NBA Playoffs 2011: Simulating Celtics Vs. Knicks, Using ‘Pat Riley Basketball’ For The Sega Genesis

In this series, we’re simulating all eight of the first-round NBA Playoffs series... using the worst 1990s basketball video games we can find.

Simulation software used: Pat Riley Basketball (Sega Genesis, 1990)

This is the cover of Pat Riley Basketball. He’s looking the wrong way. The basketball is happening on the other end of the court. A most auspicious start! This game is ****ing terrible.

This is a Sega Genesis game, but the graphics are so bad that it certainly could have been an NES game.

Look at that. I don’t think this was a case of Pat Riley’s name and face being slapped on the cover. I think Pat Riley actually made this game himself. He spoke into a tape recorder for a half-hour, saying things like, “the basketball should be round, there are two baskets, there should be crowd noise when you score,” etc. Then he declared “END OF PROGRAM!” before shutting off the recorder, ripping the tape out of the cassette’s spooling, cramming it all into a Genesis cartridge that he made out of balsa wood, and mailing it to Sega. I can’t believe the game actually works to begin with.

Anyway, reason number 33 that this game sucks is that there is no Boston team, so I couldn’t actually pit Boston against New York. We’re soldiering on anyway. As you can see, I fast-forwarded the last 45 seconds or so because I just couldn’t take it anymore. It sort of resembles a time-lapse video of a possum carcass rotting away.

Simulated result: Knicks win, 103-82, in a game that featured somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 steals. Not exaggerating. Look at that sequence at the 1-minute mark. aaaaghh this game is so awful

Keys to the game:

For simulations of the rest of the NBA Playoffs’ first-round match-ups, stay tuned to this StoryStream. And for actual, intelligent analysis of these teams, check out our Knicks blog, Posting and Toasting, and our Celtics blog, the appropriately-named Celtics Blog.