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 ways that basketball games fail to properly represent big men on the court.

Although I came to favour creating point guards for my career mode avatars, and my all-time favourite player is a shooting guard, I definitely have an affinity for big men in basketball and basketball video games alike. Back in the 90s, I loved watching the superb post play of Hakeem Olajuwon, the raw power of Shaquille O’Neal, and the spectacular slams of Shawn Kemp. As one of the taller kids who ended up playing centre at school and in my local junior league, those were the players that I tried to emulate in one way or another.

Naturally, whenever I play basketball video games, I want to use those big men like their real life counterparts as well. However, that hasn’t always been possible. From reflecting the advantage that comes with height and size, to accurately depicting skills and play styles, big men often haven’t felt like themselves on the virtual hardwood. In the case of older games, primitive mechanics and AI are frequently to blame, but even newer titles have their issues. Furthermore, misconceptions and stereotypes have also led to big men having wildly inaccurate ratings and other attributes. With that being said, here are five common ways that basketball video games get big men wrong.

1. No Size & Strength Advantage

The natural advantage that big men have in basketball is that they’re…well, big! They can shoot over and impose their bulk on smaller players, and the strongest big men can also out-muscle their fellow giants. Unfortunately, video games haven’t always been able to represent these physical advantages. Height differences usually come into play – to the point where even benchwarming bigs can be a menace – but strength and body size aren’t always as impactful as they should be. Sure, they may look the part, and strength ratings have been in basketball games for decades, but when it comes time to mix it up inside, big men have been pushed around like they’re wispy guards.

Obviously, there needs to be balance here. Not even Shaquille O’Neal succeeded in overpowering his opponents on every single play in real life, so his virtual counterpart shouldn’t either. Still, it’s frustrating going up for a Shaq Attack in video games, and being forced into an awkward adjusted layup by a much smaller player standing their ground. The same goes for being completely brick-walled by a weaker defender in the post. It’s even worse when the CPU can throw its weight around with those big men, but you can’t! Better technology has facilitated improvements here, but unfortunately it hasn’t been unusual for dominant big men to be less imposing than they should be.

2. Inability to Run the Floor

Contrary to the propaganda of talking heads with an agenda and the bleating of kids who don’t know what they’re talking about, skilled and athletic big men have always existed. Of course, video games don’t always do a great job of portraying that. It’s not just a recent phenomenon. A number of classic games don’t allow big men to run the floor, with or without the ball. For that matter, they’re not great at allowing them to put the ball on the deck to make a quick move to the bucket; something that countless power forwards and centres have done throughout the decades. Too often, virtual big men are lacking the appropriate running speed, explosiveness, and ballhandling skill.

In some ways, this is an overcorrection. You could easily take the ball coast-to-coast with Shawn Bradley in 16-bit NBA Live titles, which wasn’t realistic! Future games would implement better differentiation between big men and smaller players when it came to speed and ballhandling ability, which is what we wanted to see. The issue is that in many games, any speed or dribbling rating below a certain threshold will make a player ridiculously slow and unable to handle the rock. It doesn’t help that big men are also frequently underrated in these areas, but even with accurate ratings you can’t always run the floor with David Robinson, or go coast-to-coast with Shawn Kemp.

3. Underrated Shooting Abilities

Another misconception that’s perpetuated by the media and fans with no knowledge of or respect for the past is that back in the day, big men couldn’t shoot. This is mostly based on the notion that three-pointers are the only measure of a good shooter and the fact that players in earlier eras didn’t take as many of them, but there’s a belief that big men never took shots outside of the paint. In fact, a number of power forwards and centres had reliable midrange jumpshots in addition to a good touch in the post. Stats nerds may disagree, but that’s still an indication of someone who can shoot! In short, plenty of big men have scored a lot of their points more than five feet from the rim.

Sadly, this verifiable fact has been ignored by the producers responsible for the rosters and ratings in basketball video games. Players like Hakeem Olajuwon, Bob McAdoo, and Patrick Ewing have had insultingly low midrange shooting ratings. Admittedly this happens with many Legends irrespective of position – whoever did the ratings for NBA Live 19 Ultimate Team apparently never watched Alex English – but “big men from older eras couldn’t shoot” is an annoyingly common falsehood that influences ratings. We can fix these inaccurate ratings through roster editing – though we really shouldn’t have to do so – but we’re stuck with them in MyTEAM and Ultimate Team.

4. Big Men With Range Not Using It

On the flip side, even if basketball games properly account for a big man’s shooting abilities in his ratings, he may not use them effectively. This is more of an issue in older games, due to the primitive strategy and playcalling AI. Because big men who took a lot of threes were the outliers in earlier eras, the CPU didn’t always do a good job of setting them up for attempts beyond the arc. Even players such as Sam Perkins – who was attempting around four three-pointers per game in the mid 90s – would be parked in the post rather than spotting up on the perimeter. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t take any threes, but the generic offensive strategies didn’t suit their style.

This became less of a problem as games implemented better playcalling AI, and in-depth player tendencies. Teams could run a wider selection of plays that suited all of their prominent scoring options, and players had deeper attributes that reflected play style as well as their skill level. Once again though, the results aren’t always perfect. Both the playbooks and tendencies need to be accurate, and when it comes to the historical teams and players in particular, that isn’t always the case. Nevertheless, there has been a noticeable improvement as far as big men with range actually using that skill on the virtual hardwood. Historically speaking though, it has been an issue.

5. Likelihood to Foul

As much as people love to talk about evolution and basketball being a whole new game nowadays – especially when it comes to big men – so many aspects remain the same. For example, even though big men do spend more time on the perimeter these days, they maintain a strong presence in the paint. This is evident from the fact that big men still dominate the league leaders when it comes to blocks and rebounds. Not surprisingly, they also tend to average the most fouls per game. The NBA game may not be as physical as it once was, but contact is still most likely to occur inside, where big men are battling on the boards and looking to turn away any attempts at the rim.

When it comes to the virtual hardwood however, you’re more likely to see perimeter players in foul trouble. Big men in video games can block and alter shots and clean up on the glass without much fear of a whistle, while guards and wing players rack up fouls on reach-in calls. Granted, spamming steal contributes to that imbalance, but defenders in the paint are more likely to get away with an absurd amount of contact while players on the perimeter will get hit with “press steal to foul“. I won’t say that there hasn’t been any improvement in this regard, but many sim titles haven’t reflected the reality that big men are generally far more prone to foul trouble and fouling out.

Have you been bothered by these issues with big men on the virtual hardwood? What are some of the other ways that basketball video games have come up short – no pun intended – in accurately depicting the NBA’s giants? Have your say 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 Ways Basketball Games Get Big Men Wrong appeared first on NLSC.