NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
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 lockout rosters that were found in NBA 2K12 at launch.
NBA 2K12 wasn’t the first game with rosters affected by a lockout. Due to their early release, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive versions of NBA Live 96 had to launch with 1995 season rosters (and a workaround to add missing players, as well as an expansion draft). NBA Live 99 was also affected by a lockout, though the PC version did receive a 1999 season roster update on top of the fixes provided by an official patch. A combination of an earlier release and the extremely brief lockout of 1996 caused NBA Full Court Press to feature the previous campaign’s rosters.
Those are just some of the most prominent examples. The lockouts of 1995, 1996, and 1998 affected a handful of other games released around the same time as those titles, as naturally everyone’s hands were tied by the same restrictions of a labour stoppage. However, there were a few differences with the lockout rosters of NBA 2K12. On top of only one other game being affected that year, it was an issue that could now be resolved post-launch across all platforms, not just on PC. There were also some new challenges, particularly after online support ended. Let’s take a look back…way back…
The 2011 NBA lockout went into effect at the beginning of the offseason – July 1st – and officially ended on December 8th after an agreement was reached on November 26th. In the interim, NBA 2K12 was released in October, and as with previous games affected by a lockout, it had to launch with the previous year’s rosters. Fortunately, the game wasn’t devoid of new content. It replaced NBA 2K11’s Jordan Challenge with NBA’s Greatest, which celebrated 15 Legends and added new classic teams. NBA’s Greatest was obviously in 2K’s plans irrespective of a lockout occurring, but as that did indeed happen, it proved to be an effective contingency plan for fresh content.
Furthermore, it was genuinely enjoyable! NBA’s Greatest was a fantastic follow up to the Jordan Challenge, expanding the historical content beyond MJ’s teams while also going all out with retro presentation. It also came at a time when the key demographic was more nostalgic for those eras, not to mention far more respectful of NBA history. Even so, it couldn’t completely alleviate the downside of NBA 2K12 launching with 2011 season rosters owing to the lockout. Not everyone was interested in the mode, and most gamers still wanted to start Association and My Player games with brand new rosters. NBA’s Greatest could only keep a portion of gamers hooked for so long.
So, let’s take a look at those lockout rosters in vanilla NBA 2K12! Although they could be referred to as final 2011 season rosters, they do differ from the last official update for NBA 2K11, which was accurate as of June 16th 2011. If you look at the list of 2011 season transactions over on Basketball Reference, you’ll see moves made after that date. As I’m sure most fans know, while the season is obviously effectively over after the NBA Finals, the period between the last Finals game – including the Draft – is still considered the same campaign. As such, any Draft day trades and other moves are listed as occurring during that season, instead of the forthcoming offseason.
To that end, much as vanilla NBA Live 99 gave us a sneak peak of the upcoming season with a few moves that occurred before the 1998 lockout, NBA 2K12 set the table with some notable last minute transactions in 2011. These include the Charlotte Bobcats acquiring Corey Maggette from the Milwaukee Bucks, J.J. Hickson being traded from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Sacramento Kings, and the three-team trade that saw Andre Miller return to the Denver Nuggets and Raymond Felton end up with the Portland Trail Blazers. The swap of Brad Miller for Jonny Flynn and a future pick between the Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves was also included.
All of those players did end up playing for the teams they were sent to once the 2012 season finally got underway. However, Rudy Fernandez wound up with a phantom stint as the result of the Blazers trading him to the Dallas Mavericks during the Draft. After the lockout was lifted, Fernandez was traded again to the Nuggets; a move that was reflected in an official update. Meanwhile, John Salmons became a familiar face back in a familiar place in Sacramento. Of course, the deal that ended up having the biggest impact – the San Antonio Spurs sending George Hill to the Indiana Pacers for the rights to Kawhi Leonard – is only half-done in the rosters of vanilla NBA 2K12!
Players who retired but were still on a roster at the end of the 2011 season were also removed. That means you won’t find Jason Williams in Orlando. Speaking of Magic alumni, Shaquille O’Neal was removed from the Celtics’ roster. Meanwhile, Jarron Collins is no longer with the Blazers, but unlike Shaq and White Chocolate, he’s still available in the Free Agents. Yao Ming, who retired on July 20th after the lockout went into effect, was also removed from NBA 2K12. Brandon Roy and Zydrunas Ilgauskas remain active as they didn’t retire until September 30th and December 10th respectively, though Peja Stojakovic – who retired December 20th – is a Free Agent.
On the subject of Free Agents, the pool is much smaller than the final selection of players in NBA 2K11. Larry Hughes, Stromile Swift, Desmond Mason, and other players who were active in 2010 but retired or were otherwise out of the league come 2011, were removed. Not surprisingly, the selection of Free Agents in NBA 2K11 that hadn’t played in the league since 2008 at the latest were also expunged. With all that in mind, the rosters in NBA 2K12 are certainly new compared to NBA 2K11, though thanks to the lockout, they’re not as different or exciting as they normally would be! We just had to sit tight until the lockout ended to get the most out of NBA 2K12.
Of course, we could start an Association or My Player game if we really wanted to. There are a couple of rookies in the default rosters of NBA 2K12, including Ricky Rubio who finally made the jump to the NBA when he signed on June 17th, prior to the lockout. A class of fictional rookies also allowed My Player to function, taking the place of their real life counterparts in the Rookie Showcase that opens the mode. As I noted when I took a look back at those placeholder rookies however, they’re flagged for removal once you proceed to the start of the 2012 season. As you’d expect, this doesn’t result in a compelling and competitive race for Rookie of the Year honours!
Therefore, while Association and My Player are playable with the default lockout rosters of NBA 2K12, they’re not exactly enjoyable. It was too tempting not to at least dabble with those modes while waiting for the lockout to end and updates to come through, but I’d suggest that most gamers started over once the new rosters arrived. Indeed, this was a necessity in My Player, as pre-patch save files won’t open in an updated game. Considering the work that goes into levelling up a player from their low starting ratings, this certainly wasn’t ideal! On the bright side, in the days before microtransactions and connected online modes, losing progress wasn’t quite as bad.
Unlike the lockout-afflicted games of the 90s, NBA 2K12 had the benefit of official updates being ubiquitous on console as well as PC. Whereas the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions of NBA Live 99 were stuck with rosters finalised between the end of the 1998 NBA Finals and the start of the lockout that shortened the 1999 season to 50 games, all versions of NBA 2K12 would be updated with the Class of 2011, and moves from the abbreviated offseason. Moreover, by that point official roster updates were pushed through automatically upon firing up a game, so there was no need to go hunting for them, as was the case back in the days of NBA Live 99 PC.
Ironically, NBA Live 99 PC is now far easier for retro gamers to update! Although the delivery method for NBA 2K12’s roster updates was certainly convenient while it was still being supported, they’re no longer pushed through following the server shutdown. As such, if you didn’t download them back then or have deleted that data since, you’ll be stuck with the default rosters and an inferior experience in The Association and My Player. Fortunately, preserving the roster updates for the PC version was fairly easy, and you’ll find them in our Downloads database. Unfortunately for retro gamers and collectors, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 updates have been harder to track down.
Admittedly, a lot of people may shrug and wonder why that’s such a big problem. Not everyone is interested in retro gaming, after all. Many gamers do like to revisit their all-time favourites though, and it’s unfortunate when they’re left in a less enjoyable state due to missing important updates that are now tough to find. This is still an issue with recent releases; in fact, it’s become harder to back up and share those updates for the console versions, meaning that a game that’s only a few years old can easily be stuck with default rosters! Even with NBA 2K on PC, you need the foresight to have backed up the necessary files if you want to preserve all the roster and tuning updates.
Getting back to the 2012 roster updates for NBA 2K12, the developers made the wise decision of regularly updating the game once the lockout ended, rather than waiting until opening night to release one major update. The first update featured the initial wave of player movement, including several free agent signings and players who were released using the amnesty clause. Four rookies were added in that first roster, namely top pick Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, Kenneth Faried, and Jordan Hamilton, with more to come as they signed with their teams. By the time the season was underway, we had proper rosters to begin our games in both The Association and My Player.
Another noteworthy update in that first roster for NBA 2K12 was a new name for a former star player. On September 16th 2011, Ron Artest officially changed his name to Metta World Peace (he’s since changed it again to Metta Sandiford-Artest). While his new moniker was reflected in roster listings and on his jersey, the announcer audio still referred to him as either “Artest” or “Number 15”. A subsequent update added PA announcer and commentary audio for “Metta World Peace”, though the anecdotes that are recalled during gameplay still refer to him as “Ron Artest”. Presumably this is due to them being recorded as full sentences rather than clips that are then pieced together.
With NBA Live on hiatus following the disaster that was NBA Elite 11, NBA 2K12 was the only sim game whose rosters were impacted by the 2011 lockout. However, the league shutdown did affect another title that year: NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. Of course, NBA Jam and other arcade basketball games have often featured rosters that are outdated, partially updated, or ultimately end up spanning multiple seasons. Still, the game did receive a few roster updates reflecting player movement and adding rookies, as well as Jeremy Lin in the wake of Linsanity. They were awesome to see, though NBA 2K12 was undeniably in much greater need of the 2012 season updates.
As I’ve grown fond of saying, basketball video games are interactive almanacs. They capture a snapshot of the league at a specific point in time, preserving memorable lineups, weird stints, phantom stints, and other interesting trivia. The rosters of any game released during a lockout depict the league in limbo, and NBA 2K12 is no exception. Between the impact outdated rosters and an absent rookie class had on The Association and My Player, and the loss of updates over time, NBA 2K12 is arguably the game that was affected the most by a lockout. If you do still have those updates however, you can revisit a campaign that turned out alright following its delayed start.
(Well, aside from Derrick Rose’s injury, at any rate…)
