The 2018-19 NBA Season with the 2019 NBA All Star Game is out!

        Good news, everyone. The wait is over! A few hundred of hours of work on my side, a few spare bucks on yours is all it takes to have the best version of the 2018-19 NBA Season on PC. Yeah baby, 2K11 is still by far the best basketball game in 2019! I know I said earlier that I am not gonna publish the work I've done with the recent NBA seasons but guess what...I decided to do it instead. Thanks to my sponsor (Igor, you're the man!) I got very motivated and in less than a month I managed to update the 2018-19 NBA Season.

     Not just that the game now looks awesome but with the newest gameplay and a couple of more minor adjustments for the formulas I use, it feels better than the non-competitive NBA games on TV! If you were used to my older gameplay you will be surprised how much it changed. Now it is faster, teams shoot more threes, have better defensive skills, there are more dunks in transition and big men rebound more intelligently, all players make better use of the screens, and CPU or allegedly coaches substitute players better etc.

      This is really how I imagined the game 8 years ago. I love it so much that I decided to buy a game controller (I haven't had one since 2014 because I was enjoying managing my teams with the Coach Mode on since then) and took on my favorite Phoenix Suns trying to dig them out of the bottomless hole they are historically in. Let's call it the snakes pit of Arizona desert. Haha!

        In other news, I decided to give the real 2018-19 NBA season another chance and occasionally I am watching full games especially with Philadelphia 76ers, Lakers and Toronto. You can tell I appreciate the new, young team in Philly, or Lebron and Kawhi. The rest...I find it boring especially with the non-competitive rules the NBA managed to lower the standards this decade.

        I've chosen to release and post the 2018-19 NBA Season DLC during the All Star weekend on 15-17th February 2019. But as far as my concern I won't watch anything related to the 2019 All Star Game. This event died a long, long time ago. FYI this is why the organizers are trying to bring back the good old times and ask Vinsanity take part in the dunk contest and Dirk in the 3 point contest. 'Cause that's when 'tha real shit' happened!

       This doesn't mean I don't respect the game; on the contrary, I created it and add it to my game! Everything related to the actual NBA season is represented properly in my DLC. To be honest, I love the videogame more than the reality recently; of course when it comes to NBA played in the 90s, I prefer the reality and often go back and watch games from that era (I just bought another 2TB HDD to archive the games I have!). 

        The 2018-19 NBA Season DLC is the product of a few hundreds of hours of work. It contains:

- realistic gameplay based on my own formula that gives realistic scores/percentages and also correct movement at a real NBA speed on the court

- complete roster (14-15 players) and accurate lineups plus correct situationals (starters and bench players) for each team; also a few free agents and basically every player who was active in NBA for at least 5 games before the deadline in February 2019

- high definition and many 'new generation' textures from NBA 2K14 & 2K19 applied to 2K11 faces (with tattoos!) that make players in this mod look crispy clean and - thanks to the rendering of 2K11 - more realistic than any other 2K game on the market in 2019!

- the All-Star weekend with accurate players that you can use in the Quick Play mode and realistic jerseys, arena and court based on previews published by nba.com early February 2019

- accurate skills and tendencies for each player based on a template and several formulas I use now that take into account real stats from NBA players career (it calculates career average ratings per 36 minutes from the data sheet on https://www.basketball-reference.com)

- a completely new portrait system for the player's in-game photos with long rectangular action photos

- some players' names were tweaked to match the NBA 2K11 name list so the arena announcers can pronounce them; those who weren't on the 2K list will be called by the "Money" nickname (this way at least it sounds like a made basket when they score but if you don't like it, you can change these things in the game by editing the player's bio)

- real coaches names (two per team) with real height, cyberfaces and experience years

- real courts and jerseys with correct colors plus the city edition jerseys for each team used in 2019

- an NBA TV presentation and scoreboard with the addition of my logo for this DLC
- my own global for 2K11 that includes the best stuff released over the years in the gaming community including progressive sweat, skinnier/realistic legs, Nike accessories, long leg pads etc.
- new canvas style background photos of the top players in the NBA this year for the game menu

- a few G-League teams with jerseys and courts to replace some now defunct D-League teams (credits to DaCrispy!)

       This DLC comes with all the necessary files plus the Roster file and the Season Mode file where I set up complete roster for the teams along with accurate lineups from the beginning of the season. Be warned you will need to use my Game Sliders and Coach Profile plus Fatigue as substitution method that is in the Settings file (don't worry it will be all sent to you by email!). The game is using Real Player FG & FT percentages and I advise you to play it that way if you want to see realistic effects.

        If you want to understand how my version of the game works, you should go to the How To Play The Game link on this blog. There are explanations about the Game Settings, Game Sliders (that also work with the Coach Mode on) and the Universal Coach Profile.

        Installation guide for my roster file:

1. Pay & get the roster file (.ROS) and the season file (.RFG) then place them into your NBA 2K11 SAVES folder.

2. Download ALL mod files (.iff, .cdf) from the links I will send you by email and install them into your NBA 2K11 GAME folder.

3. Lastly, start the the game and load the game files. To do this, go to “Options”, select “Load/save”, and load > “Roster1819″ or "Season1819". Go to “Manage Roster” to check if you have successfully updated your NBA 2K11 PC roster.

        In case you're interested in acquiring this mod, send me an email to leeunagi@gmail.com first. After that I will provide you with my PayPal account where you can send your payment for this mod. As soon as I cleared your payment, you will receive an email from me containing the Roster (.ROS) file and the Season Mode (.RFG) file along with all the links to the files contained in this DLC. I am looking forward in hearing from you. Enjoy your game, folks!

        Here are a few extra, random screenshots for you taken during the season I am playing with the terrible Phoenix Suns.

Music (and videogames)

       I never posted about my musical preferences before so I thought this is now the right time to do it. I am an avid music listener and by music I mean real music - and by that, music that makes your mind happy and your body bouncing. I started listening to Classic Rock in middle school and then in high school I switched to Blues. Everything that was Pop and the horrendous Rap aka Hip Hop had no effect on me. Jazz and Classical music were OK but represented the former generations who in my opinion gave up hope. I realize today my musical preferences would mean the same to the millennials but what the heck, we are not here to please everyone or else we wouldn't enjoy anything on our behalf, right?

      For many, many years I was a huge Blues (and Rock) music collector ending up having over 12000 albums while maintaining a website where I promoted tens of new albums every week. People could download those albums and later buy them at the usual store. It used to be the easiest way to promote yourself if you were a young artist. That was more than 10 years ago before YouTube took over with their ads. Obviously what I did is now called 'piracy' because some of the frustrated artists weren't happy they were losing a few bucks while other decent artists understood this was actually beneficial to them because more people found out about their existence and more fans showed up at their concerts and bought their merchandise. 

       But again, you can't make everyone happy. So...someone reported my page and Wordpress (yes, those MOFOs) decided to close my page without a warning. Last time I checked my website was worth $14000 and earlier that year someone saw a profit in it and offered to buy it but I refused to sell my soul. Now my soul is free while one of its layers is somewhere at the bottom of the sinking belly of the internet.

       Long story short...I am still listening to what I like. But I find it shameful there is less and less good music around. Everybody is talking about these shitty rappers when we all know that is NOT music but a social movement. And like any other protest, it isn't peaceful. So I am not interested in it nor in any other sub-culture products that promote it. Sadly this happens to videogames too. I am simply outraged to see that good funky music from the 90s videogames disappeared completely and was replaced by mumbling or screamed non-musical anger and depression of these so-called "musicians" who can't sing nor play any instrument anymore. 

        Here are a few oldie but goldie samples from back in the day. 

        My favorite by far is the NBA Live 97 menu music. Just like one of the comments to this video said...I spent hours on my Playstation One editing the roster while listening to this soundtrack. Another comments say: "This song fits the game and era it was made in so well, you could swear this would’ve been played as a theme for the NBA on TNT or TBS, or played during commercial breaks." And: "Damn I miss these tracks and 90s games, 90s owned...Fuck 2K!". Well said.

      Not game related in any way or form but I will post a few links to the best songs from my favorite musician. It's someone I have been watching early in his career. Once I've taken a 14000 kilometer journey (yes, you read it right!) to attend his concert in New York. Now he is one of the top guitar players in the world and has tens of millions of fans.