Your Friend Who Likes Games

A couple weeks ago, I realized I hadn’t visited a local video game resale store near me. In addition to running Mother’s Day errands, I had some extra time to go check it out. It’s called Duck Duck Games and it’s located in my little pocket of Northeast Ohio, which I find to be really cool. They seem to be successful. I walked in, and the owner(?), a guy named Joe, told me they’d been pretty busy that day, and I was not the only customer in the store. We connected over how great Cowboy Beebop is and he then griped about how newer anime is not for him (I respect). They provide refirbishing services, had consoles and games from every generation (I was shocked to be looking at Atari cartriges), and even host new game releases. I felt at home, and again, happy that the store is a local entity.

While perusing sections of games categorized by console generations, I spotted NBA Street Vol. 2. I don’t think I’ve ever picked up something off a shelf so quickly. The price of $42 felt both steep and justified, as I haven’t visited this PS2 icon in over 20 years.

My store haul on that first trip to Duck Duck Games landed me a copy of NBA Street Vol. 2, 10 stickers of mostly Kirby in their various attack abilities along-side a couple Pokemon and a Sonic I still haven’t stuck anywhere. Oh, and a moderately sized Kirby plush.

The stickers landed on my various YETI water mugs, travel coffee cups, and bike frames 🙂

The mission then was to dust off the PS2 Slim I know we’ve had sitting upstairs in our bedroom untouched for months. I crossed my fingers that we too had a memory card available – we did 🙂 – and I figured how I would then use available TV’s and space in my office to create yet another gaming set up. I managed to stack an old Visio on some already-stacked shelving, plug it all in with an Amazon-ordered RCA-to-HDMI adapter and it quickly became good enough and useful.

Once the game was working, booted up, sound and visual in-check, I couldn’t wait to hear that sound I had heard so many times as a pre-teen middle schooler:

Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s They Reminisce Over You (1992)

If you know, you know. This iconic start to a song – some jazzy hip-hop horn accompanied by the “I reminisce, I reminisce” lyrics. The start screen begins with this song every time, so for many of us obsessed with this game in the early 2000s, it was a repeated soundtrack start to all our baller grind sessions. Goosebumps the first time I heard it again.

NBA Street Vol. 2 is as good as I remember. This experience surprisingly was a not a cute re-visit to a game I once loved and a sad realization that nostalgia will never be the same as the original time. Well, maybe a little bit in regards to my relationship to the game now, but more on that later…

But the game is such an impressive time capsule of captured style. The reason I think it’s still so revered is that it completely owns the style and soul of street basketball. Nothing corny about it. You could argue that the announcing voice might feel a bit cringe by today’s standards – Robert “Bobbito” Garcia a.k.a. DJ Cucumber Slice – but the commentary and energy he brings is so genuine that I want to be his best friend. I believe in it. I believe in the game now, and I really was persueded then. In 2003, this game became my entire personality.

I reminisce too

I reminisce plenty with the replaying of this game. I remember so whole-heartedly identifying with it. I remember finding the same red, white, and blue basketball at Target. I remember how passionate I was to try to learn all of the ‘handles’ in my driveway. I remember lowering the hoop so my friends and I could not only dunk, but rehearse the sequenced, 3-person ‘GB2’s’ seen in game and completely explosive if we got them right (in retrospect, I may have been the most excited..). I remember building a blanket fort for a sleep-over and a friend from my basketball team and I played a career mode together all night and then again when we woke up in the morning. I remember giving honorary points to each other when we blatantly goaltended because the game let you do so (street rules baby) and was easy to do so with tall players. I remember wanting to look like the characters, and let the fashion choices for my character in game influence my middle school fashion. Swishy pants only. No jeans. Basketball I played for school was a competely different thing. Street ball, that I often played by myself in my driveway, was all mine. Simply put, can’t find proper words to describe, I and I think many others had been completly enthralled by this game because it not only presented something fun and cool to play, it presented an entire culture and educated us about what the attitude of pick-up street basketball entailed. And, impressively, I still feel that as I play today.

Playing NBA Street Vol. 2 in 2026

Obviously, I play games differently now than I did then. Or maybe rather I should say that the context in which I am enjoying NBA Street Vol. 2 is way different now than it was then. My big question going in to playing it now: is it as good as I remember? Yes. Absolutely. Today, I have zero question of the merit and quality of this game. I think it still plays really well, and does exactly what it intends to do. Like I did when I was a kid, and as I do with most games, I play the main campaign. So I again chose the “Be a Legend” mode and began a new career as a zero-star baller.

The structure of Be a Legend mode is great. You start playing pick-up games in what feels like your local New York outdoor court playing games against other teams of three who’s names take the likes of, ‘Derrick,’ ‘Shaun,’ ‘Stephen..’ you know, the local guys you always play. You earn reputation by winning, and it goes down if you lose.

This game can be a power fantasy if you want it to be (what game isn’t?). With three difficulty options, you can choose how much time you want to spend grinding through the ranks. The middle and highest difficulty offer bigger chances of losing, and you don’t progress in the game unless you win. If there were ways to feel a little more confident on defense, I may have tried to stick with at least the middle tier. But this time around, I stayed with the lowest difficulty and let the game be the semi-passive, arcade flow experience that I think it intends to be. This way, progression stayed at a continual pace that let me re-see what the game had to offer again.

The game has a nice RPG-ness that hooks you into identifying with it. You pick your home location, you recruit local ballers to be on your team, you choose a team name and logo, and you set out to take out the street-ballin’ world one game at a time.

Gameplay is simple but stylish. 3 v. 3 street basketball. 1-pointers inside the line, 2-pointers outside. I saw the ‘videogameyness’ of it more this time around. Execute ‘handles’ (stylish) dribbles in front of defenders to, in a sense, attack them so that they may ‘break their ankles’ and fall, opening up a lane for you to drive and score. Either that, or pass the ball around looking for an opening. Pump-fake then shoot/drive, or pass the ball when a teammate jumps high in the air toward the hoop to execute a VERY satisfying alley-oop. Defense, you block the other players lane to the hoop, beware of their handle-attacks, try to steal the ball, or block their shot when they shoot. Rebound if they miss. And repeat.

What really hooked me as a kid was the flow and style the culture of the game encouraged you to have. I remember playing the game so much that I’d muscle-memory certain moves and sequences to perform them in the smoothest way possible and land the most style points.

This time around, I saw the style as more abstract. Just varied button inputs that would give variety to the moves you do and the dunks you’d perform. More jaded perspective, but still felt great to do.

As you progress in your career, you unlock more courts and locations to play at which host more difficult opponents, so you’ll need to continue to use points unlocked to progress your baller’s stats and continue to recruit better teammates from teams you’ve defeated. Recognizing now that “Uptown” is a clever name for the iconic, caged-in rooftop court of Manhattan. Challenge games in various locations are fun too. There are games that challenge you to win with 1-pointers only, a game that challenges you to win with a style-point score, a game that challenges you to score using dunks only…. Honestly, I’d invite more of those variations in the career mode. Reframes the game and they’re fun!

I forgot how the game shows you how cool it can be as CPU teams you play against start to execute cooler and cooler moves and dunks. Continual, “oh yeah” moments that prompted me even this time around to look up controls – particularly the ‘Back to Papa’ move that allows you throw a pass back to yourself off the backboard. Again, cool then, cool now. As hinted at by fictional magazine covers on the loading screens, you continue to face various fictional ballers throughout your career that all provide specific specialties and style you can recruit to your team. I could never forget Stretch Munroe, the tall, afro’d gentleman that smirks on the cover of the game. I did, however, forget about the Lil’ Bow Wow-adjacent character named Biggie Littles who had the best Handles stat. Or Whitewater, who’s best Shots stat earned him his splashy nickname. Speaking of nicknames… something that fed my pre-teen ego was my Dillon character given a nickname by the game. Of course I identified with that. My baller’s nickname this time around was Playground, because ‘I’ve been taking these kids to school.’ I don’t remember what my middle school nickname was…

And how about that delicious 70s font!? Mmmmmm ;p

The Dual-Shock PS2 controller rumble still feels great on dunks, steals, well-executed handles, and blocks. It was easier to notice now, and found it interesting to document in my brain how the PS2 used blur-motion as an attempt to make things look more realistic. I remember noticing it as a difference between the PS1 and the PS2 as a kid, but wouldn’t pinpoint what it was until now. I remember seeing noticable differences with blur-motion PS2 games like Grand Theft Auto III and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. If I could toggle it off as I play on a thankfully small HDMI TV, I’d probably do so. It just appears kind of blurry with this set up and I know it’s not the ideal way to look at it. Even the skipping noise of the disc being read by the PS2 was a welcomed familiar sound. 🙂

I can’t forget to mention the camera work too. The camera zooms out a tad to hint to the player to watch for a teammate jumping up for an alley-oop. The camera zooms in to posterize dunks. And when you do something that feels really sweet – I remember it being very popular at the time – an INSTANT REPLAY would show you again how cool you are from a different camera view. Made it feel both like a game that you’re playing and a television production.

At this point of my playing, I know what the game is, and I’m happy I have the experience to play again. I don’t find myself seaking challenge in it, but instead just enjoy a semi-passive, flow-state arcade experience where I know I’m going to win the game and progress. And I’m okay with that as a revisit to a game I’d always loved and still do. I value not only the snapshot of the time it came out – featuring a Michal Jordan that was technically still in the NBA, the Lakers featuring the late Koby Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, Paul Pierce on the Celtics.. – but also the history lesson provided in highlighting some the NBA’s all-time greats.

Without NBA Street Vol. 2, I would have never investigated the likes of “Pistol Pete” Maravich, Dr. J, Isaiah Thomas, Wilt Chamberlain, or Jerry West. Can’t forget Magic and Bird, of course. Not only do their player cards fill the loading screens, but you eventually play against them as a ‘blast from the past’ all-star lineup and get to experience first-hand what their style and play was all about. Yet another thing that solidifies and immortalizes what’s special about basketball culture inside and outside of the NBA.

The last thing I’ll say here, because I don’t want to start over now but maybe someday I will, I thought mid-way through my career that it would have been funny to create Adam Sandler as my baller. It’s known that the comedian actor loves to play pick-up basketball in New York, making him a near perfect-yet-comical candidate for a road to baller glory. It may have made me take the game just a tad less seriously, but in the spirit of meme culture, here’s a pic of what I think that character may have looked like:

Cheers everybody, and thank you for reading 🙂

Your Friend Dillon