of basketball video games, as well as other oddities such as returns to teams that were over before they began. As evident from this article being a Part 5, I’ve also been reflecting on several players who only ever saw court time for a specific team on the virtual hardwood. This has usually been due to injuries, or the timing of transactions related to the release of video games and their roster updates. Either way, they’re interesting to look back on!

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The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 4)

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 4 in an ongoing series where I look at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

It’s time for some more video game roster trivia! As I’m so fond of saying, old NBA video games are like interactive almanacs, capturing snapshots of the league at the time of their release (or indeed, their most recent roster update). Revisiting those titles reminds us of players who became familiar faces in strange places, as well as those who later returned to familiar places. We can see comebacks that were over before they began, as well as odd situations such as Michael Redd’s appearance on the Dallas Mavericks in NBA Live 2003 PC.

Those are the stints I’m taking about again today: the players that only appeared on certain teams in video games. There are several reasons why this happens, from an offseason acquisition that was cut in between the rosters being finalised and the real season tipping off, to injuries resulting in a stint that only occurs on paper and the virtual hardwood. Unless you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of trades and free agent signings over the years, it may not be until you dust off an old game that you remember a player only technically appearing on a roster. Of course, you may not be a crazy collector of old games like I am, so allow me to provide some more examples!

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The Friday Five: 5 Cover Players You May Not Recall (Part 3)

The Friday Five

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 yet another list of five cover players that you may not recall.

Yes, we’ve made it to Part 3 in this series! There have been a lot of NBA video games over the years, which has resulted in a number of different cover players. Obviously, some of the greats have appeared on the covers of multiple series, or multiple games within a series. Over the years, publishers have been able to sign the NBA’s biggest names to promote their brand of virtual basketball, especially with gaming increasing in popularity, and players who grew up playing video games subsequently entering the league. Regardless, not all cover players have been superstars.

While these names may not be obscure or forgotten – again, some of them were very prominent names in their day – one may not recall that they were cover players at one point. Video game series come and go, with some games being far more popular and successful than others. In some cases, you might remember the game, but – contrary to Fort Minor’s famous song – you might not remember the name. And of course, there are regional covers that aren’t as well-known, some of which have become appealing collectibles for anyone into that sort of thing (not mentioning any names here). With that being said, let’s refresh our memories about these five former cover players.

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NLSC Podcast #368: You Say Ancient, We Say Classic

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Episode #368 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Derek (aka Dee4Three) and I are your hosts for this weekly podcast that’s all about basketball gaming.

Picking up some extra copies of NBA 2K12 has revealed some interesting details, but we’re still searching for answers about a possible limited edition cover. Meanwhile, comments on a recent YouTube video underscore how NBA 2K21 Next Gen wasn’t the leap that many gamers were hoping for. Speaking of NBA 2K’s future, we discuss Visual Concepts’ recent acquisition of HookBang, and what it means for the series. We also have some thoughts on remarks from Sony’s Jim Ryan regarding backwards compatibility, and his dismissal of classic games as unplayable. In this week’s mailbag, we’re building our own arcade basketball game based on one of three classic titles, and recalling our experiences with Sony’s NBA series.

Join in the conversation in the comments below, or here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as mailbag questions and topic suggestions for future shows. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. The show also comes out on our YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe for future episodes and other video content.

NLSC Podcast #333: Just Two Creatures of Habit

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Episode #333 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Derek (aka Dee4Three) and I are your hosts for this week’s show.

Would you pay $16,000 for a promotional copy of NBA 2K15? Someone on eBay is hoping that you will! We’ve spent considerably less on recent additions to our collections, which we were excited to pick up. Speaking of collectables, a few copies of Slam City with Scottie Pippen have also popped up on eBay, leading us to reflect on that somewhat forgotten game. Meanwhile, an influx of new gamers in NBA 2K20’s online scene has further emphasised the need to implement proper ranking and matchmaking measures (and inspired another rant). We also discuss what it takes to change our gaming habits on the virtual hardwood, and how some of those habits were formed in the first place.

What’s your take on this week’s conversation? Sound off in the comments section below, or join in the discussion here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as suggestions for topics that you’d like to hear us discuss in future episodes. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki.

The Friday Five: 5 Features That Are Older Than You Think

The Friday Five

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 five features in modern basketball games that are older than you may realise.

We’ve seen some really cool features in basketball video games over the past couple of generations. Extensive historical content, brilliant presentation, and innovative approaches to modes, have all continued to push the basketball gaming experience further and further. Not every idea pans out, and there are always some of us who prefer an old school approach when it comes to certain features, but the amount of innovation and creativity is still very impressive. Of course, not all of those concepts and features are necessarily brand new ideas.

As I’ve discussed in many Wayback Wednesday features, there was an impressive amount of innovation in several early basketball video games as well. Modern tech has allowed developers to push the envelope even further, but it’s interesting and sometimes surprising when we look back and see that certain features were attempted many years ago, with varying degrees of success. That isn’t a bad thing, as good and creative ideas should be revisited when the technology allows them to be even better, perhaps even the way that they were originally envisioned. Those original attempts do deserve credit though, as they demonstrate that some features are older than we think.

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Wayback Wednesday: The Life in NBA 08

NBA 08 Featuring The Life

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 Life in NBA 08.

Sony’s NBA series was one of the last major competitors to the two big brands in sim-oriented basketball games, NBA Live and NBA 2K. The games are part of a lineage that includes the NBA ShootOut series, known as Total NBA in PAL regions. Being developed by divisions of Sony Computer Entertainment, the games were naturally exclusive to the PlayStation consoles, with the exception of NBA ShootOut 2000 which saw the series’ lone PC release. Generally speaking, the games did receive some positive reviews, but over the years they were unable to best NBA Live or NBA 2K in terms of sales or overall quality.

Nevertheless, the NBA series did boast some innovative features, some of which have since been adopted by NBA Live and NBA 2K in some form. A prime example is the mode known as The Life, a narrative-driven experience that predates the use of stories in MyCAREER by several years. The mode and the story changed from year to year, but in this article I’m primarily focusing on the PlayStation 2 version of NBA 08, as it’s the game I have in my collection. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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