Wayback Wednesday: 90s Teams in NBA Live 2002

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 revisiting NBA Live 2002, and creating some makeshift 90s teams.

Minimalist modding has become a staple of my retro gaming. It’s a way to indulge nostalgia in multiple ways: the mechanics and aesthetics of my chosen game, the teams that I assemble, and the process of modding. I do also enjoy simply playing with the default rosters, or a roster update set in the same season as the game, for a more authentic step back in time. However, the creativity of minimalist modding so often steers me towards discovering what I can do with the content that’s available in any game that I’ve chosen to revisit.

In games such as NBA 2K6 and NBA Live 10, it’s difficult to go back to the 90s with any makeshift classic teams, at least without creating a bunch of players. After all, by that point, most the stars and role players who were active in the 90s had retired. Not all of the big names had signed on to be Legends around the time of NBA 2K6, and NBA Live 10 doesn’t have any historical teams or players at all. However, since NBA Live 2002 came out closer to the 90s and includes several stars from that decade, is it possible to cobble together some retro teams? Let’s take a look back…way back…

This isn’t actually the first time that I’ve tried to assemble a roster of 90s teams in NBA Live 2002. A little over a decade ago, when I first started to experiment with PCSX2, I attempted to roll back the rosters to the 1997 season. I even sent the file to JaoSming so that he could play with them and stream it on Twitch! Even then, I was beginning to recognise the personal significance that NBA Live 2002 held, being the game that I was playing in my final year of high school. Entering a new stage of life, I already felt some melancholic nostalgia for the NBA of just a few years prior. Indeed, it’s why I created a 1996 season roster mod for the PC version of NBA Live 2001.

Well, that and my enthusiasm for NBA Live 96 PC, of course! In any event, there’s so much nostalgia wrapped up in NBA Live 2002 for me that it only makes sense to try my hand at reverting the teams to some point in the 90s. Once again, my first instinct was the 1997 campaign. Not only is it one of my all-time favourite NBA seasons, but thanks to the team signing an aging Robert Parish, it’s also the only 90s Bulls team that has eight players in the default rosters of NBA Live 2002. Thanks to the absences of Ron Harper, Dennis Rodman, and Luc Longley, it’s an extremely makeshift lineup! Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen are in the game though, which is what’s important.

Of course, it’s not just the Bulls who are missing key players. Only five teams can field an authentic 1997 starting lineup with the players in NBA Live 2002’s rosters, namely the Charlotte Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, New York Knicks, and Denver Nuggets. All but two of the remaining 24 teams – the Dallas Mavericks and Milwaukee Bucks – have a starting five comprised of players who were on their roster in 1997, albeit with quite a few players out of position on top of filling in for missing teammates. The teams with the most players still available in NBA Live 2002 are the Knicks (9), Heat (10), and Lakers (11), making them the most fun to play with.

Since we’re talking about accuracy, there’s naturally a catch when it comes to the minimalist modding in a console release such as NBA Live 2002. Only eleven of the teams still have logos and jerseys that are more or less unchanged since the 1997 season, with the Hornets being a borderline example since they slightly revised their classic pinstripe jerseys beginning with the 1998 season. To that end, while a pleasing number of the teams’ lineups facilitate respectably accurate matchups, the branding won’t be authentic across the board. Still, the point of minimalist modding is to make the best of what you’ve got at your disposal, so 1997 rosters are surprisingly viable.

With that being said, the 1997 season has a major drawback as the choice for rolling back the teams in NBA Live 2002 to some point in the 90s. Several of the players from the Class of 1997 were still active in the 2002 season and thus available in the game, but they’re relegated to the Free Agents Pool if we opt for the prior season. Bring the rosters forward a year, and you can include Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, Keith Van Horn, Chauncey Billups, Ron Mercer, Tim Thomas, Bobby Jackson, Antonio Daniels, and several other players. It’s somewhat easier to fill the rosters, or at least create the actual starting lineups, when you re-create the 1998 season instead.

Not surprisingly – though still somewhat ironically, given the significance – modding NBA Live 2002’s rosters to reflect the season of The Last Dance doesn’t do much to celebrate the Chicago Bulls. In fact, with the loss of Jason Caffey to the Golden State Warriors, they end up running with a very small ball lineup indeed! It helps the rest of the league however, as every team (including the Bulls) has at least six real players from their 1998 rosters, and starting fives that can work even if they’re not exactly ideal. To that point, 1998 is the earliest you can roll back NBA Live 2002’s rosters and still have every team field a viable lineup, without creating any missing players.

On top of that, some of the new branding that teams adopted for the 1998 season was still in use as of 2002, leading to more accuracy in a minimalist project. More than half of the league – 17 teams to be precise – has logos and jerseys that are suitable for a 1998 season roster. Combine that with the higher number of teams with deeper rosters and authentic starting lineups (give or take a player), and you can set up quite a few matchups where you won’t be distracted by glaring inaccuracies. Again, while minimalist modding is about accepting limitations, it’s always more fun when you can cobble together something with more authenticity, so 1998 is the superior choice.

Although I haven’t yet spent the time and energy to do it, minimalist modding can also include adding missing players using the in-game functionality, making the most of the options that are available. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox version of NBA Live 2002 allowed for 50 created players. That isn’t enough to create a complete 1997 or 1998 roster, but it would allow for the most important missing players to be added, perhaps with a focus on the Playoff teams. Once again, that’s the beauty of minimalist mods: they’re different enough to be fun, but they don’t require 100% accuracy in their details. It’s doing as much as possible with the content and options that are on hand.

Who to create? How about: Dennis Rodman, Luc Longley, Ron Harper, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, Jeff Hornacek, Rik Smits, Detlef Schrempf, Joe Dumars, Hersey Hawkins, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Isaiah Rider, Rex Chapman, Kevin Johnson, Rony Seikaly, Jayson Williams, Doug West, Johnny Newman, Andrew Lang, Roy Rogers, Blue Edwards, Lee Mayberry, Pooh Richardson, Darrick Martin, Dennis Scott, Malik Sealy, John Williams, Chris Mullin, Gheorghe Muresan, Mark Price, B.J. Armstrong, Terry Mills, Otis Thorpe, Ricky Pierce, Dale Ellis, Derek Harper, A.C. Green, Erick Strickland, Bobby Phills, Dino Radja, Dee Brown, and Tyrone Corbin.

Creating those 42 players would allow for accurate starting lineups and eight-man rotations in 1997 and 1998 season rosters in NBA Live 2002. You could also flesh out some of the most popular teams by filling the last eight created player slots with the likes of Eddie Johnson, Chris Morris, Nate McMillan, Michael Cage, Jaren Jackson, Rick Mahorn, and Terry Cummings, as well as Anthony Johnson who missed the roster cut-off. Obviously you can substitute a few players as necessary for deeper rosters for your chosen year – I’m trying to cover both 1997 and 1998 with those suggestions – but the point is that 50 created players is actually enough to work with.

While I’ve focused on a makeshift retro season roster here, it would also be possible to create an assortment of classic teams from the 90s in NBA Live 2002. The 2002 branding and lack of retro jerseys limits our options as far as authentic aesthetics, but strictly focusing on players, NBA Live 2002 can facilitate some teams from as far back as the mid 90s. The minimum eight-man rosters aren’t always feasible without creating a player or two, but the 1994 Lakers, 1995 Knicks, 1995 Nuggets, and 1996 Magic are just some of the teams that have viable lineups, especially with the Legends Pool also at our disposal. It’s just a matter of ignoring some of the incorrect jerseys!

Indeed, if inaccurate jerseys aren’t a problem and you’re willing to spend some time putting all of those 50 created player slots to use, then you’ll find that you can create several teams from throughout the 90s in NBA Live 2002. That includes iconic NBA Finals showdowns such as every Chicago Bulls championship matchup, as well as the Houston Rockets’ back-to-back title clashes with the New York Knicks and Orlando Magic. If you stick to only creating the most important players where necessary and choose your teams wisely so that journeymen don’t need to be in too many places at once, you could certainly create a full league of 90s retro teams in NBA Live 2002.

I might just take a shot at that sometime, but for now, the tinkering that I’ve done has at least made it clear that NBA Live 2002 can facilitate several minimalist modding projects involving 90s teams. Should I find myself on another retro kick with the game, I’m sure I’ll explore them further. In the meantime, it was satisfying to indulge that multi-level nostalgia: my time with NBA Live 2002, 90s NBA, a significant time in my life, and yes, even my earlier attempts at rolling back the teams! I’m all about revisiting all-time favourites as they are, but if you have the time and inclination to try some minimalist modding, I can attest to it being an incredibly rewarding experience.

Back to the 90s in NBA Live 2002

The post Wayback Wednesday: 90s Teams in NBA Live 2002 appeared first on NLSC.