Wayback Wednesday: The End of Franchise Mode in NBA Live 2000

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 reflecting on how we’ve now reached the end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000 in real life.

To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – a classic film that I surprisingly haven’t referenced more often in my various articles – “life moves pretty fast“. That may not sound like a particularly profound piece of wisdom, but it is funny how a date that once seemed so futuristic is suddenly the present. In the 90s, the future draft picks in the 2000s that were being thrown into trades seemed so far away. Of course, back then the Year 2000 sounded incredibly sci-fi in general. Then it arrived, and apart from some very old computers rolling back to 1980 on their calendar, 2000 felt very much like 1999!

Around the turn of the millennium, we received one of the all-time great basketball video games: NBA Live 2000. The crowning achievement of the original NBA Live development team still holds up, especially the PC version which also brought us the first iteration of Franchise mode. Sim heads had been longing for multi-season play, and after NBA Live 99 gave us a small taste of the concept, Franchise in NBA Live 2000 truly delivered the goods. With the ability to play or simulate up to 25 seasons, we could reach the once faraway year of 2024! Let’s take a look back…way back…

Before I dive into that however, I need to reiterate how special it was to finally get that first 25-year Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000. Once again, we’d received a glimpse of multi-season play in NBA Live 99 PC, but it wasn’t the deep experience that we now know as a franchise mode. We could play up to ten seasons in NBA Live 99’s multi-season mode, with players developing and declining throughout the years. Teams would trade players, but there were no contracts and negotiations with free agents. Without the Draft, no new rookies entered the league, which meant Rookie of the Year was a one-time award. Nevertheless, it laid the groundwork for Franchise.

It isn’t exactly fair to compare the original Franchise mode from NBA Live 2000 to what we now have in MyNBA and MyLEAGUE, or even what was soon to come in Dynasty and The Association. It now seems quaint with its simplified salary system, lack of custom Draft Classes, and a more basic set of features. There’s no relocation and rebranding, no sliders and in-depth customisation or commissioner options, and certainly no historical eras! However, you have to remember just how long it took for franchise modes to achieve their current depth, and all of the incremental additions and improvements in between. Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000 truly was special.

Despite the mode’s ability to play well into what was then the distant future, much of the initial appeal was in the present: taking control of a team for the 2000 season, playing through the campaign, and being the GM with the added challenge of the salary cap and teams declining your trade offers. The traditional single Season mode was still available, but many of us had been dreaming of the depth Franchise offered. Even if we were unlikely to get through all 25 seasons, it was a tantalising prospect. I’m guessing no one has ever reached 2024 in NBA Live 2000’s Franchise mode the long way, playing full seasons on 12-minute quarters, but many have probably tried!

Conversely, I expect that many of us simulated through to the end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000 PC, just to see what would happen and how everything would turn out. My cousin and I spent an afternoon doing just that, essentially using Franchise as a management sim. It was fascinating to see the fictional rise and fall of teams in the virtual NBA, and attempt to build a contender that the sim engine would reward with the Larry O’Brien trophy. Many players surprised us by retiring relatively young, or going on to have very lengthy careers. We also discovered a bug, namely that as long as a player is on a roster, their Years Pro will increase, even if they miss a whole year.

Since we’ve reached 2024 for real, I took the time to start a new Franchise in NBA Live 2000, and sim through to the end once again. As you would expect, it’s a wildly different experience 25 years later! Back in 2000, the mode could provide a quarter of a century’s worth of a speculative future; now, we have a complete history to compare it to. Obviously, even without knowing what was to come, certain outcomes felt more likely, or at least plausible, during our simulations all those years ago. The results are certainly fascinating now that we know all of the champions beginning with 2000, as well as the players who became stars or alternatively busts, and when they all retired.

From the beginning of my simulation through to 2024, it was a wild ride. Shaquille O’Neal was the 2000 MVP as in real life, but the Charlotte Hornets defeated the Portland Trail Blazers in five games to win the championship; a huge blow for the Lakers and Glen Rice, considering the trade the previous year! Kevin Willis was the biggest name on the list of retirees at the end of year one. This was quite a reasonable prediction given his age, but of course the real Willis played into his 40s, retiring in 2005 and then making a brief comeback with the Mavericks in 2007. Meanwhile, his teammate Charles Barkley remained healthy, before finally deciding to retire in 2002.

In this timeline, the Shaq and Kobe Lakers didn’t dominate the NBA, at least come the Playoffs. Instead, it was the Sacramento Kings who established a Dynasty, winning four straight championships from 2001 to 2004. This included a five-game victory over my Chicago Bulls in 2003, a surprising return to the championship round after making it back to the Playoffs the previous year. In fact, under my watch, the Bulls went from going 17-65 in 2000 to 35-47 in 2001, and then 55-27 in 2002. Following a second round exit in 2004, the simulation delivered us title number seven in 2005, just seven years after The Last Dance. This made me quite cocky about my GM abilities!

The key to our success in 2005 and continued relevance throughout the decade was the second overall pick in 2000, Debarge Hardy. A 6’5″ shooting guard who sported #98 – perhaps in honour of the great Roster Player – Hardy played 20 seasons and scored 41,704 points to become the new all-time leader. In fact, quite a few players topped the 30,000 point mark, including Kobe Bryant (36,483), Stephon Marbury (30,774), Shareef Abdur-Rahim (30,099), Allen Iverson (33,629), and Tim Duncan (36,796), to name the ones whose final stats I remembered to check. As you might have guessed, AI, Starbury, and Reef enjoyed considerably longer virtual careers.

Incidentally, while Kobe and Shaq never won together, the Mamba did get a ring as a member of the Denver Nuggets in 2009. In this reality, it was Shaq who remained with the Lakers, coincidentally retiring in 2011 after 19 seasons as in real life. The Spurs defeated the Nets 4-2 in the NBA Finals for Tim Duncan’s second ring, albeit in 2006 rather than 2002. Boston finally returned to the Finals and won it all in 2015, a year after Antoine Walker called it a day following a 17-year career in Beantown. I rescued Kobe from the Pistons’ bench in 2016, ensuring that he’d get the minutes to at least challenge the all-time scoring record. He thus retired a Bull at the end of 2017.

Funnily enough, the Lakers won the championship that year. In 2018, the Cavaliers – featuring a player sporting #23 – reached the Finals and defeated the Mavericks in seven games. 2020 brought about the first Lakers-Celtics Finals since 1987, as well as the retirement of the aforementioned all-time leading scorer, Debarge Hardy. Despite Debarge’s departure, my Bulls picked up title number eight in 2021; a culmination of a rebuilding effort as my core aged and players such as Elton Brand and Ron Artest retired. Again, I’m compelled to point out that my efforts produced two more titles than the real Bulls have accomplished since 1999! I mean, they’re fictional, but still…

To summarise this simulation to the end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000, we saw a new all-time leading scorer, a player average 40 ppg to lead the league while also topping it in assists with 9.4 per game (the fantastically-named Furious Cooper of the Atlanta Hawks), and the 2024 champions were the Denver Nuggets (their third in 25 seasons). The other champions during that span included the Bulls (2), Celtics (1), Wizards (2), Spurs (2), Kings (4), Magic (1), Nets (1), Heat (1), Lakers (2), Pacers (1), Pistons (2), Cavaliers (1), and Hornets (2). Both Shaquille O’Neal and Ray Allen retired the same years as in real life, albeit as members of the Lakers and Bucks.

That’s just one simulation through 25 seasons of course, but even without being a maths whiz, I guarantee that the odds of replicating history exactly won’t ever be in our favour. If nothing else, the league will be populated by fictional players who won’t necessarily have a real life counterpart! At the same time, it’s interesting that broadly speaking, there are some similarities here. We have seen the all-time scoring record broken. The Lakers and Celtics have renewed their rivalry in the Finals; twice, in fact! Both have won championships, as have the Spurs, Heat, Nuggets, Pistons, and Cavs. Trae Young has led the league in points and assists (albeit total, not per game).

Obviously, these parallels are coincidental. We can’t discount my intervention in the proceedings, either. Beyond the Bulls’ two titles – something that sadly hasn’t come to pass – I chose to keep an aging Debarge Hardy in the starting lineup to ensure that he’d have the opportunity to break the scoring record, just as I did with Kobe. Unless I overlooked someone, none of the original players who topped 30,000 broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s mark during the simulation, so I’d suggest it’s not programmed in as a guaranteed result. The moves that I made, as well as the ones I chose not to make, undoubtedly had a ripple effect that influenced the dice rolls with the yearly results.

Honestly, I’m not sure what was more fun: simulating to the end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000 back in the day and wondering what would come true, or running the same exercise in 2024 and comparing the results to what actually happened. It’s been fascinating to see those 25 virtual seasons play out from both perspectives; looking forward and looking back, to quote iconic Australian country singer Slim Dusty. Of course, it’s a sobering thought to realise that we’re past the end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000. The game is finally outdated in every way imaginable, with NBA Live 2001 now being the earliest title in the series that can represent the current year.

That’s just the inevitable passage of time, but it still invites reflection; in particular, on the strange way that 25 years ago can often feel so close, but 25 years into the future seems so far away. That perspective is only reinforced by experiencing the seasons that mark both the beginning and end of Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000, leading one to utter that ever-so-trite phrase, “it only seems like yesterday”. Of course, NBA Live 2000 does indeed preserve yesterday for posterity, in the way that all basketball video games end up becoming interactive almanacs. As far as its prophetic abilities are concerned, it’s only correct coincidentally, and even then only in broad strokes.

Still, while 2024 was once a viable sci-fi setting, where flying cars and intergalactic travel could be plausible, the fictional future that can be crafted in NBA Live 2000’s Franchise mode isn’t so far-fetched today. Perennial lottery teams finally winning a title? We’ve seen that happen! How about seemingly untouchable statistical records actually being broken? Yep, that’s happened, too! What Franchise mode in NBA Live 2000 couldn’t predict, of course, was the evolution of its own concept into something we never thought possible. It sure laid the foundation though, so while we may have reached the end of the era that it spans, the legacy of the first Franchise mode lives on.

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