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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 fictional rookies that are found in the original rosters of unpatched NBA 2K12.
Fortunately, there haven’t been too many lockouts in the history of the NBA. To that point, only two of them have ever ended up cancelling games, and we’ve yet to see an entire season lost to an unresolved labour dispute. We have seen lockouts affect video games however, whenever they’ve been released as scheduled despite a stoppage. The most obvious effect is that those games have launched with previous season rosters, rather than including the offseason moves and a new rookie class that we normally expect to see. This in turn has presented some issues, and necessary workarounds.
For example, the 16-bit version of NBA Live 96 included the expansion draft, as well as codes to easily replace Roster Players with rookies (and Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and assorted Legends!). Only one player in NBA Live 99 – Peja Stojakovic – could win Rookie of the Year in Season mode, though the official PC patch did add the Class of 1998, and any created rookies were also eligible for the award. NBA Full Court Press also received an official roster update. And then, there’s NBA 2K12, and its fictional placeholder rookies that stood in for the Class of 2011 until the lockout was lifted and a patch was released. Let’s take a look back…way back…
With the 2011 NBA lockout going into effect on July 1st and lasting until December 8th, an early October release for NBA 2K12 meant that it would be devoid of any offseason transactions, as well as the Class of 2011 rookies. In addition to pledging to update the game with 2012 season rosters as soon as it was possible, Visual Concepts made the excellent decision to follow up the original Jordan Challenge with NBA’s Greatest. With the league in limbo and no new lineups to play with, it only made sense to continue to celebrate NBA history by expanding the historical content. The retro presentation, from overlays to audio and video filters, was the icing on the cake.
Of course, even though NBA 2K12 launched with final 2011 season rosters owing to the lockout, the game still allowed us to jump into the 2012 season with franchise and career mode play. As such, in an unpatched NBA 2K12, you’ll see a rather interesting oddity; namely, an 82-game schedule that was never actually used! Needless to say however, the far more crucial issue as far as authenticity was the lack of the Class of 2011 rookies. It was all well and good to play exhibition games with 2011 rosters and the NBA’s Greatest showdowns, but if you wanted to tip off a new Association or My Player game, then the new rookie crop would be very conspicuous by their absence.
If you browse those original rosters in an unpatched NBA 2K12, you’ll see that they’re basically the same as the final official update for NBA 2K11, aside from a couple of moves that occurred prior to July 1st, the addition of a few players who were hidden, and the removal of retirees such as Shaquille O’Neal. Again, the Class of 2011 rookies aren’t accounted for, so you won’t see Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, and so on, nor any placeholders for them. This remains the case in The Association, thus the Rookie of the Year race is between Ricky Rubio – drafted in 2009, and signed on June 17th 2011 – and some fictional rookies from the D-League.
The presence of Rubio – not unlike Peja Stojakovic in NBA Live 99 – and the use of the fictional D-League rookies, makes The Association viable in vanilla NBA 2K12. It’s nowhere near as fun, though; as I’ve lamented, it’s unfortunate that the console updates are seemingly lost forever now that the servers are offline. Meanwhile, My Player took a different approach. The Association could function with a handful of freshman, but My Player needed a full complement of them in order to stage the Rookie Showcase game, and then hold the 2011 Draft. And so, in a vanilla NBA 2K12, the league in My Player is furnished with fictional Class of 2011 rookies.
In true Roster Player fashion – well, the Roster Players that companies didn’t get into trouble for – none of the stand-ins have recognisable names or faces. Therefore, you may not immediately guess who anyone is supposed to be when you play the Rookie Showcase game. Once you finish the game and proceed through to the Mock Draft however, it’ll become clear who’s who. The Cavaliers will be projected to take point guard Doug Martin, a suitable substitute for Kyrie Irving. Power forward Cliff Davis doesn’t look like Derrick Williams, but that’s who he’s meant to be. Golden State might miss out on Klay Thompson, but sharpshooter George Turner is available.
Despite the legally-distinct names, likenesses, and bio data, all of the major draftees are accounted for in fictional fashion. It’s no coincidence that the Jazz will take a centre named Derrick Gibson third overall, just as they picked Enes Kanter at that spot in real life. Another big man, Nick Brown, will be drafted by the Raptors in place of Jonas Valanciunas. Erik Anderson definitely isn’t a dead ringer for Kemba Walker, but he does allow the Bobcats to select a point guard ninth overall. It’s surprising that the NBA allowed as many similarities as they did here, though it’s not as if 2K was pushing their luck with names like Kyle Irvine, Clay Timmins, and Kevin Waller!
As far as making My Player immediately viable in NBA 2K12 despite the drawback of the lockout, these fictional rookies were a logical solution. However, once you get drafted and begin your NBA career, you’ll notice something peculiar: they’re nowhere to be found! Much like The Association, the Rookie of the Year race will be between your player, Ricky Rubio, and a couple of players who were under contract but didn’t see any action in 2011, such as Robert Vaden. At first, I thought this must be an issue with teams being full. Given that NBA 2K12 launched with final 2011 season rosters, a majority of the teams have the maximum of fifteen players in their default lineup.
Since My Player could be played with custom rosters back then, I tried releasing a bunch of players throughout the league, ensuring that every team had at least two roster spots available. These rosters were definitely taken into a new My Player game – I moved Tracy McGrady to the Hawks and Baron Davis to the Knicks, giving me a couple of points of reference to confirm that – but all of the fictional rookies were still absent. This is actually by design, and it makes sense. It avoids populating the mode with fictional players that can’t be replaced by their real life counterparts, while still allowing gamers to get into a My Player game before a roster update came through.
I’d suggest that most gamers did indeed prefer not having those placeholders in the league, especially since the new roster wouldn’t update any My Player games already in progress. At the same time, the lack of a rookie class beyond your avatar, Ricky Rubio, and potentially a couple of other players, left the experience extremely bare. My Player may have been playable in vanilla NBA 2K12 thanks to those fictional rookies appearing during the introductory stages, but it wasn’t exactly enjoyable yet. There wasn’t much incentive to dive into it at launch! Sadly, if you’re missing the updated rosters on console, you’re stuck with that very limited experience today.
Interestingly, while there hasn’t been a lockout since 2011, NBA 2K21 also ended up having to launch with fictional rookies. Due to the pandemic shutdown, NBA 2K21 was released while the delayed 2020 Playoffs were still underway. If you began a MyCAREER game with the original rosters, your MyPLAYER would be joined by a contingent of fictional freshmen. Unlike in NBA 2K12 however, these players did actually participate in games, and weren’t just there to facilitate the Draft at the end of The Prelude. Of course, there had been some significant changes to the design of, and overall approach to, the career mode experience between NBA 2K12 and NBA 2K21.
Given that more and more MyCAREER gamers are taking part in the online team play modes and just using the NBA games to level up quicker, there’s a need to be on the grind from Day One. Conversely, My Player in NBA 2K12 was still all about an offline experience, so gamers could afford to wait until the lockout ended and new rosters came through to start a proper game. MyCAREER has also become a massive money-maker for Take-Two, and the mode is packed with advertising, so NBA 2K21 wasn’t about to discourage gamers from jumping into it right away. That wasn’t an issue in NBA 2K12, which predated all of those greedy recurrent revenue mechanics.
Nevertheless, the requirement of fictional rookies in NBA 2K12 and NBA 2K21 does raise questions about early releases, particularly when there are unusual circumstances such as the lockout and pandemic shutdown. As developer interviews have revealed, release dates are ultimately the NBA’s call. Still, now that microtransactions are such a prominent part of MyCAREER as well as MyTEAM, I doubt that Take-Two would be keen to give up a month or two of potential revenue either. Even with real rookies and updated rosters, getting an early start on MyCAREER can saddle you with some undesirable issues, even though it’s advisable if you’re planning on playing online.
Once again, this wasn’t a concern back in 2011. As for the fictional rookies, once they were replaced in the official rosters, NBA 2K12 My Player functioned as normal. A couple of the placeholders do remain in the Rookie Showcase and Draft though, even with the updated rosters. If you look at where they’re drafted, you’ll notice that they represent the players that didn’t come to the NBA for the 2012 season, such as Jonas Valanciunas and Nikola Mirotic. Appropriately, they aren’t added to the league after the Draft. Again, it’s unfortunate that these updates are long-gone on console, but if you’re on PC, we’ve preserved the official patch and roster in our Downloads section.
The fictional rookies in NBA 2K12 are a prime example of the oddities that you’ll find in games that are missing official patches and content updates, particularly in games that were affected by unusual circumstances such as a lockout. If it’s been a long time since you’ve fired up the vanilla game, and you logged hundreds or indeed thousands of hours following the updates, you may have forgotten about the fictional rookies in NBA 2K12. In fact, it seems I overlooked them when I dabbled with My Player ahead of reviewing the game way back in November 2011! It wasn’t until a community member asked me about those rookies that I thought to investigate them.
I’m glad that I was prompted to delve into the situation, just as I’ve covered the effects of the previous lockouts on games such as NBA Live 96 and NBA Live 99. I can also confirm that my original My Player save, started long before the release of the official title and roster updates, will crash if you try to load it with a patched game; there’s a reason that patch notes have cautioned us that existing save files may no longer work! Of course, it further illustrates how getting an early start on modes like My Player could easily backfire. With the rise of online team play and implementation of Virtual Currency, modern MyCAREER fortunately tends to avoid such compatibility issues.
Mind you, NBA 2K12’s My Player is obviously free of the toxicity and pay-to-enjoy elements that now plague MyCAREER! Back then, even as a 60 Overall, our avatar was given some high ratings in key areas according to their chosen style, and fun was clearly the aim above all. As for the fictional rookies in vanilla NBA 2K12, they may not have been ideal, but with the lockout making the situation difficult, the developers opted for what was the best solution. Those temporary placeholders allowed gamers to at least get a taste of My Player at launch, before the players, owners, and league settled their differences, and properly brought a new season to the virtual hardwood.
