Wayback Wednesday: The Dream Team in NBA 2K17

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at the Dream Team in NBA 2K17.

They’ve often been cited as the greatest basketball team ever assembled. They swept their way to the gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, famously winning by an average of 44 points per game while never calling timeout. Eleven of its players are enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame for their individual accomplishments, and the team itself was collectively inducted in 2009. Eight years later, the team would also be inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. Simply put, the Dream Team was a squad for the ages.

As far as the virtual hardwood is concerned, the Dream Team has made a handful of official appearances in video games. They were the cover stars of EA Sports’ Team USA Basketball, and were included in NBA 2K13; appearances that I’ve previously covered here in Wayback Wednesday. The most recent game to officially feature the Dream Team was NBA 2K17, an appearance that stands out as somewhat different – and indeed slightly controversial – compared to previous releases. Let’s take a look back…way back…

Whereas the Dream Team were a contemporary squad in Team USA Basketball and a regular bonus team in NBA 2K13, they were a pre-order bonus for NBA 2K17. Of course, you didn’t necessarily have to pre-order, as the unlock code was included in first run copies of the game. As such, as long as you bought a brand new physical copy around launch, or were able to get your hands on a copy with an unredeemed code, you could still play with the Dream Team in NBA 2K17. Once unlocked, the legendary squad joined a selection of bonus teams which also included the 2016 Team USA and Australian Boomers, both of whom made cameos in the MyCAREER story.

Unfortunately, while the Dream Team may not have been a pre-order exclusive in the strictest sense, if you didn’t get your hands on an unredeemed code, there was no other way to legitimately unlock them. Unlike the All-Time College Teams, they weren’t made available as paid DLC at any point, to the disappointment of gamers who opted to pick up the game later. Not only that, but the code to unlock the Dream Team in NBA 2K17 wasn’t redeemed through the digital storefronts of Steam, Xbox Live, or the PlayStation Network. Instead, it was a Locker Code that was entered in-game, adding access to the Dream Team to your MyPLAYER Account on the platform.

This may not seem like a problem at first glance. It’s a straightforward method that requires no additional purchase, and once the team was unlocked, it stayed unlocked; as long as nothing happened to your MyPLAYER Account data. As I would discover, uninstalling and reinstalling NBA 2K17 did result in issues with corrupted user files. This wasn’t too big of an issue, provided there were backups and the game could sync with the server. Of course, once NBA 2K17’s servers went offline, it was no longer viable to retrieve a face scan, convert an online MyCAREER save into an offline file, download official roster updates, or do anything else that accessed server side content.

Frustratingly, your MyPLAYER Account would still be updated with the new offline data. Since NBA 2K17 could no longer connect to a server to check if the Locker Code had been entered, this would remove access to the Dream Team. Furthermore, since Locker Codes require access to the servers, it isn’t possible to simply re-enter it. This means that unless you had the foresight to never attempt to uninstall and reinstall NBA 2K17, or do anything that might compromise your user data, it’s far easier than it should be to lose the Dream Team forever. This also includes installing NBA 2K17 PC on another system following the server shutdown, as I regrettably discovered.

In hindsight, it wasn’t the best way to handle a pre-order bonus. I’ll take my criticism a step further and say that the Dream Team really shouldn’t have been a pre-order bonus in the first place, but rather historical content that was readily available for everyone. With that being said, and although I’m loathe to champion paid DLC – especially when it involves removing content that should be free and accessible by default – that approach would’ve at least provided a means of unlocking the Dream Team without pre-ordering NBA 2K17. Those of us who did pre-order would never lose access to the Dream Team, as the content would be tied to the digital platform we were on.

As such, most of the screens that you’re seeing in this article come courtesy of Dee, who has been much more careful with his PC installation than I was. Speaking of the PC version of NBA 2K17 however, it is possible to unlock the Dream Team through roster editing, but the tools at our disposal require an older version of the game, and a matching roster that was saved using that executable. The All-Time College Teams can also actually be unlocked this same way, revealing that both are on-disc DLC. Going back to my previous point, while executives have tried to justify this – and some gamers also predictably shill for it – I’m of the mind that it’s a lousy practice.

Putting aside lousy business practices in Triple-A gaming and how easily it can be lost post-server shutdown however, it was awesome to have the Dream Team in NBA 2K17. I’m all for extra historical content whenever we can get it, and as noted above, they are undoubtedly a squad that’s worth celebrating. It was also appropriate timing given that NBA 2K17 was released in an Olympic year, and included the current Team USA to go up against. I only wish that I’d made better use of the Dream Team when I had access to it on both PlayStation 4 and PC. While I spent countless hours with NBA 2K17, most of the time I was playing MyCAREER and 2K Pro-Am.

Beyond exhibition games against Team USA 2016, the Boomers, or any other squad you fancied throwing on the court with them, the Dream Team also had a presence in MyTEAM. It was its own collection with special versions of each player, featuring the appropriate jersey numbers and suitably high attributes. This notably marked the only appearance of Charles Barkley in MyTEAM; at least as far as I’m aware. It’s definitely the final official appearance Chuck has made in a video game to date, as Take-Two continues to decline his offer to be included if they’ll make a contribution to the retired players’ fund. That alone makes the Dream Team’s inclusion significant.

On that note, it’s a downer to realise that we’re unlikely to see the Dream Team in another game anytime soon. While we’ve come to accept that classic NBA teams will have missing players and placeholders, it wouldn’t feel like an appropriate celebration of the Dream Team if they weren’t complete. For the record, while it is a shame that we don’t have Charles Barkley in NBA 2K – either as part of the Dream Team or a retro NBA squad – I understand and respect his position. He’s looking out for the previous generations that didn’t make the same kind of money as he did, and aren’t paid much to appear in games. It’s unfortunate that 2K is too greedy to compromise.

This means that Chuck’s willingness to make an exception in NBA 2K13 and NBA 2K17 isn’t something to be taken for granted. Both games were strong releases across the board without even taking their historical and bonus content into account, but the fact that they feature rare appearances from Barkley makes them even more special. It’s obviously much easier to go back and appreciate their inclusion in NBA 2K13, where they’re readily available and can’t be lost from the roster. If you do still have access to them in NBA 2K17, be careful about uninstalling and reinstalling, else you’ll find yourself in the same predicament that has befallen me (and likely others as well).

The more years that pass since the era of the NBA I grew up with, and the more that I hear it being ridiculously maligned as inferior and weak, the more I appreciate any content that celebrates it. Reactions to historical content in video games certainly highlight a generation gap that I’m noticing now that I’m aging into the upper end of the key demographic. Although many gamers were excited to hear that a revamped Jordan Challenge would be in NBA 2K23, I also saw dismissive comments stating “no one asked for this”. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that a huge amount of NBA 2K’s current userbase – easily over half – weren’t around for the 80s or 90s.

To that end, nostalgia for that era is perhaps becoming so last decade. I’m seeing more nostalgia for the early to mid 2000s onwards, which I admittedly do share, but not to the same extent as players from the 80s and 90s. I’m speculating here, but I’d suggest that younger NBA 2K gamers are more interested in seeing the 2008 Redeem Team added than a squad from thirty years ago that old heads like me are nostalgic for. That’s not me being a Grumpy Elder Millennial grumbling about how kids don’t have any appreciation for history. That is an issue, but as time marches on, the younger generation will always have nostalgia for a different era. That’s just the way it goes.

In that respect, the Dream Team in NBA 2K17 can be viewed as marking a turning point in basketball gaming and discussion. Sure, there were already rumblings of the “plumbers and dentists” rhetoric, but celebrating the Dream Team was still considered a strong enough selling point to make them a pre-order bonus. It would still appeal to me and many others, but likely not to hoops gamers who are much younger. We’re also less likely to see content like that among pre-order bonuses, compared to in-game currencies, exclusive apparel, and other consumables and content for MyCAREER and MyTEAM. In a way, NBA 2K17 was the last “traditional” release in the series.

Once again, that makes the inclusion of the Dream Team in NBA 2K17 a rather apt celebration of the end of era. On the other hand, it also demonstrates the changing times with its exclusivity and impermanent nature compared to NBA 2K13. While I’m presently unable to fire up NBA 2K17 and enjoy the Dream Team directly – though hopefully I might be able to change that through modding in the future – I appreciate its appearance in hindsight. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the Dream Team on the virtual hardwood. If we have, it makes NBA 2K17 even more historically significant. If we haven’t, I hope that its inclusion is handled much better the next time around.

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