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 player stints that never officially appeared in any basketball video games.

One of the reasons that I enjoy retro basketball gaming, and covering old titles for Wayback Wednesday, is the interactive almanac aspect. As I’ve said so many times, firing up old games is like consulting an almanac or encyclopedia. You’ll see all the familiar faces in strange places, and back in familiar places. The memorable teams of yesteryear are there to browse, and of course, play with. For so many of us, video games complemented our NBA fandom, and were part of following along with the league that year. Not to overuse a phrase, but they capture a snapshot of the season.

Well…for the most part! As I’ve demonstrated through various articles, there are aspects of basketball video games that prevent them from being completely accurate interactive almanacs. We’ve seen phantom stints; the players that only appeared on certain teams in games, as they didn’t ever suit up for that club in an official NBA contest. There are comebacks that were over before they began, and players who made it into the rosters of video games without ever tallying a single minute in the league. And then, there are the players who had stints that never appeared in the official rosters of a game. Here are five of the most memorable unaccounted for stints.

1. Rasheed Wallace’s Atlanta Hawks Stopover

It’s without a doubt one of the strangest subplots of the 2004 season. On February 9th, the Portland Trail Blazers sent Rasheed Wallace to the Atlanta Hawks along with Wesley Person, in exchange for Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff, and Dan Dickau. Sheed infamously played just one game for the Hawks: a road loss to the New Jersey Nets on February 18th. One day later, he ended up in Detroit as part of a three-team trade, and went on to help the Pistons defeat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals come June. For those keeping score at home, in less than a fortnight, Sheed played for three different teams, changing one of his uniforms within 48 hours.

If you were maintaining a current roster mod, or simply keeping your own game up to date, chances are that Wallace was a Piston before you had a chance to make him a Hawk! That stint was obviously long over before it could be officially included in NBA Live or NBA 2K, so outside of any community-made rosters that were accurate as of February 18th, it’s not a lineup that you can readily play with. In recent years, I’ve thought it might be fun to create a roster that captures extremely rare games and stints like this. That lineup with Sheed had some interesting pieces, and given that the Hawks were selling his jersey, they probably didn’t intend it to be a one-game deal.

2. Antoine Walker’s Second Boston Celtics Stint

When I’ve covered familiar faces in strange places, or back in familiar places, my rule is that those stints must have officially appeared in the rosters of at least one video game. That’s because we are a basketball video game fansite, and so I prefer to look at NBA trivia through the lens of the virtual hardwood. To that end, Antoine Walker’s return to the Boston Celtics in the 2005 season is an example of a familiar face back in a familiar place that hasn’t made the cut, because it isn’t reflected in any official rosters. Like Sheed’s stopover in Atlanta, a deal at the deadline brought Walker back to Beantown, not quite two years after they had traded him to the Dallas Mavericks.

That was long after the 2005 season titles were released, where you’ll instead find Walker on the Hawks. He was then traded to the Miami Heat in the offseason; a move that was made in time to be included in the 2006 season releases, thus preventing his Celtics comeback from receiving any official representation on the virtual hardwood. It also meant that we didn’t see him sporting number 88 in any official rosters. As you may recall, the man once known as Employee No. 8 had to double up his number as it was being worn by a rookie Al Jefferson. After a couple of games sporting the very rare 88 on his jersey, Walker struck a deal with Jefferson to reclaim his usual number.

3. Luke Ridnour’s Short Stints Pre-Retirement

He was never a star, but Luke Ridnour had – by most measures – a successful NBA career. Ridnour played twelve seasons in the league, spent a few years as a starter including a memorable run with the Seattle SuperSonics in 2005, and was considered a solid point guard. His career took a sharp downturn after 2013 however, and he appeared in just 47 games during his final season with the Orlando Magic in 2015. Ridnour’s NBA story didn’t quite end there though, as he was infamously traded four times in six days. This flurry of phantom stints began with the Magic trading him to the Memphis Grizzlies for the rights to Latvian forward Janis Timma on June 24th.

The very next day, Ridnour was traded twice; first to the Charlotte Hornets for Matt Barnes, and then to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Jeremy Lamb. As Ridnour had begun his career with the Seattle SuperSonics, this could’ve counted as a familiar face back in a familiar place, at least far as the franchise was concerned. That return wasn’t to be however, as the Thunder sent him to the Toronto Raptors on June 30th for the draft rights to Tomislav Zubcic. The Raptors waived Ridnour on July 9th, after which he decided to sit out the season, and ultimately retired. You’ll find him in the Free Agents in NBA 2K16 and NBA Live 16, but neither game accounts for those stints.

4. Dennis Rodman’s Dallas Mavericks Cameo

Although it was short-lived, and generally unsuccessful, Dennis Rodman’s stint with the Dallas Mavericks wasn’t a total embarrassment. He signed with them on February 3rd, having not played in the NBA since he was released by the Lakers the previous April. Rodman started all twelve games that he played for the Mavericks, playing 32 minutes per contest. While it’s obviously a very small sample size, he averaged 14.3 rebounds per game in that stint. Had he played enough games to qualify for the league leaders, it would’ve edged Dikembe Mutombo as the top man on the boards that year! It’s also on par with the numbers that earned him seven consecutive rebound crowns.

In other words, little had changed with his game despite a long break. Unfortunately, when it came to his demeanour and antics, nothing had changed there, either. That didn’t gel with a young team seeking leadership and their first Playoff berth in a decade. He was released on March 8th, and Steve Nash opined that he felt Rodman never truly wanted to be a Maverick, and was unmotivated as a result. The signing certainly didn’t pay off, as the Mavs went 3-9 with him in the lineup, after winning 10 of their 13 games before he signed. It was an unceremonious end to his NBA career, albeit one that’s often overlooked due to its brevity and absence from video games.

5. Muggsy Bogues’ Phantom New York Knicks Stint

I’d cite Muggsy Bogues as a prime example of stats not telling the whole story, and how the current fascination with them leads to players being underrated. Muggsy never led the league in any of the major statistical categories (though for a long time, he had the best career assist-to-turnover ratio in NBA history), but he was incredibly talented. He was also fearless despite being at least a foot shorter than most players, knifing into the paint and eluding premiere shot blockers. Unfortunately injuries did slow him down after the mid 90s, and he spent the latter part of his career mostly coming off the bench as a serviceable playmaker, ably steadying the second unit.

After appearing in 80 games for the Toronto Raptors in the 2000 season – the first time he’d hit that mark since 1993 – knee problems limited him to just three games in his final campaign. The Raptors traded him to the New York Knicks in February 2001 – where he would’ve reunited with former Charlotte Hornets teammate Larry Johnson, also in his last season – but he never reported to the team, given that he was inactive and only included for salary cap reasons. This phantom Knicks stint doesn’t appear in any official rosters, as he was traded to the Mavericks in August and later waived; a phantom stint that was included in a video game, specifically NBA Live 2002.

So, more often than not when I have to cut an example pending further research, that’s that. Unless it can be reworked into another article, I’ll usually just discard it. Still, it’s a shame to let stories and research go to waste, especially when there’s some other fun trivia involved. With that in mind, here’s the original fifth example that turned out to not actually be an example!

Dominique Wilkins’ San Antonio Spurs Sojourn

There’s a reason that we usually don’t talk about Dominique Wilkins’ career after he was traded by the Atlanta Hawks. He never played anywhere else for more than a single season, his best days were definitely behind him, and he split his final years between the NBA and Europe. Indeed, Wilkins missed the entire 1996 season – a very memorable campaign in NBA history – because he opted to play in Greece rather than return to the Boston Celtics. Nique’s stint in Greece wasn’t without controversy, and he returned to the NBA for the 1997 season, signing on with the San Antonio Spurs. He turned out to be one of the few bright spots in a tough season of…well, tanking.

At the age of 36, Wilkins was definitely past his prime, but he still had moments of explosiveness and led the Spurs in scoring that year. To that point, I recall thinking it was rather harsh when a magazine previewing the 1997 season mentioned his signing with the remark that the Human Highlight Film was “running in slow motion these days”! As he joined the Spurs in early October 1996, Nique missed the cut-off to be included in NBA Live 97. However, he can be found on the Spurs in NBA ShootOut ’97 (aka Total NBA ’97 in PAL regions), as well as an official roster update for NBA Full Court Press. It was fun to discover that, and worth doing the extra research!

Do you recall these stints that didn’t officially appear in the rosters of any video games (and Nique’s appearance on the Spurs in NBA ShootOut ’97, or NBA Full Court Press following its second roster update)? Who are some other players with memorable stints that were only ever included in unofficial rosters? Let me know 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 Stints That Never Appeared in Games appeared first on NLSC.