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 another list of five brief stints that were captured for posterity in video games.

Yes, it’s time for another Five that underscores once again that basketball video games end up being interactive almanacs! Last June, I recalled five brief stints that made it into the official rosters of basketball video games, from Rasheed Wallace’s unlikely appearance as an Atlanta Hawk in NBA Ballers to Anfernee Hardaway’s frequently forgotten comeback with the Miami Heat, as seen in NBA 2K7. A combination of late releases, revised editions, and official roster updates have preserved a number of these odd stints for players that we generally picture in a different uniform.

To that point, if we’ve spent a considerable amount of time with a game – especially in the days before official roster updates – we may come to think of these brief stints as lasting much longer than they actually did. That’s definitely the case for me when it comes to at least one of the examples that I’m covering here today. As for the other brief stints, while I do remember them and that they didn’t last long, it’s still thanks to unusual and fortuitous circumstances that they were preserved in the official rosters of video games. Long-time readers will know how much I love trivia like this, so let’s not delay any further; here are five more brief stints that were captured in games!

1. Isaiah Rider, Denver Nuggets (NBA 2K2)

Let’s begin with an example that I discovered while researching players whose brief stints weren’t preserved in any official rosters! Isaiah Rider, 1994 Slam Dunk Champ and versatile wing scorer with one of the best lucky highlights of all-time, was out of the league by the age of 30. The man nicknamed J.R. was still healthy, but off-court problems and clashes with coaches and team management eventually resulted in him burning all of his bridges. After winning a ring with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001 – albeit after being left off the Playoff roster – he latched on with the Denver Nuggets, hoping to rejuvenate his career for a team that was definitely in need of a good scorer.

It proved to be a very brief stint, as Rider was waived on November 20th 2001 after appearing in just ten games. As it stood, his signing came late in the offseason, which meant that Rider was notably absent from NBA Live 2002. This led me to believe that his Nuggets stint didn’t have any official representation. The Rasheed Wallace/NBA Ballers fiasco was certainly a reminder to do my due diligence though, and so upon checking NBA 2K2, I confirmed that Rider’s ultimately short-lived stint in Denver was accounted for. He is on their inactive list by default though, so it’s still quite easy to overlook. In any case, it serves as a reminder of Isaiah Rider’s last run in the NBA.

2. Terry Cummings, New York Knicks (Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside)

When I was researching examples for this follow-up to my previous Five, Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside yielded several examples due to its abnormally late release. In fact, because there were so many of them, I decided I’d simply cover them all for Wayback Wednesday! However, there are a couple that I’d like to highlight, because of the importance of the players. The first is Terry Cummings, who the New York Knicks acquired from the Philadelphia 76ers at the trade deadline in exchange for Herb Williams and Ron Grandison. As I noted in another Wayback Wednesday, Herb would rejoin the Knicks and end up a teammate of a player he was traded for (again).

By the 1998 season, injuries and age had taken their toll on Cummings, and he was no longer the 20 ppg scorer that had made two All-Star teams in the 80s. Still, he was a capable veteran power forward who added some size and scoring up front, which the Knicks were in need of after Patrick Ewing injured his wrist in December and missed the rest of the regular season. Cummings left New York after the season, wrapping up his career with two years in Golden State. The original 1998 rosters in NBA Live 99 do capture this brief stint, but again, thanks to a late release and a roster cut-off date of February 19th – the trade deadline – it’s also in Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside.

3. Chauncey Billups, Toronto Raptors (Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside)

The other brief stint from Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside that I’m covering here is Chauncey Billups’ half season with the Toronto Raptors. Taken third overall by the Boston Celtics in 1997, Billups didn’t exactly impress in his rookie campaign. It was clear that he had skill and potential, but he struggled with his shot, and didn’t dazzle with his playmaking as he later would. As such, while it’s unusual for a lottery pick to be traded in their rookie year, it wasn’t altogether surprising, either. After Kenny Anderson refused to report to the Raptors following a trade from the Portland Trail Blazers, Toronto sent him to Boston in a deal that included Billups and Dee Brown.

Like Terry Cummings’ Knicks stint – and indeed many of the brief stints that occurred during the 1998 season – Billups’ tenure in Toronto can also be seen in NBA Live 99, but was subsequently overwritten by the official patch on PC. Still, it’s fun to have a contemporary game that captures those short-lived and often-overlooked stints from 1998. It’s also interesting to have an interactive reminder of Billups’ early struggles to find his place in the league. After becoming an NBA Finals MVP, an All-Star, and a Hall of Famer, Mr. Big Shot’s journeyman era is the prelude in a triumphant story, rather than the tale of a bust in a Draft best known for the Tim Duncan sweepstakes.

4. Kenny Smith, Detroit Pistons (NBA Live 97)

These days, Kenny Smith is best known as the Inside the NBA analyst without any All-Star appearances, but as Shaquille O’Neal would be inclined to point out, more rings than Charles Barkley. And, while Chuck will certainly joke about Kenny being carried by Hakeem Olajuwon, if he were to be serious about it, I’m sure he’d admit that The Jet did still play an important role in the Houston Rockets’ back-to-back titles. Although he remained their starting point guard through 1996, Smith was losing minutes to Sam Cassell. Though Cassell was sent to the Phoenix Suns in the Charles Barkley trade, Smith perhaps saw the writing on the wall, and signed with Detroit.

You’ll see The Jet on the Pistons in the default rosters of NBA Live 97, but he was gone long before NBA Live 98 was released. With Joe Dumars and Lindsey Hunter sharing point guard duties, Smith was clearly an expendable insurance policy. He was cut loose after only nine games, in which he played a paltry 7.1 mpg. He then signed on with the Magic for six games, before finishing the year with the Nuggets, and retiring in the offseason after being cut by the New Jersey Nets during training camp. It was an abrupt and unceremonious end for a highly-touted amateur who became a fine NBA player, but Smith has found tremendous success in his broadcasting career.

5. Otis Thorpe, Portland Trail Blazers (NBA Live 95, NBA Jam Tournament Edition)

A teammate of Kenny Smith on the 1994 Champion Rockets, and briefly once again on the 1997 Pistons, Otis Thorpe’s later years in the NBA were somewhat nomadic. He had two brief stints during the 1998 season, first with the Vancouver Grizzlies and then the Sacramento Kings – the team with whom he’d begun his NBA career – that were captured in NBA Live 98 PC and Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside respectively. However, it’s his short tenure with Portland that I’ve chosen to focus on. It’s a stint that I often associate with him, due to the fact that it’s where he can be found in NBA Jam Tournament Edition and NBA Live 95 PC, two of my all-time favourite games.

Because the PC versions of NBA Jam TE and NBA Live 95 were both late releases, they accounted for the trade that sent Otis Thorpe to Portland for Clyde Drexler. Being the result of such a memorable and impactful trade makes it a standout stint as much as its brevity, but to get back to a point I made earlier, the fact that I’ve seen Thorpe on the Blazers so often in NBA Jam TE and NBA Live 95 makes it easy to forget that it lasted only 34 games. Despite coming off the bench and only playing around 27 mpg, Thorpe was the third-highest scorer on the Blazers at the end of the season. He was then traded to Detroit in a deal that gave Bill Curley a phantom stint.

Do you remember these brief stints and the video games that they’re captured in? Can you recall any other memorable brief stints that made it into video games that I’ve yet to cover? Let me know in the comments below, 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.