My mother was captain of her college basketball team; she was also a member of the Romanian national basketball team. Unfortunately for me, her basketball DNA was not passed on to me at birth.

When I broke my last window in a one on one game in my friend’s driveway I decided that I should keep my basketball playing to video games only. That was years ago, and since then, the only baskets that I’ve made were all virtual. However, there is one problem with video game basketball that I’ve encountered in every version of the game that I’ve played. Something just did not add up right. Some games had problems with the player motions and animations, some with the actual graphics, others with sound but all of them had some kind of an issue when it came to the gameplay and controls. Maybe it is the extremely fast-paced rhythm of the game that causes all the gameplay issues, or maybe it is just bad programming, or … it could be both, but up until now video game basketball just didn’t do anything for me.

But once again, I have hope; not because the new basketball season is just around the corner, but because one of the new basketball titles released this year happens to be from the creators of MLB 08 The Show. The Show was an awesome baseball game from just about every single aspect of the game, and with all the recent disappointments coming from the EA sports studios, I’ll be honest, I have no desire to try their basketball game. Not only is EA’s game ten dollars more, but best I can tell it does not even have a franchise mode. So this NBA season I’m going to experiment with NBA 09 – The Inside. Twenty-five seasons are available, and if fortune is on my side, in the next few seasons I shall restore the Chicago Bulls to their formal glory. If the game allows us to create characters, I will certainly recreate Jordan. Maybe I’ll name the guy Jordan 2 or Jordan Jr. But before I get carried away any further with my Chicago Bulls fantasy, I better start playing some exhibitions games so I get used to the controls. I hope this game is at least decent. After so many years of video game basketball somebody ought to get it right; maybe this game did.