The Live '96

I bought NBA Live '96 for the Super Nintendo at a Blockbuster (I think my dad paid for it), in I believe the summer of 1997.  There is a slim chance it was '98 or '96, but '97 makes the most sense.  I played an exhibition game and won it pretty easily, so I started up a season almost right away.  No dawdling for months like with Live '95 - I was hungry to get back on the court.

This SNES version was a lot easier than the PC version of '95, because of controls if nothing else.  Also, I now knew that I should be getting into the paint rather than popping 3s.  You could get into the paint with reckless abandon in that game, and I did.  Derek Harper was the point guard.  I would have him bring the ball up and then try to penetrate.  He usually could and then score an easy dunk/lay-up at the rim.  If not, I passed around and tried something else.  In general though you could score at will.  Harper was my scoring leader and I am fairly certain he scored over 100 points at least once.  I think it goes without saying that I play these games on the hardest difficulty level by the way.

For much of the season, I was playing with a broken controller.  It wouldn't allow you to move around freely, so it was a slight handicap although it didn't matter much.  For one game against the Seattle Supersonics, it did matter.  Looking at the real NBA schedule from that season, it appears that this would be the game from January 19th, 1996 in Seattle.  I lost the game - I think it was close, but do not remember the final margin of loss.  That was my first loss, and if it is that game then I would have been 36-0 going into it.  36-1.

During the March 8th game (remember these are game dates, not real - it was all played in the summer of '97 in my room) against Philadelphia, I got frustrated when a computer opponent knocked me down without a foul call, even though I was winning big.  I purposely knocked down and fouled one of their guys, which I sometimes did when frustrated.  I started doing it every play, and some of my guys started fouling out.  Soon I was interested to see what would happen if there were only 5 guys left and one fouled out.  I kept fouling until only 5 of us were left...when one of the last 5 fouled out, nothing happened - they left them in the game with 6+ fouls.  Mystery solved.

By that point I had let the Sixers back into the game with all of the free throws, after having been up by a comfortable margin.  I wound up down 3 with time winding down.  I inbounded and took a 3...no good but I managed to grab the rebound.  I would have one last chance - I kicked it back out...and the ball went to Charles Smith in the backcourt.  The genius had already run down the floor to get back on defense.  Turnover, game over.

In real life, the Knicks' head coach Don Nelson had been fired right before this game.  Now there was a reason in my personal narrative for the Knicks to be firing their coach who had a 58-1 record.  He disgraced the team and caused a big scandal with the intentional foul-outs.  Enter Jeff Van Gundy.

The final game of the regular season was against Boston.  I noticed that I had never scored over 200+ points in a game, and had never held a team below 100 (defense is hard).  I really made an effort to go for that, and I hit both goals in the final game.

The playoffs were a breeze; we swept them all.  Along the way, some revenge was had.  We defeated the Magic, and I believe even played Houston in the finals, who the real Knicks (and the fake Knicks since there was no history before '95) lost to in '94.  One note about the playoffs is that for some reason they were shortened - the first round was I think a best of 3, with the remaining rounds best of 5 (it's supposed to be 5-7-7-7).  I'm not sure if that was the game's fault or mine.

The Live '95

First, let me again say that I expect virtually nobody to find these interesting - they are largely for me; I enjoy reading about my own triumphs and failings in video game sports, and I wish I had been writing on them in detail all along.

We come to my first full season - NBA Live '95, played in the winter of 1996.  The above screenshot is a good representation of my entire season.  That's John Starks of the Knicks shooting a 3, and that was my go-to play in the game.

At that time, I did not have much of a grasp on good basketball strategy.  I'm not claiming that I do now, but I certainly know better than I did then.  My favorite player in real life and the game was John Starks.  As I said, much of my play consisted of having him shoot 3 pointers.  That was a bad idea, because 3s were hard to make in that game.  In one particular game, Starks scored 96 points; I was trying to have him beat Wilt Chamberlain's record.  He didn't make it, and we lost the game. 

I played probably 1.5 games on average per day.  There were days when I played 3 games after school (remember, these are full games that take about an hour each), and that was probably the max.  I often used to nap during halftime.

There was a high school friend (9th grade) I talked to about Live.  He hated the Knicks, and recommended me a high-powered team to try out.  He wrote the names on a piece of paper while we were in a class, or maybe in the East Cafeteria.  I traded most of my players for that team - the starting 5 were Hakeem Olajuwon, Shawn Kemp, Scottie Pippen, Kendall Gill (the friend was a Sonics fan), and Gary Payton.  I know Ewing was on the bench and don't remember the others.  I made more trades from time to time - the game let you trade any player for any player, so you could get rid of your scrubs and get all-stars in return.  I might have had Reggie Miller at one point, and I traded for Mitch Richmond after he lit up the Knicks in a game on January 13th, 1996, which I listened to on the radio at my grandparents' house.  (Note - thinking about the real-life timeline with Mitch Richmond, it is possible that I started the season in late 1995.)  The game rated your team in different attributes, and I often strove to make trades to become a full 5 stars in every category.

I remember one memorable game where Olajuwon hit an 8 footer from the side for the win in the closing seconds.  I don't remember any other close finishes in detail.

When the season's trading deadline came up, the game warned me.  I thought about it, and I concluded that I should trade to get all of the original Knicks back.  I could not take this super team to the playoffs, it wouldn't be right.  I was going to live or die with the Knicks as they truly were.

In general, the game was easy.  Even with my poor knowledge of strategy and constant 3 point bombs I had the best record in the league, somewhere around 67-15 I would guess.  We went to the playoffs with home court advantage throughout.

The first two rounds weren't a problem.  In the Eastern Conference Finals, we played the Orlando Magic and promptly went up 3-1 in the series.  At that time in history, I believe only 4 real life teams had come back from a 3-1 deficit, so I was sitting pretty.  When I was behind in Game 5, I wasn't that concerned because I would have two more chances.  I did not put any extra effort into making a comeback, and lost the game.  Series at 3-2.  We lost again in Orlando, a blowout.  3-3.

A brief interlude on losses.  Many people say "why don't you just restart the game if you lose".  To do that would be to ruin the entire purpose, for me, of playing seasons.  There has to be a real sense of danger, a real chance that you might lose individual games and even overall in the playoffs, and that all that grinding would be for naught.  Winning the championship every year with no adversity is not fun.  Here are a couple of links to recent blog posts about losing:

http://disqus.com/forums/gamermelodico/just_doing_what_the_lions_do_best/trackback/
http://www.pippinbarr.com/inininoutoutout/?p=1541

So, the entire season came down to this one game.  Game 7, Knicks-Magic, at the Garden.  Keep in mind that this season takes place over the course of months, with 100+ hours of playing time (with all of the false starts and exhibition games, I have probably played NBA Live '95 more than any other game in any genre).  Getting knocked out of the playoffs would be huge.  It was now probably February of 1996.

At halftime of Game 7 I was already down big, by 20 or so.  I likely took a nap or tried to, wanting to delay what looked like the inevitable.  After the 3rd quarter I was still down big.  I remember pumping myself up, knowing I needed to make this one last push and come back.

I never made it close.  My Knicks lost the series 4 games to 3 on a dark, cold winter's night on Long Island.

The Dynasty

This is the first of what will be a series of posts chronicling my NBA Live dynasty.  I expect that it will interest almost nobody, but I still need to write down the history for myself and for posterity.

I have been playing the NBA Live video game series since the first one - NBA Live '95.  The games allow you to play full seasons, and I do - 82 games plus the playoffs.  I play full length games with 12 minute quarters.  As you can imagine, this is a brutal grind.  It is so brutal that I am now, almost in the real year 2011, still only playing NBA Live '99, so I have only gotten through 4 full seasons so far in the 15 years I've been playing.  Most people who do this play shortened seasons with short quarters, but I strive for authenticity.

I started the dynasty with NBA Live '95 in January or February of 1996 (NBA Live '96 had already come out).  The version I was playing ran on MS-DOS for the PC, controlled with the keyboard.

I played around with the game for quite a while before getting "serious".  There was many an exhibition game played, and I had several false starts to seasons where I eventually restarted for reasons that I cannot recall - probably having to do with being unhappy with my team's record.  There might have been a season that I played a good 15-20 full games of before restarting.

My team is the New York Knicks.  The real Knicks have been "my" team in real life since June of 1994, and I became an increasingly hardcore fan as the 1990s progressed.  There was never a question that I was ever going to play a full season as any team other than the New York Knicks, and they are who I am playing NBA Live '99 with today.

In general I am excellent at placing memories in space-time.  You know how people know exactly what they were doing on 9/11 or when Kennedy was shot?  I remember exactly what I was doing on December 29th, 1995 between 4 PM and 6 PM, walking past the girl in corduroy pants on November 30th, 1996, the cologne I bought in January of 2001, and the book I was reading on the toilet in ~April of 1997 (The Godfather).

The point being, I remember quite a bit of detail about my NBA Live seasons, even the ones that I played 15 years ago.  So, I'm going to recap seasons in this blog with as much detail as possible.

I planned on writing about the first season in this post, but the introduction has taken longer than expected, so I will end this for now.  To be continued (in way more detail than you'll ever need to know)...

The Test

Just a test. 

I am planning on titling every post "The X".  This was a rule made on Seinfeld so that writers didn't waste a lot of time trying to think up clever titles.  I'm doing it for the same reason.