My childhood addiction to video games did not carry over past high school. Still, basketball games keep my attention because they capture the spontaneous fun of sports and the interplay between improvisation and structure. Whereas Madden requires a strong sense of strategy and football tactics, anyone can pick up a controller and play NBA Street.

The earliest NBA video games focused on possession and imitation. Bulls vs Blazers and Jordan vs Bird explored the novelty of actually controlling your favorite players and replicating the match ups you saw on TV. Then in 1992, NBA Jam wreaked havoc on every arcade and birthday party in the country, questioning the notion of what constituted a sports video game. Jam is a major breakthrough, but it’s not an NBA video game. It’s an arcade game that happens to use NBA players and something that approximates a regulation court.

NBA Live combined the arcade mentality of Jam with the experience of watching a game in person. That was the inspiration behind the 3/4 view it became famous for (I still go to NBA games and say “Yes, I have the NBA Live view!”). Derivative titles like 1997's NBA Showtime and 1998's Kobe Bryant’s NBA Courtside followed suit.

Today we receive more than play-by-play commentary and replay treatment. Games extend the narrative of players and teams we obsess over on ESPN and Grantland. Now that years have accumulated, these avatars are actual beings with real histories. We weave our understanding of the player’s accomplishments on the court and our interactions with them in the virtual world.

The relatively primitive nature of 1991's Tecmo actually helped portray Jordan’s intangible greatness with more fidelity than any other game since. For game developers, Nintendo’s 8-bit format meant that every player looked, dribbled, passed and shot exactly the same.