Tag Archives: NBA 2K17

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #630 of the NLSC Podcast!

Entering 2026, we had some plans and goals for the virtual hardwood. Since we’re rapidly approaching the middle of the year – no, don’t ask us where the time went – we decided to check in on how those plans are going! To that end, this week we’re joining the community in discussing our basketball gaming habits so far in 2026, from the selection of titles that we’re playing to the modes that have kept us hooked. We also recap a fun Parsec session with the Snes9x Super Nintendo emulator featuring a five-player co-op game of NBA Live 95 that was an absolute blast, and an intense four-player head-to-head showdown in NBA Hangtime that was ultimately decided in overtime.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 52:14 — 36.2MB)

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!

It’s always great to see new modding tools being released in the community, especially when they’re free of charge! To that end, SexCurryBeats has released 2KVenueLab, a comprehensive utility that includes tools for NBA 2K11 right through to NBA 2K26.

As per the description, the key features of 2KVenueLab are as follows:

• IFF viewer/exporter
• POD/mobile file support
• Archive tools
• Package staging/restore
• OBJ export
• Browser previews
• Roster editor tools
• For NBA 2K11-2K26

Pick it up here in our Downloads section! Shout out to SexCurryBeats for providing this modding resource, and several other mods and contributions throughout the years.

Also, thanks as always 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 there are times that I miss dice roll shooting mechanics in basketball video games.

At this point, it’s a safe bet to say that Green Releases will remain a fixture of NBA 2K’s shooting mechanics moving forward. It’s just a matter of how they’re handled, and whether there are any additional controls and mechanics such as shot aiming or rhythm shooting with the right stick. In recent years, the “Green or Miss” approach to shooting has been particularly contentious. On one hand, it rewards skilful input with a guaranteed result (blocked attempts notwithstanding). On the other hand, it’s not necessarily accessible, or preferable for offline play.

It’s funny to revisit the discourse around Green Releases back in 2017, when Mike Wang spoke of a desire to wean gamers off of the idea that they should be guaranteed baskets. “Green or Miss” certainly goes against that aim, demonstrating how attitudes have changed as NBA 2K has increasingly catered to the online scene. Personally, I’m in favour of Green Releases being guaranteed, very good or near-perfect releases still being reliable, and then progressively lower odds of success as the timing gets worse. To that point, while I wouldn’t change the approach of Green Releases always being successful, I must admit that I sometimes miss the old dice roll shooting mechanics.

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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 inaccuracies and other issues that have bothered me while basketball gaming.

Even the best basketball video games have had issues and inaccuracies. Perfection is basically an impossible bar to reach, and coding a sophisticated video game of any genre is hardly as simple as typing plain English into a word processor! Also, some ideas simply just don’t pan out. And so, we accept that our favourite hoops titles will have imperfections. In the best case scenario, it doesn’t stop us from enjoying them. Mind you, because we’re passionate about basketball and basketball gaming alike, any major inaccuracies and technical issues are naturally difficult to ignore.

Of course, these issues and inaccuracies don’t always ruin basketball video games. As I said, even our favourite games have them, and we all have different standards and expectations besides. With that being said, while technical problems, inaccuracies, and other issues may not completely spoil a game, they can still end up bothering us. The good ultimately outweighs the bad, but they’re still the finer points that we can’t help but notice, and would like to see fixed and improved upon for an even better experience. To that end, while the following five issues and inaccuracies didn’t stop me from having fun on the virtual hardwood, they were nevertheless a bit annoying!

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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 Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

Every entry in the NLSC Top 10 Plays represents a joyful moment playing basketball video games. This has perhaps never been more apparent than in this week’s top play, where you’ll see the Live 01 Legends reacting to an absolutely awesome alley-oop from their showdown in NBA Live 2005! Some minimalist modding is also on display in that highlight, which is always great to see. The rest of the countdown is packed with great dunks, slick moves, and other exciting moments from eight different games ranging from NBA Hangtime to NBA 2K26. 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.

In addition to the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week and episodes of the NLSC Podcast, Dee and I make a habit of sharing highlights from our basketball gaming sessions on the NLSC’s YouTube channel. To that end, the time has come for another round-up of some recent uploads!

The latest video from Dee showcases our session with the PlayStation version of NBA Live 96, in which we took on the Golden State Warriors with the Washington Bullets. We’ll be discussing the game in an upcoming podcast that was originally scheduled for this week, but unfortunately had to be delayed due to technical issues. Speaking of our deep-dives into games on the podcast, last week we covered NBA Starting Five 2005, and you can check out the highlights from our head-to-head game featuring the 1982 76ers and 1987 Lakers.

As for me, back in December I posted a re-creation of Kobe Bryant’s 62-points in three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks in NBA 2K6, in honour of the 20th anniversary of that feat. I’ve also uploaded a reel of Wilt Chamberlain highlights from a game of NBA 2K17, in which I was using the All-Time Kansas Jayhawks included in the All-Time College DLC.

Check out all of those videos below, and be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel if you haven’t already! On top of these longer gameplay reels, I also post some shorts from time to time, along with the occasional video essay. As always, feel free 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, share the highlights with everyone, and discuss them on the podcast.

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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 what keeps a few of my old favourites out of my basketball gaming rotation.

A few weeks ago, I discussed some of the basketball games that I’d like to bring back into my rotation at some point this year. Unsurprisingly, four of the games that I listed – NBA Live 96, NBA Live 2004, NBA Live 06, and NBA 2K13 – are among my all-time favourites. It only stands to reason that they’re prime candidates as I continue to get my virtual hardwood fix from retro and classic titles. And yet, despite holding those old favourites in high regard, to date I haven’t been in a rush to make them part of my rotation again. Instead, I’ve sought out new retro kicks.

It’s something that I’ve been thinking about since I posted that Friday Five article. My disappointment with recent NBA 2K titles has pushed me towards retro gaming, and to that end, you’d think I’d reach for my old favourites before anything else. After all, they’re the basketball games I’ve enjoyed the most. Familiarity and nostalgia should make them an ideal alternative whenever a new release fails to impress me. To that end, I have dusted off these old favourites here and there, but again, I’ve mostly been revisiting games that I overlooked, and discovering new favourites. Upon reflection, there are a few reasons why some of my beloved old favourites remained benched.

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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 being hooked on history and nostalgia with my current basketball gaming habits.

Many years ago, we were discussing the most recent WWE video game in the Forum. Sauru – a long-time member who had a few years on most of us – was wistfully noting the lack of wrestlers from the Golden Age/Hulkamania Era. As somewhat of a lapsed pro wrestling fan, he was far more interested in playing with his nostalgic favourites than the contemporary wrestlers. I understood his disappointment and agreed that a larger selection of Legends would be great, but noted that a majority of the userbase were more interested in the current WWE; a point that Sauru did concede.

Of course, all these years later, I find myself relating to Sauru’s disinterest when it comes to basketball and basketball gaming. His stance isn’t just understandable, but now very relatable! Indeed, it’s one of those “It’ll happen to you!” moments that The Simpsons warned us young viewers about back in the 90s. As I’ve grown disillusioned with the modern NBA and the disrespect for the history of the league – to say nothing of my issues with recent NBA 2K games – I’ve doubled down on my nostalgia. And so, these days I find far more satisfaction in going back to older titles that still hold up, discovering new favourites, and playing with Legends and other nostalgic lineups.

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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 Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

As in real life, video game highlights can come from the most unexpected sources! To that point, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays tips off with Vince Carter breaking out a 360 jam in Fox Sports NBA Basketball. Of course, classics such as NBA Live 2000 and NBA Street Vol. 2 are also featured in the countdown, providing a spectacular array of alley-oops, poster dunks, two-way plays, and an acrobatic finish by Chris Webber. Ready to get hyped for another weekend of basketball gaming? 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.

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #622 of the NLSC Podcast!

There’s a lot of fun to be had taking on the CPU solo or co-operatively in basketball video games, especially with the range of modes at our disposal. However, head-to-head play is also a blast, and we have countless memories of epic battles with friends, family, and online opponents. This week, we join the community in recalling the best players that we’ve ever faced on the virtual hardwood, and some of the lessons that we took from those showdowns. We also recap a fun game of NBA Live 2000 PC that demonstrated just how superbly it holds up more than 25 years later, and touch on some of the downsides of skill-based mechanics when it comes to realism and lucky plays.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 54:12 — 37.6MB)

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!

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

Once again, we love variety in the NLSC Top 10 Plays, but we’ll never object to a reel of spectacular dunks! The most exciting shot in basketball is the star of this week’s countdown, which includes a flurry of awesome jams from Kevin Garnett and Antonio McDyess in a battle between the Live 01 Legends. In fact, Legends are also a recurring motif this week, from the All-Time College Teams in NBA 2K17 to the greats of the game hooping together in Ultimate Team and MyNBA. The countdown culminates with one of the craziest alley-oops you’ll ever see on the virtual hardwood, courtesy of two of the greatest players of all-time. 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.

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 thoughts on how “press steal to foul” is a lazy approach to designing defensive mechanics in basketball video games.

There’s a clear interest in and emphasis on skill-based mechanics in NBA 2K these days. From sweats in the online scene sneering “get good” to developer blogs touting a focus on representing the “skill gap”, there’s a belief that NBA 2K’s gameplay must be a worthy test of one’s reflexes and abilities on the sticks. Accessibility? Realism? Fun? Go play a mobile puzzle game if that’s what you want, you filthy casual! That’s the attitude that NBA 2K has been increasingly catering to, and gameplay has taken a dip in quality because of it. At least one game developer saw that coming.

The irony of course is that thanks to canned and animation-heavy sequences, to say nothing of artificial boosts, imbalance, and paying to skip the grind, it’s laughable to suggest that NBA 2K is a pure test of stick skills! Moreover, when the mechanics are broken or poorly designed, it becomes a test of a gamer’s patience and willingness to compensate for a flawed system, rather than their ability to be strategic and skilful. Like a carpenter with a dull saw and a headless hammer, we’re impeded by the tools we have at our disposal. In short, we need a game’s mechanics to work and be useful in order to expertly employ them. To that end, “press steal to foul” is lazy design.

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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 unexpected benefits of basketball video games.

Like most devotees of the virtual hardwood, I got into basketball games because they combine two things that I enjoy; obviously, video games and basketball! To that end, the main benefit of basketball games has been countless hours of fun playing a virtual representation of my favourite sport. When I was a kid getting into hoops back in the 90s, basketball games helped to educate me about the NBA, and become familiar with some lesser-known players. They’ve allowed me to re-create iconic moments, indulge fantasies, play out What If scenarios, and basically just have more fun with basketball.

You can’t really ask for more than that out of one of your favourite hobbies! However, there have been some other, more unexpected benefits of basketball games. I couldn’t have ever imagined those benefits when I was excitedly installing NBA Live 96 and NBA Jam Tournament Edition on the family PC and renting NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo from the video store all those years ago. While basketball games would’ve remained an enjoyable pastime for me even without these unexpected benefits, they certainly make me grateful that I took and maintained an interest in them! Indeed, I’m sure that basketball games have given many of us more than just fun on the sticks.

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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 Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

One thing’s for sure: the slams you’ll find in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays are far more exciting than the 2026 Dunk Contest! Sure, that’s a low bar to clear, but the community soars far above it with some spectacular jams on the virtual hardwood. It’s not often that you’ll see NBA Live 07 for Xbox 360 in the countdown, but even it was able to put this year’s contest to shame with some wild stuff from Tyrus Thomas! However, the top spot goes to another clutch bucket from a gamer with a knack for crazy finishes. Seven different games are featured this time around, from NBA Live 2003 through to NBA Bounce. 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.

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 thoughts on how despite some interesting ideas here and there, MyCAREER keeps telling us the same old story.

When the Next Gen version of NBA 2K14 launched with the very first MyCAREER story, it was a bold attempt to innovate with the single player career experience. The mode had already been expanding since its debut in NBA 2K10 as My Player, but introducing a narrative with cutscenes and further role-playing elements continued to differentiate it from the franchise modes. Once 2K began working with big name filmmakers and actors, MyCAREER came to feature impressive production values and deeper stories, which I’ve come to appreciate.

There are some recurring problems with the story-driven approach to MyCAREER, of course. Not everyone is interested in flavour content like that, especially if they just want to build up a player for the online scene. The quality of the stories has varied over the years, with a few of them being very obnoxious in tone. There have been some distracting disconnections between the story and the MyPLAYER protagonist, where a very specific back story doesn’t suit the concept of avatar customisation. If nothing else, we’re not rated like we’re a future star! However, the biggest issue is that even in the best case scenario, we end up being told the same old MyCAREER story.

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