NBA Live 99

NBA Live 99 is a basketball sim built on 1997-98 rosters, frozen in time by that year's lockout. The core loop: play games, develop your squad across multiple seasons. It introduces Practice Mode for skill drills and multi-season play that tracks player growth over time. You won't find free agency or draft classes here—those systems came later—but the foundation for long-term team building is present. Gameplay focuses on managing lineups and executing plays rather than flashy presentation. The lockout context means you're working with the league as it stood before the 1998–99 season reshuffled rosters. If you wanted to experiment with player progression in a pre-franchise era basketball game, this was the starting point.