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.
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