Dee has uploaded some more great highlights to our YouTube channel, this time spotlighting NBA 2K9 PC. As you’re probably well aware, NBA 2K9 was the first game in the series released on PC, and these highlights demonstrate why so many basketball gamers were excited to see 2K finally land on the platform.
In this matchup, Dee took control of the Orlando Magic and faced the CPU-controlled Cleveland Cavaliers. The two teams of course clashed in the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, with the Magic ultimately advancing to face Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. You can expect to see some emphatic dunks from LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Mickael Pietrus, as well as some big shots from Jameer Nelson and Virtual Hardwood Legend Delonte West. It was a hard-fought game that wouldn’t be decided until the final minutes, with both teams making some great plays at both ends of the floor. Check it out!
Be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for regular highlights, and other basketball gaming content! As always, feel free to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play, as well as revisit and discuss on the NLSC Podcast!
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #478 of the NLSC Podcast!
Games that we wish we played more, seasons that we wish we finished, and saves that we wish we still had, are common tales among basketball gamers. This week, we join the community in reminiscing about some of our biggest basketball gaming regrets! A misconception about a job listing also prompts us to address the subject of NBA Live rumours, as well as clickbait content. Additionally, we touch on whether a theoretical future NBA Live should be sim, arcade, or a sim-arcade hybrid. We also reflect on some spectacular highlights in last week’s NLSC Top 10 that had us all buzzing, and provide an update on reaching Year 6 in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:08 — 53.3MB)
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!
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #470 of the NLSC Podcast!
Which basketball video games rank among our most-played all-time? This week, we join the community in reminiscing about the various titles that we’ve racked up the most hours in over the years. We’re also able to talk about the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod at last, and it’s no surprise that the community shares our enthusiasm for it! johnz1 will also be joining us to talk about the mod next week, so stay tuned. The Elite 8 of our NCAA Basketball 10 Tournament is in the books, so we reflect on the action thus far, and look ahead to the Final Four. We also pay tribute to the late, great Willis Reed.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:18:33 — 54.3MB)
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!
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 9 in an ongoing series looking at players that only appeared on certain teams in video games.
Yes, it’s time to revisit one of my favourite roster trivia topics! As I said when I resumed this series with Part 8, I was actually ready to be done with it after Part 7. After all, I was starting to get into more obscure examples, with players who weren’t as noteworthy unless you were a hardcore fan in the 90s through to the early 2000s. As it turned out however, I’d missed a number of more well-known players who only appeared on certain teams in video games. I’d also overlooked some slightly lesser-known names that keen fans with good memories will nevertheless likely recall.
Even though the reasons for these players only appearing on certain teams in video games and never in real life come down to the same basic circumstances, it’s still interesting to look back at how they got there. If nothing else, it’s easy to forget that players were with certain teams if only for a minute, even if we recall that they did bounce around the league during their careers. As always, basketball video games serve as interactive almanacs here, capturing a snapshot the same way that they preserve familiar faces in strange places, and their returns to familiar places. Once again, shout out to David L for providing a heads up on a number of these examples.
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.
A great variety of titles are represented in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays, with highlights coming from six NBA 2K games, and two NBA Live games released almost twenty years apart! We’ve got 90s highlights thanks to mods and MyNBA Eras alike, an appearance from a prime Antonio McDyess, and my NBA 2K14 MyPLAYER pulling off yet another move that I certainly never could in reality. As you prepare for another weekend of basketball gaming, allow the community to inspire you to create some more fun virtual hardwood memories!
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.
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.
It’s a new year, but the first NLSC Top 10 Plays of 2023 is tipping things off in familiar fashion: a countdown of exciting plays from seven different basketball video games, both recent and classic. There are poster dunks galore, breathtaking moves in the paint, and an entry that would rightfully score 50 in any Dunk Contest. The NBA 2K2 soundtrack provides the music on this occasion, and appropriately, cover player Allen Iverson makes an appearance in the countdown. Keep those highlights coming, and strap in for another spectacular year of the Top 10!
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.
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 creepy moments in various basketball video games.
Last year, I finally got around to a Friday Five topic that I’d been considering for some time: creepy moments in basketball games. It felt like an appropriate topic for an article coming out around Halloween, and although that spooktacular holiday is next Monday, I thought I’d get us in the mood early rather than repurpose it for the Tip-Off. There are a couple of examples I forgot about when writing the previous Five, and upon further reflection, a few more came to mind. On top of that, I’d suggest that producing a sequel pays fitting tribute to many horror franchises!
As I said in my previous article, creepiness and horror aren’t usually the hallmarks of basketball video games. It’s not in the spirit of the genre to be creepy and frightening, but there are nevertheless moments on the virtual hardwood that make us jump. Once again, they’re generally unintentional, being the results of glitches or perhaps strange design choices. However, this time there is one example that is definitely deliberate, and while it likely didn’t cause any nightmares, it’s fitting for Halloween. To borrow the tag line of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series: reader beware, you’re in for a scare! Well, perhaps not, but these are some unusually creepy moments in virtual hoops.
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 reflecting on ten years of embracing NBA 2K, after growing up playing NBA Live.
Just in case there’s any confusion, no, this isn’t a tenth anniversary for NBA 2K. As the special edition of NBA 2K19 reminds us, the series is already twice as old as that! However, 2022 marks ten years that I’ve personally been embracing NBA 2K as a key part of my basketball gaming experience. If you’ve grown up with NBA 2K and never played NBA Live when it was the brand leader, this undoubtedly sounds strange. Why would I need to warm up to NBA 2K, and come around on embracing it? As a keen basketball gamer, shouldn’t I want to play the game that’s been on top for years?
Of course, but for an older gamer like me who grew up with NBA Live, embracing NBA 2K and its approach to sim basketball took some time. There was bias and a comfort zone to push past, not to mention availability and preferred platform. While I have my criticisms – and it’s important that we do constructively criticise any game we play, basketball or otherwise – I have grown to truly appreciate and enjoy the NBA 2K series. It’s been ten years since I’ve fully committed to embracing NBA 2K, so it feels as though some reflections are in order. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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!
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!
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 another ten players that became familiar faces back in familiar places.
We’ve reached the seventh and (for the moment) final instalment of the Familiar Faces Back in Familiar Places series! As a spinoff of the Familiar Faces in Strange Places series of articles, I wanted to match its seven instalments and 70 examples of players with interesting stints. One of the reasons I love compiling these lists is that these stints – both the ones in strange places and back in familiar places – are often forgotten. Of course, sometimes we’d prefer that, as the players were shells of their former selves by that point!
Once again, I’ll note that I’m looking at these examples through the lens of basketball video games. As I’ve explained before, I do this because it fits in with our content as a site about basketball gaming, and because revisiting old games is one way that we’re reminded of the stints that we’ve forgotten. It also makes things more challenging as I’m trying to seek out the most interesting stories, and limit examples to ones that can be found in official rosters. To that point, there are fewer stars in this instalment, but certainly some noteworthy NBA player trivia. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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 another ten players that became familiar faces back in familiar places.
Since there are a number of players who became familiar faces back in familiar places at some point in their career, its time for the sixth instalment of this series! For those who are unfamiliar with the topic, I’m taking a look back at players who returned to teams that they’re usually most closely associated with, after stints elsewhere. While many big names never had a proper reunion with their former clubs until after they retired, others did don the same jersey once again (or an updated version of it). The same goes for players who weren’t stars, but still noteworthy names that we recall.
Of course, sometimes we forget about their return stints, especially if they were brief and towards the end of their career, and there was no hoopla of an “official” farewell tour. As I’ve said before, one way to recall these familiar faces being back in familiar places is to fire up an old video game, and see them there in the rosters. It’s why I’m looking at these examples through the lens of basketball video games, on top of them being what we’re all about here at the NLSC. Let’s take a look back…way back…
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #428 of the NLSC Podcast!
We had a lot of fun revisiting NBA Live 06 PC recently, using the last NLSC roster to play with the Dream Team and updated Decade All-Stars. We did spy a couple of oversights though, leading to the temptation to pick up the old tools and fix them. Indeed, the lure to mod old favourites remains strong! Some recent events prompt us to comment on one of our pet peeves: bewildering Dislikes on YouTube videos. Rumours of a possible sale or merger for EA have been making the rounds, so we weigh in with our thoughts on the situation. We also catch up on the latest from the 1995 MyLEAGUE in NBA 2K19, and reflect on the immersive nature of retro season mods. Meanwhile, NBA 2K14 MyCAREER has produced the worst virtual NBA Finalists either of us have ever encountered.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:57 — 53.9MB)
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!
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #427 of the NLSC Podcast!
We’ve been freshening up our retro basketball gaming with mods from the archives, as Lutz’s Champs Roster allowed us to re-create a classic Celtics highlight in NBA Live 98 PC! We also played NBA Live 2004 PC with a camera mod that’s made it difficult to return to the default broadcast view. Responding to an interesting listener question, we discuss whether adopting a similar idea to Dynamic DNA could benefit tendencies and roster quality in NBA 2K. As we catch up on the latest news from our NBA 2K19 MyLEAGUE and NBA 2K14 MyCAREER games, we marvel at the stories that can be told through gameplay and results alone. We also reflect on a truly shocking award snub.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:18:34 — 54.3MB)
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!
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 players who only played a single season in the NBA, but ended up being regular starters.
On top of the players that have just one appearance in the NBA – “cups of coffee“, as Basketball Reference labels them – there are many players who spent just a single season in the league. While this is still a tremendous accomplishment, it may be surprising, not to mention disappointing for seemingly promising prospects. Usually, these players only appeared in a handful of games, playing sparingly. You generally wouldn’t expect them to be starters, at least outside of a game or two when injuries opened up a rare opportunity.
Surprisingly, several single season players were starters for a respectable chunk of their only NBA campaigns. For the purposes of compiling the most interesting and relevant list – i.e. not just including anyone who played one season and started a few games – I’ve set the cut-off at starting in at least 20% of their appearances. That might still seem generous, but considering that most single season players have ridden the bench, it represents some regular forays into the starting five. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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