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 things that only appeared in basketball video games.

One of the goals of sim games such as NBA 2K and NBA Live back in the day has been to represent the league as realistically and with as much detail as possible. It’s something that games have been able to achieve with greater success as technology has improved, from deeper modes to regular roster updates. To that end, throughout the years we’ve generally been able to point out things that are missing from video games. That includes aspects of the real NBA that haven’t ever appeared on the virtual hardwood, for one reason or another.

Sometimes though, it’s been the other way around, with games including things that we don’t end up seeing in real life. I’m not talking about the over the top action of the arcade games, or the fictional content that we occasionally see in sim titles. There was a reason to include these things in games, but various circumstances prevented them from occurring in reality. As such, basketball video games have captured snapshots of What Ifs, and what would’ve been if not for an unusual turn of events. Some of them look like mistakes – and indeed, they may be roughly implemented in certain cases – but there was originally a need for them. Instead, they became interesting oddities.

1. 1999 Philadelphia All-Star Court

The 1999 lockout wasn’t the NBA’s first labour dispute, but it was definitely the most destructive. Weeks of games were cancelled, resulting in the shortest season in league history. When the action finally got underway, the extended break and abbreviated offseason and training camp led to some ugly basketball early on. The stoppage also contributed to the premature decline and downfall of players like Shawn Kemp and Vin Baker. And of course, with the shorter schedule, the planned All-Star Weekend in Philadelphia needed to be cancelled. The logo for the 1999 event had already been unveiled, but we never got to see the stars balling on a court bearing that branding.

Well, not in real life, anyway! You can actually find the 1999 Philadelphia All-Star court in NBA Live 99 and NBA in the Zone ’99. Notably, exhibition All-Star games in NBA Live 99 are played on the 1998 All-Star court in New York, but the Three-Point Shootout and All-Star Game in Season mode feature the updated floor and location. As for NBA in the Zone ’99, it has a dedicated All-Star Game mode along with the Three-Point Shootout and Dunk Contest. Even though none of those events took place and the 1999 Philadelphia All-Star branding was ultimately reworked for the 2002 Weekend, NBA in the Zone ’99 preserves those original midseason plans.

(Note: The above paragraph has been edited since the original posting to accurately describe the implementation of the 1999 All-Star court in NBA Live 99. Thanks to Pep for the correction!)

2. Original Schedules in Seasons That Lost Games

On the subject of lockouts and things that only appeared in video games as a result of them, that naturally includes the original season schedules. In the real 1999 season, we didn’t get to see the Utah Jazz open the year against fellow Western Conference powerhouse and eventual champion San Antonio Spurs. Instead, they tipped it off against the post-Last Dance Chicago Bulls, in what is undoubtedly one of the saddest NBA Finals rematches the regular season has ever seen! The original schedule is still playable in games, though. The 82-game season option in NBA Live 99, NBA Jam 99, and the aforementioned NBA in the Zone ’99, still uses the original 1999 schedule.

As an aside, NBA in the Zone ’99 included the new 50-game schedule, and it was also patched into the PC version of NBA Live 99. Once again though, if you want to play what would’ve been, you can do so by selecting the 82-game option. The 1999 season titles weren’t the last to be affected by a lockout as NBA 2K12 likewise had to launch with final 2011 season rosters, and an 82-game schedule that would be tossed out and replaced by a 66-game campaign once the labour dispute was resolved. In hindsight, given that the league dictates release dates, it’s odd that games weren’t pushed back in light of those lockouts. Of course, they ended up with interesting content as a result.

3. Voided Trades & Signings

Basketball video games have featured plenty of phantom stints, as I’ve covered in my Friday Five articles over the years. However, while those players never suited up in a season or Playoff game for specific teams in real life, they were nevertheless officially on the roster at some point, thus their presence isn’t an inaccuracy. Also, while those phantom stints are interesting, they aren’t necessarily uncommon, as demonstrated by the fact I’ve been able to write 21 articles on the topic! Conversely, voided trades and signings are far rarer than players briefly being members of a team on paper. It’s even rarer for those – shall we say, exorcised phantom stints – to be captured in any games.

It has happened though! Yes, I’m going to cite two of my favourite examples here. The fourth revision of the arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition features the cancelled Robert Horry for Sean Elliott trade between the Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons. It’s either half-completed or half-reversed, as they’re still wearing their old jerseys and erroneously have each other’s portraits. As for voided signings, Michael Redd is on the Dallas Mavericks in NBA Live 2003 PC. Since the roster cut-off date passed while the Milwaukee Bucks were still dragging their feet on matching the offer for their restricted free agent, the game features Redd on the “wrong” team.

4. Players That Ended Up Never Playing in the NBA

Just because you wind up never tallying a single minute in an official NBA game, it doesn’t mean that you can’t end up in an NBA-licensed video game! When it comes to players who have appeared in more video games than actual NBA games, there are some fascinating stories. One of my favourites is JamesOn Curry, who technically has the shortest NBA career with 3.9 seconds of court time in his lone NBA contest. Mind you, at least Curry actually played in a game that counted! A number of second round picks (and a few first rounders), as well as training camp signees, have been on rosters long enough to be included in games, but were released before they could even debut.

There’s Cory Hightower, a Flint, Michigan basketball legend and promising prospect who was drafted in 2000, but never made it beyond training camp. You can find him in NBA Live 2002 though, albeit with a generic face and misspelled first name. Peter Cornell is another player from that era who was signed long enough to appear on the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic in NBA Live 2002 and 2003 respectively, but was cut before the season began. 1999 Knicks Draftee Frederic Weis – the player that was infamously posterised by Vince Carter at the 2000 Olympics – was on the team in Fox Sports NBA Basketball 2000. In short, it’s a long list with some fascinating tales.

5. Full 2020 Season & Regular Playoffs

Whereas NBA Live 99, NBA Jam 99, and NBA 2K12 include schedules that were never played due to games lost at the beginning of the season, NBA 2K20 features a schedule that wasn’t completed as planned! That is of course due to the shutdown on March 11th 2020 as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While a plan to restart play was approved on June 4th – six years ago yesterday – the rest of the 2020 season was obviously anything but normal! 22 teams played eight more games to determine Playoff seeding, all in the NBA Bubble in Orlando. The NBA Finals took place in October, and then the 2021 season started in December following a brief offseason.

None of this is reflected in NBA 2K20. Whether you’re playing MyLEAGUE or MyCAREER, you can play a full 82-game schedule with teams both travelling and hosting games in their cities as normal. Modders re-created the Bubble, but it wasn’t added in any official updates. I don’t blame the developers for not doing that. I can only imagine how hard it would’ve been to implement those changes to the season post-release, compared to the NBA Live 99 and NBA 2K12 patches that accounted for the lockouts. Besides, it’s kind of nice that NBA 2K20 preserves an image of what we were expecting to see pre-COVID, including a championship without an asterisk.

OK, OK, that was cheap ragebait for Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James fans! In all seriousness though, what are some other things – events, stints, branding – that only appeared in basketball video games for one reason or another? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.