Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five phantom stints that didn’t appear in any video games.

Through my series of Friday Fives documenting players who only appeared on certain teams in video games – up to 21 parts and counting! – I’ve listed a number of players whose phantom stints with teams were made tangible on the virtual hardwood. Let’s flip the topic though, and consider noteworthy phantom stints that didn’t appear in any video games. This might seem like a strange topic to explore, as obviously there are plenty of players with brief, on-paper tenures that didn’t last long enough to appear in games. However, most of them aren’t particularly exciting or interesting.

The ones that are worth talking about meet a few conditions. Naturally, they involve players who were stars or otherwise noteworthy. Also, while they ultimately didn’t get captured in any video games, the timing wasn’t too far off from it feasibly happening. Perhaps most importantly, if they had been captured in games, there’d be tremendous novelty not just in the strange sight, but also the lineups that we’d be able to play with. With those criteria in mind, I do have five examples that fit the bill. On top of being What Ifs that would’ve set up fun scenarios, they also demonstrate just how easily we can forget some of the details of major or otherwise very memorable NBA trades.

1. Dana Barros, Charlotte Hornets

One-time All-Star and 1995 Most Improved Player Dana Barros earned those honours with the Philadelphia 76ers, after beginning his career with the Seattle Supersonics. His longest tenure was with the Boston Celtics however, and he also played two years with the Detroit Pistons. Between those stints, he had phantom tenures with the Dallas Mavericks and Charlotte Hornets. His brief, on-paper Mavericks stint made it into the PlayStation 1 version of NBA Live 2001, thanks to a deal that gave Robert Pack a phantom stint with the Celtics, as seen in the same game. However, you won’t see Dana Barros suiting up for the Hornets in the official rosters of any 1994 season titles.

On September 1st 1993, the Supersonics traded Barros to the Hornets along with Eddie Johnson for Kendall Gill and a first round pick in 1994. Just two days later however, the Hornets traded Barros, Sidney Green, and Greg Graham to the 76ers for Hersey Hawkins, leading to two of the best years of Barros’ career. By the time any games with 1994 rosters came out, those trades were in the rear view mirror, and his brief detour prior to arriving in the City of Brotherly Love had no real or virtual on-court appearances to remember it by. Incidentally, having Dana Barros and Muggsy Bogues would’ve given the Hornets one of the shortest backcourts of all-time!

2. Glen Rice, Utah Jazz

Unfortunately, reaching All-Star status doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a graceful and dignified exit from the league. Not everyone is guaranteed a farewell tour, or an opportunity to walk away on their own terms. It’s just the way it goes, but it’s still kind of sad to see. Glen Rice became one of the league’s best scorers by the mid 90s, but the dreaded combination of age and injuries brought on a rapid decline after he won a championship with the Lakers in 2000. In consecutive offseasons, Rice was part of multi-team trades, including the one that sent Patrick Ewing to Seattle. Rice actually ended up in New York in that deal, and had a solid year despite coming off the bench.

It wouldn’t be the last time that Rice arrived on a team as a fellow All-Star from the 90s was departing. He was traded to the Rockets in 2001, only for Hakeem Olajuwon to be dealt to Toronto. After a couple of seasons in Houston, Rice was sent to Utah, just as Jazz Legends Karl Malone and John Stockton were leaving for LA and retiring respectively. He was waived less than a week later, resulting in a phantom stint that occurred far too late to be included in any of the 2004 season games. Glen Rice’s final games with the Clippers also lack any official representation in video games, though it was an unmemorable stint that ended unceremoniously when he was cut in January.

3. J.R. Smith, Chicago Bulls

Decades of watching the Chicago Bulls try to rebuild has impressed upon me what an anomaly the Michael Jordan Era was, and makes me grateful that I was around to see it! Those fond memories certainly remove some of the sting of the post-championship years, but it’s still frustrating to see the team lack shrewdness in their moves, whiff on draft picks, and allow talented players to slip through their fingers. There are so many examples of that, but one that’s always bothered me is J.R. Smith. Granted, he was still young when the Bulls acquired him, and there was no guarantee that he’d reach the level that he did, but I liked his potential and hoped they’d give him a chance.

Of course, they didn’t. The Bulls acquired Smith from the New Orleans Hornets along with P.J. Brown, in a deal for Tyson Chandler; another young player they gave up on, only for him to become an All-Star, the Defensive Player of the Year, and an NBA Champion elsewhere. Chicago kept Brown, but traded Smith to Denver for…an aging Howard Eisley, and the picks that became JamesOn Curry and Aaron Gray. Shrewd move, GarPax! Anyway, J.R. Swish was a Bull for all of six days in July 2006, so needless to say the 2007 games don’t reflect that phantom stint. They do include the signing of Ben Wallace, though. As a Bulls fan, I really despise that 2006 offseason!

4. B.J. Armstrong, Los Angeles Lakers

Speaking of former Bulls, the team wasn’t hurt by the loss of B.J. Armstrong to the Expansion Draft in 1995. He was already falling out of favour with Phil Jackson by that point, but he did still have something left in the tank. He even replaced Tim Hardaway as the Warriors’ starting point guard, leading to Tim Bug being traded to Miami. As for Armstrong, while he didn’t post eye-popping numbers during his final seasons, he remained a capable veteran backup at the point. He even had a couple of good games against his former team in the second round of the 1998 Playoffs, helping the Hornets to steal a victory in Game 2. Nevertheless, he was far from untouchable.

When the Hornets had a chance to swap the injured Glen Rice for a younger All-Star in Eddie Jones during the 1999 lockout season, they took it. The deal worked out much better for the Lakers – as noted above, they won the championship in 2000 – but it was still understandable that the Hornets rolled the dice. Armstrong was included in the Rice-for-Jones trade – as were J.R. Reid and Elden Campbell – but he was the only player who was immediately waived afterwards. NBA Live 99 PC’s official roster updates don’t account for his fleeting phantom Lakers stint, or his subsequent signing with Orlando. In fact, the updates actually removed him from the roster completely!

5. Vernon Maxwell, New York Knicks

Let’s wrap up this list of players with phantom stints that aren’t preserved as oddities in video games with Vernon Maxwell’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Knicks tenure. Mad Max ended up with two rings from his time with the Rockets, but that second title run in 1995 proved to be an unfortunate turning point in his career. He was suspended for entering the stands and punching a heckler, a decision he doesn’t regret as he alleges that the fan hurled both racist comments and tasteless remarks about his stillborn daughter. On the other hand, Maxwell has expressed regret over quitting the team during the Playoffs over his frustration with losing playing time to Clyde Drexler.

For the rest of his career, Maxwell had short stints – never longer than a season – with a handful of teams. He also had an altercation with Gary Payton – another player who wasn’t shy about speaking his mind – that led to their teammate Horace Grant being injured. After missing the Playoffs with a knee injury, Maxwell was included in the aforementioned deal that brought Patrick Ewing to Seattle, with Mad Max going to New York; the team his sharpshooting had helped to defeat in the 1994 NBA Finals. He was waived three weeks later and joined the 76ers not long afterwards. This series of events prevented Maxwell’s phantom Knicks stint from appearing in any games.

Were you aware of these phantom stints? Would you like to have had the ability to experience them in video games, even though they wouldn’t ever come to fruition in real life? Let me know in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Phantom Stints That Didn’t Appear in Games appeared first on NLSC.