by RayRay_953 on Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:09 pm
At its core, the all-time teams can be considered a welcome addition for both additional players accessible outside of MyTEAM, or to simply overwrite/use for another team (as pointed out in the article). For me, there are several aspects of these teams that are both great and disappointing. Some of the legends included can be a great historical lesson which includes some lesser-known legends like Phil Chenier, Richie Guerin, Bob Love, and Wayne Embry to name a few. I do wish 2K could get the rights to more legends that NBA Live had in their older games that are deserving of a spot on these teams (some really old-school legends that come to mind include Carl Braun, Paul Arizin, George Yardley, Bobby Wanzer (he actually has a hidden cyberface for the past few 2K installments now). Of course, it's disappointing that we won't see guys like Barkley or Miller featured in the game, but there are still many players that have yet to have been included for an unknown reason even if they are in the NBRPA. One thing that I found cool was that they finally added Mel Daniels to the All-Time Pacers in NBA 2K22 after being a MyTEAM exclusive since 20 (I asked a question about why he wasn't there before a while back for the podcast!)
The All-Time teams in 2K have come a long way from the debut of the decade teams in 2K1. I believe ESPN NBA Basketball was the first game in the 2K series to introduce individual All-Time teams for the 76ers, Celtics, Lakers, and Sonics as bonus teams to unlock. Like their current counterparts, they consisted of current players and legends, but the only uniforms you could select were simplified variants of their then-current uniforms. I also remember that Barkley was in 2K6, 2K also lost the rights to Shawn Kemp and he was absent from the All-Time Sonics team that year (which moved Spencer Haywood to the starting PF).