BOOM-SHAKALAKA!!
Clintastic!
In what’s sure to make the day of everyone alive in the mid-’90’s, EA Sports is set to announce the return of the greatest video game of all time, NBA Jam, for the Nintendo Wii. If the thought of sharp-elbowed NBA player caricatures with Barry Bonds-sized heads on Kate Bosworth-sized bodies doesn’t get you pumped, then you were either a deprived child or just aren’t human.
There’s really no way the EA execs can screw this up if they stick with the original formula, down to the George Clinton-style P-Funk soundtrack and the endearingly repetitive, poor man’s Marv Albert announcer. My only suggestion would be having at least one old school player (of the always interesting hidden variety, perhaps) on every team, because quite frankly, I need more of Tom “The Bomb” Gugliotta and Blue Edwards in my life.
Without further ado, I present the three players – since starting with Tournament Edition, teams could make substitutions after each quarter — who should be represented in NBA Jam 2010, along with one old school star in parenthesis. I mean, just imagine Mark Price lobbying one up for LeBron James, or O.J. Mayo feeding one to “Big Country” Reeves. Whoops, bad choice of words there.
(Note that since there were only 27 teams at the time of the original game’s release, I took the liberty of choosing a retired “legend” for Toronto, Memphis, and Charlotte — the Bobcats, that is, since the 1993-94 Charlotte Hornets once featured the epic and my personal favorite duo of Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson. Well, aside from the phenomenal Rookie All-Star squad that included the likes of Bill Curley, Eric Montross, and Yinka Dare.)
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