Tag Archives: Teams

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 where a number of NBA Legends ideally should have retired.

With the 2026 NBA season underway, some of the biggest names in the league are continuing lengthy careers. LeBron James is embarking on a record-setting 23rd NBA campaign, which indeed may not be his last. Stephen Curry is in his 17th year, while former teammate Kevin Durant is in his 18th (though it would’ve been his 19th if not for missing the entire 2020 season). Of course, only Curry is still with the team that he began his NBA career with. As such, he’s the most likely of the three to retire with his original club, and having never left to boot.

Mind you, while it sometimes seems that superstars move around more often than they used to, even decades ago future Hall of Famers were wrapping up their storied careers on different teams. That’s how we’ve come to see so many familiar faces in strange places! To that end, while we focus on the accomplishments of those Legends and where they were in their prime more so than we do their weird final stints, we may still wish that they retired in the “right” place. Thanks to basketball video games, we can see what that would’ve looked like. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #580 of the NLSC Podcast!

Which teams have we most enjoyed watching, and indeed putting on the virtual hardwood, throughout all of our years of basketball fandom? This week, we join the community in naming our favourite teams from our favourite franchises, our favourite teams from franchises that aren’t our chosen clubs, and our favourite bad teams; bad of course being a relative term in some cases! This leads us to reminisce about a wide variety of teams, from NBA Champions and perennial contenders to flash-in-the-pan squads, basement dwellers, and memorable underdogs, as well as the lineups that made them such fun teams to use in basketball video games for one reason or another.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:58 — 40.9MB)

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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!

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 pet peeves I have when it comes to NBA branding.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from changing up the design and layout of the NLSC from time to time in the twenty three years that I’ve been running the site, it’s that you can’t please everyone. No matter what improvements there might be, there’ll always be a couple of comments demanding that we change it back. As frustrating as that is to read, I get it. After all, aversion to change is common, and I’m as guilty of it as anyone else! New aesthetics can be jarring and may take time to get used to, no matter how nice they are, or how much a fresh look was needed.

This is something to keep in mind whenever NBA teams introduce new branding. Of course, sometimes those new designs leave us wondering what the people responsible were thinking! We also tend to get attached to certain logos and jerseys – especially the ones that were in use when we first got into the NBA – so personal preference will lead us to balk at certain branding. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re right or wrong, but we are all entitled to our opinions on the looks that teams sport. To that point, I definitely have some pet peeves when it comes to NBA branding past and present. These are the five that spring to mind as the ones that I find the most irritating.

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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 teams that were fun to use in video games, despite being unsuccessful in real life.

Unless you’re a diehard fan of them – or looking for a challenge – you’re probably not going to choose to play with a bad team in a video game. Mediocre teams can be more enjoyable as long as they have some talent at their disposal, but they’re generally not our first choice either. We tend to gravitate towards the teams with the top stars and talent, with whom we can win games and make spectacular plays. They’re far more appealing choices in franchise modes as well, since their deeper lineups facilitate a wider variety of trades, without having to completely gut the rotation.

Of course, many unsuccessful teams throughout the years have been much better on paper. Injuries may have derailed their season, or their players might’ve been a poor fit with no chemistry. Some years the competition is particularly tough, or they’re a young team that’s still developing. Whatever the case, these teams are actually fun and interesting to play with in video games, despite their lack of success in real life. In the hands of gamers, they can overachieve well beyond the most optimistic predictions. Here are five unsuccessful teams – which for the purposes of this list, means missing the Playoffs – that were exciting and intriguing options to play with in video games.

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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 defunct and relocated teams that are fun to play with in older games.

If it isn’t obvious from producing a weekly Wayback Wednesday feature, as well as playing old favourites with Dee4Three on Parsec and discussing them on the NLSC Podcast, I love revisiting basketball games from multiple eras, and bringing them back into my gaming rotation. Sometimes I get on an extended kick with a game, as is the case with NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4, while other titles I just like to throw on for an exhibition or two. Whether I’m playing solo or with Dee, those exhibition games always raise an important question: who to play with, and against?

Obviously, our favourite teams – the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics – will always be an option. Of course, there are some Bulls and Celtics teams throughout time that aren’t as fun to play with, while other teams are far more intriguing. However, more and more, I find myself being drawn to the defunct, relocated, or re-branded teams in older basketball video games. 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 is a list of five more players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

It’s time for Part 2 of a topic I’ve previously covered here in The Friday Five: players who appeared on certain teams in video games, but not in real life. As I said last time, one of the fun parts of revisiting old games is seeing a snapshot of the NBA as it was when they were current, and recalling players’ forgotten stints with various teams. In doing so, you can also discover oddities such as players appearing on the rosters of teams that they never actually suited up for in real life. Although these look like mistakes, there are several reasons why it happens.

As I noted in my previous article, these include early roster cut-off dates and deals made later in the offseason, deals that are voided, and injuries that put players on the shelf for the entire time they’re with a particular team. Roster cut-off dates aren’t an issue anymore thanks to official updates – and we could always make updates to the rosters ourselves – but due to the aforementioned circumstances, some players will still only ever suit up for a particular team on the virtual hardwood, while being little more than a name on the roster/payroll in real life. Once again, I find trivia like that to be quite interesting due to the different back stories, so here are five more examples!

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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 five players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

I’ve mentioned that one of the fun aspects of revisiting old games for my Wayback Wednesday features is that they’re a snapshot of the NBA at the time. It’s interesting how it can jog your memory when you fire up an old title, see a familiar name, and think “Oh, I forgot he played for them!” For me it happens with a lot of journeyman who I recall from the 90s and early 2000s, and even a couple of stars who had brief stints with unusual teams at the end of their careers. With the way that some players change teams, it can be difficult to immediately find them in older titles.

Of course, the snapshot that games can provide of the NBA of yesteryear isn’t always completely accurate. Older titles had roster cut-off dates and no official updates, so players would end up on teams they were cut or traded from by the time a title was released. Other players might indeed spend time on a team’s roster during the season, but never actually play a single game for them due to injury or other factors, thus only appearing for them on the virtual hardwood. As with the players who have appeared in more video games than NBA games, I find it to be an interesting trivia note. Let’s look at five players whose stints with teams only came on the virtual hardwood!

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