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Wayback Wednesday: Familiar Faces Back in Familiar Places

Wayback Wednesday: Familiar Faces Back in Familiar Places

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at some examples of familiar faces returning to familiar places, and the games where we see those stints.

In an ongoing Wayback Wednesday series, I’ve been taking a look back at familiar faces in strange places; in other words, well-known players and their stints with teams that are less talked about and usually weird to see, and the video games where those stints were represented. This week, I’m inverting the idea and taking a look back at familiar faces back in familiar places; in other words, well-known players who made a return to a team they’re most closely associated with, after leaving to play elsewhere in the NBA.

On the surface, this may not seem as interesting as seeing familiar faces in strange places. However, these return stints are interesting in their own right, as they have their own stories. Some of them were brief and essentially retirement tours, while others lasted longer and saw more success. Oddly enough, it can also feel strange to see a player back in an old uniform after we get used to seeing them in a new one. As I like to say, basketball games act as interactive almanacs for these stints of note, so let’s use them to take a look back…way back…

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Wayback Wednesday: Familiar Faces in Strange Places (Part 2)

Wayback Wednesday: Familiar Faces in Strange Places (Part 2)

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at some more NBA players who became familiar faces in strange places, and those stints in video games.

As I said in my first Wayback Wednesday article covering this topic, there’s definitely something oddly fascinating in seeing familiar faces in strange places. We often claim that we wish that those stints didn’t happen or that we could forget all about them, yet they’re burned into our memories. It’s hard to forget something that looks strange and out of place, and that certainly describes the image of players wearing the uniform of a team other than the one we associate them with the most. The time capsule-like nature of video games helps us to remember – and also replay – these unusual stints.

I mentioned that there were more examples than the ten I covered in my first article, and to that end, I have another ten to share today. This time, not all of the players were perennial All-Stars, but they are familiar names who ended up in strange places. In fact, a couple of these stints were so brief that the only way to experience them again on the virtual hardwood is to load very specific roster saves – assuming that you still have them, of course – or by recreating them. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Wayback Wednesday: The Cancelled Trade in NBA Jam TE

Wayback Wednesday: The Cancelled Trade in NBA Jam TE

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at a cancelled trade that made its way into the arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition.

We’ve just passed the trade deadline for the 2020 season, and saw a flurry of activity. In the wake of all the deals that went down, several players have been cut, many of whom will no doubt attract some interest on the open market. All of these transactions will be taken care of in NBA 2K20, which receives regular official roster updates. We’re also able to update rosters ourselves, and that’s something we’ve obviously been doing for years in our community, for both NBA Live and NBA 2K. Of course, over a decade ago, official roster updates weren’t as common.

If we go back even further, we’ll find a lot of games that didn’t receive any roster updates post-release, as well as titles that didn’t have roster customisation features. This was true of NBA Jam and its sequel NBA Jam Tournament Edition, which were stuck with out-of-date rosters once trades and signings occurred. Well, sort of. There were changes in different revisions and releases of the NBA Jam games, and on at least one occasion, an update resulted in an error due to a cancelled trade. It’s an interesting situation, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games

The Friday Five

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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