Despite living in the shadows of its 2K Sports counterpart for the better part of the last half-decade, EA Sport’s once-gigantic franchise, NBA Live, made a big splash by announcing Oklahoma City Thunder all-star Russell Westbrook as its cover athlete for the upcoming NBA Live16.
With its first release coming in ’95, the basketball franchise enjoyed huge success until it was leapfrogged by the competition in terms of both aesthetics and gameplay until EA eventually pulled the plug on NBA Live entirely before the 2009-10 season. It returned four years later with NBA Live14 featuring Kyrie Irving on the cover. Last year’s NBA Live15 saw Damian Lillard in that role.
Apart from being the next successor in EA Sports’ apparent new fascination with point guards, Westbrook makes for a pretty obvious choice to grace the cover. Already one of the more popular (and therefore marketable) athletes in the NBA, he’s also probably the player who can most often be described as being in “video game mode” (the other candidate for that title, Steph Curry, is already on the cover of the competition, NBA2K16). In other words, to accomplish feats on the court that can conceivably only happen after boosting a players ratings to 99.
Exhibit A:
The defence rests, your Honour.
