Wayback Wednesday: Inaccuracies in Basketball Games
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 taking a look back at some noteworthy and recurring inaccuracies that we’ve found in basketball video games over the years.
Licensed sports titles are judged differently to other genres of video games. Because they’re aiming to depict a real sport played by real athletes, we expect accuracy. Even in arcade games with all of their breaks from reality, there’s an expectation that the players will resemble their real life counterparts, and that their ratings will reflect their strengths, weaknesses, and overall style of play. The bar is set much higher in sim titles, especially as technological improvements have led to increasingly realistic graphics and gameplay. Above all, we expect attention to detail.
Of course, none of us are infallible, and thus human error is inevitable. As anyone who’s ever worked on a roster mod can attest, it’s all too easy to overlook a jersey number, neglect a needed ratings update, or forget to double-check the spelling of a newly-added player’s name. That’s not even getting into leaving a necessary file out of the update, or any other technical mistakes! Still, it’s interesting to discover some of the inaccuracies that made it into the default rosters, especially before official roster updates were commonplace. Let’s take a look back…way back…
Many old school basketball gamers are no doubt familiar with Tecmo Super NBA Basketball. As a contemporary of the NBA Playoffs series on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, it was a strong competitor to NBA Live’s forerunner. However, there was also a NES version simply titled Tecmo NBA Basketball. As documented over on The Cutting Room Floor wiki, that version featured several inaccuracies with player information, from jersey numbers to bio data. Again, that’s inevitable thanks to typos, oversight, or even limited or incorrect source material, which definitely was an issue back then. What’s interesting is the number of mistakes involving prominent players.
For example, Isiah Thomas – by that point a two-time champion and perennial All-Star – is listed as #14, rather than #11. Kenny Anderson wore #10 instead of #7, a number he was given right from when the New Jersey Nets drafted him. Meanwhile, Tom Chambers sported #23 instead of #24, and Brian Shaw had #20 instead of #22 (though he’d previously worn #20, and would switch back to it). Shawn Kemp was also 6’7″ and 212 lbs, rather than 6’10” and 240 lbs. Similarly, Sam Bowie was listed at 184 lbs instead of 240 lbs, while Jeff Ruland had multiple inaccuracies, being 6’4″ instead of 6’11”, 184 lbs instead of 272 lbs, and wore #23 instead of his familiar #43.
Without player editing functionality or official roster updates, gamers were stuck with these inaccuracies. A second revision would later be released, fixing those errors and making a few updates such as changing Orlando Woolridge’s number – he’d switched from #6 back to #0 – and replacing Michael Jordan with a Roster Player due to losing the rights to use his likeness. Incidentally, an updated version of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball also removed His Airness, as well as Reggie Lewis. Before official roster updates and comprehensive roster editing, subsequent revisions of games were the only way to receive such fixes. If you had the original release, you were out of luck.
The same obviously goes for any roster updates following player movement. This also applied to the arcade versions of NBA Jam and NBA Jam Tournament Edition, which both received multiple revisions. Although this allowed newer versions of the ROM to reflect some major trades, it infamously resulted in preserving a phantom deal. The cancelled Sean Elliott for Robert Horry trade made it into the fourth revision of NBA Jam TE, though their portraits and jerseys weren’t properly swapped. Without any further revisions, a number of cabinets retained those inaccuracies. Working off of an old revision also seems to account for Kevin Edwards’ portrait error in the PC release.
However, it’s the inaccuracies in player ratings in those original NBA Jam games that are perhaps the most fascinating. Obviously we don’t look to arcade basketball titles for realism, but once again, we usually still expect ratings in those games to represent players’ skillsets. That’s why it’s noteworthy that some players had ratings that didn’t gel with how they played, even accounting for exaggerating their skill level. A couple of examples that always come to mind for me are Dino Radja and Juwan Howard having three-point ratings of 9 in NBA Jam TE PC. Dennis Rodman’s blocking rating was also absurdly high for a player who only averaged 0.6 bpg over his entire career.
There were a couple of reasons for those inaccuracies, as well as oddities such as Cliff Robinson’s strength rating making him a bruiser. The first is that the original NBA Jam games were made in the early 90s, when comprehensive resources weren’t as readily accessible, and it wasn’t as easy to watch every team in the legaue. As a result, there was some guesswork by the developers, and ratings that were based on limited exposure to certain players. On top of issues with likeness rights, it’s also why some of the teams featured players that weren’t among the top names on their roster. Mind you, these inaccuracies and unorthodox choices do add to the charm of those games!
Furthermore, because teams were limited to two players in the original NBA Jam, and 1-3 substitutes with the expanded rosters of Tournament Edition, allowances had to be made for balance. To ensure each team had a good dunker, a knockdown three-point shooter, adequate defense, and so on, players ended up with fudged ratings. In the absence of a rebounding attribute, Rodman’s high blocking rating effectively accounts for his defensive prowess. Players on teams that were intended to be tough opponents, and powerful squads to use, also received subtle boosts. Ultimately, the inaccuracies in NBA Jam didn’t negatively impact the gameplay as they would have in sim titles.
Alright, so games that were developed prior to the explosion of the World Wide Web and all of its resources couldn’t always be counted on for accuracy. What about games that were released in the 21st century? There have been some interesting inaccuracies with player numbers and bio data in those games as well. Strangely, Eddy Curry wore #27 in the Xbox 360 version of NBA Live 06. No one on the Knicks wore #34 the previous year, so it doesn’t even make sense as a temporary placeholder. The game didn’t receive any official roster updates, but fortunately by that point we had an Edit Player function, so it was trivial to fix that error ourselves for the sake of accuracy.
As far as ratings are concerned, Yao Ming’s three-point ability was inaccurately high in a number of NBA Live releases during the 2000s. For the record, Yao made one three in his rookie season, another three in his second-to-last campaign, and shot 2-for-10 for his career. It might’ve been a spreadsheet error given that he technically shot 50% from downtown in his rookie year, or perhaps a fudged rating to account for his shooting touch. An inaccurate rating here or there is part and parcel of any roster – official or otherwise – but the fact that Yao had an inflated three-point attribute in a few games makes it stand out. Oversights do happen, and it’s another rather easy fix.
At the same time, while I’m sympathetic to the challenges of maintaining rosters, some inaccuracies are sloppy. Even as of NBA 2K23, there’s a myriad of ratings, tendencies, and animations that are way off. It’s an issue that plagues both active players and historical players alike. Indeed, back in 2020, Dee posted a lengthy Twitter thread that nevertheless only scratched the surface of all the inaccuracies! This includes spreadsheet-driven decisions like 2005 Tim Duncan being able to shoot threes, because he shot 33% that year…on nine attempts. There are also copy and paste oversights that leave players with someone else’s very unsuitable animations.
Inaccuracies like that are disheartening because video games have come a long way. The bar has been raised, and there are far more resources available. Not only that, but official roster updates are viable, yet these inaccuracies remain year after year, leaving the fixes to unofficial rosters. Mistakes in early basketball video games feel like a novelty now, not to mention they’re understandable. When something’s out of place in a modern title, it feels lazy, or a deliberate decision to suit an agenda. As Dee pointed out, LeBron James’ midrange rating is a great example of this, assuming it’s not just ignorance. Either way, it causes the game to fall short as far as its roster’s accuracy.
Getting back to some more amusing inaccuracies, we’ve seen some memorable oddities with player appearances. Strangely, a couple of games from the 90s missed the mark with Jason Kidd’s skintone. He appears slightly too tanned in NBA Live 96 and NBA Live 97 PC, but in the SNES version of NBA Jam TE, his face and model are using the darkest complexion. If you didn’t see his name at the top of the screen, you wouldn’t even know that it was meant to be him! There are a few players like that in the pre-cyberface era, which were probably the result of oversight, or perhaps some poor quality reference photographs. Of course, we also have more recent examples.
When NBA Live 18 launched, it’s safe to say that Bogdan Bogdanovic wasn’t quite himself! Even with players getting face scans nowadays, it isn’t uncommon for some of them to use a generic placeholder, or traditionally sculpted model, until such time as they’re actually able to sit for a scan. That wasn’t the problem with Bogdanovic in NBA Live 18 though, as instead of being a white player with short brown hair, he was black with braids. I don’t recognise the face he was erroneously assigned in those original rosters, but suffice to say, it wasn’t close to being the right one! Fortunately, one of the official roster updates corrected the issue, giving us a proper Bogdanovic.
Considering that he’s become a fixture at the All-Star Game and is now a champion and Finals MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s placeholder face in NBA Live 14 is one of the most hilarious and insulting visual inaccuracies. Despite an accurate portrait, he has a generic face that looks more like Terry Crews, or maybe Chuck Hayes, or even a mixture of both. Conversely, while his face in NBA 2K14 is naturally younger, it’s still clearly him. His ratings in the default rosters of both games are quite poor, but that’s more of a reflection of how his career has exceeded expectations of a foreign prospect taken with the 15th pick. However, I won’t make any excuses for that face!
Looking at the different positions that The Greek Freak has been listed as over on Basketball Reference brings to mind the difficulties in accounting for such changes in video game rosters, and the inaccuracies it’s caused. Countless players have been listed as the wrong position: point guards who are swingmen, shooting guards who are point guards or small forwards, small forwards who should be shooting guards or power forwards, power forwards who should be small forwards or centres, and centres who should be power forwards. The versatility of some players can admittedly make things complicated, and even the addition of a secondary position doesn’t always help.
Juwan Howard’s primary position always posed a problem. He’s usually listed as a power forward, but so was Chris Webber when both were on the Bullets/Wizards, with Gheorghe Muresan in the middle. One of them had to be the small forward to make the lineup logic work, and that tended to be Howard. Nevertheless, Basketball Reference lists him at the four spot for most of their seasons together. Games from the mid 90s were at odds as far as who started at power forward and small forward on the Minnesota Timberwolves when it came to Kevin Garnett and Tom Gugliotta. This issue was later repeated with Josh Smith and Marvin Williams on the 2000s Hawks.
James “Hollywood” Robinson was a point guard from the 90s that was often listed as a shooting guard in NBA Live games. Looking back at the teams that he was on, it was probably done to ensure that he got adequate court time, rather than being stuck behind other point guards in the lineup. I’d suggest that this accounts for several of the inaccuracies involving player positions. Even when secondary positions were added, teams still ran with unorthodox lineups that didn’t warrant a player’s primary position to be changed, and not all games had robust rotation logic. Many inaccuracies likely were the result of incorrect sources or human error, but some were clearly deliberate.
Needless to say, modding has allowed us to resolve inaccuracies without official updates, and indeed, some that the developers didn’t get around to fixing. There are games that we haven’t been able to mod of course, and some inaccuracies that we’ve had to leave in place because they’re serving a purpose in lieu of a better solution. It’s also frustrating to have to correct the same issues year after year – such the copy and paste jobs and spreadsheet anomalies in NBA 2K’s rosters – and I admire anyone who has the patience to tackle that project on an annual basis. We should be beyond that now, especially when 2K touts the basketball minds they have working on the rosters.
As I said though, in older games, inaccuracies and errors stand as interesting trivia. It’s unfortunate that the only way to resolve them was to buy an updated copy of the game, but in the early days of the genre, we often made the best of those titles, warts and all. The mere fact that we could play with virtual representations of real players that had recognisable facial features, digitised portraits, and individual ratings, was a novelty. Knowing the limitations and having played better games that followed, we can appreciate those mistakes as fun quirks. Now, we have different expectations. In Tecmo NBA Basketball, those errors are amusing. In NBA 2K23, they’re a nuisance.
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