In this week's Wayback Wednesday, Andrew reminisces about some interesting video game roster trivia involving Tom Gugliotta.
The post Wayback Wednesday: Tom Gugliotta & Basketball Video Games appeared first on NLSC.
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at Tom Gugliotta and some interesting trivia regarding his career and appearances in video games.
There are some well-known examples of players whose history with basketball video games is interesting and unusual. It seems such a weird and unfathomable situation nowadays, but back in the 90s, Roster Players were frequently a necessity due to the absence of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, owing to them retaining the rights to their likenesses. Shaquille O’Neal was also briefly exclusive to NBA Live, and even David Robinson once required a stand-in. Of course, I also enjoy delving into virtual hardwood trivia concerning far more obscure players, such as Junior Harrington.
Now, on the scale of obscurity to all-time fame, Tom Gugliotta is probably closer to the likes of MJ, Chuck, Shaq, and The Admiral than he is to Harrington. That is to say, if you were to ask long-time basketball fans and history buffs, they’d be far more likely to recall Googs than Junior. With that being said, like so many players of yesteryear that were very good but not all-time greats, Gugliotta doesn’t get talked about enough. That’s unfortunate from a basketball standpoint, but his career also resulted in some fun NBA video game trivia. Let’s take a look back…way back…
Drafted sixth overall in 1992, Tom Gugliotta had a solid rookie season on a terrible Washington Bullets team. Now, there’s a reason that “great numbers on an awful team” is a knock on players who fluke their way to a career year when a thin roster opens up an opportunity for more minutes, but Gugliotta had several productive years. He even made the All-Star team in 1997, and was a coveted free agent prior to the 1999 lockout season. Injuries took their toll and cut short his prime, but Googs was a big man who could score in a variety of ways, as well as adequately defend, rebound, and even pass and handle the ball. He wasn’t a superstar, but he was a fine player.
When we think about NBA players that played for multiple teams, there’s usually one in particular that we’ll associate them with. Success is frequently the deciding factor here, but we’ll also associate players with the teams they were playing for when we first started watching basketball; even if they had longer and more successful stints elsewhere. To that point, I generally picture Tom Gugliotta playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves, as that’s who he was with when I really started getting into hoops. It’s also where he became an All-Star, and the trio of Googs, Kevin Garnett, and Stephon Marbury once seemingly had great promise, leading the Timberwolves to relevance.
As I noted above however, Gugliotta didn’t begin his career in Minnesota. He spent his first two years in Washington, where he started every game he played in a Bullets uniform. As such, you’ll find him in their starting lineup in video games that are set in the 1993 and 1994 seasons. This includes the 16-bit version of NBA Live 95, which had final 1994 season rosters. Gugliotta was also featured alongside Harvey Grant as the Bullets’ duo in the original NBA Jam. It’s easy to scoff at that choice, and sure, you could’ve made a case for Rex Chapman, Michael Adams, or even Pervis Ellison. Grant was the Bullets’ leading scorer though, and Googs was a top rookie in 1993.
That brings us to the 1995 season, and the games set in and around that time. Googs began the season with Washington, but was traded to the Golden State Warriors after six games. Who was the player going the other way? None other than future All-Star and Hall of Famer Chris Webber, who wanted out of Golden State and forced a sign-and-trade after opting out of his deal; rookie contracts were quite different prior to the lockouts of the 90s! Gugliotta played 40 games for the Warriors before he was traded again, being sent to Minnesota for rookie Donyell Marshall. He later noted that being traded so early on his career meant that he didn’t form attachments to any one team.
In any case, Tom Gugliotta ended up playing for three different teams during the 1995 season. As a side note, the record is five, held by Bobby Jones (the one born in 1984, not the Hall of Famer who played with Julius Erving). These three stints in the span of a single season resulted in some interesting differences between video games released in the mid 90s. In all revisions of the original arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition, you can find Googs (albeit misnamed “Gugliotti”) on the Bullets. In the 16-bit console versions, he’s on the Warriors. Finally, in the PC and PlayStation versions – released later and featuring rosters updated as of the 1995 Draft – he’s in Minnesota.
Once again, the 16-bit version of NBA Live 95 featured final 1994 season rosters, with Tom Gugliotta starting for the Washington Bullets (though again, he was still with them when the 1995 season tipped off). NBA Live 95 PC accounted for his trade to the Minnesota Timberwolves however, thus skipping his Golden State Warriors stint entirely. Meanwhile, NBA Action ’95 – the game that kept David Robinson out of NBA Live 95 PC – was released after the Webber deal, but prior to the Gugliotta-for-Marshall swap. As a result, it joins the 16-bit version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition as the only video games to capture Googs’ brief midseason Warriors stint.
Before official roster updates were commonplace or indeed viable, the only time we saw games updated to reflect player movement during the season was when a new revision was developed. This included new boards for arcade machines, second-run copies and international versions that came after the North American releases, and ports to other platforms. This is how a handful of old video games have preserved snapshots of the league that include rare and forgotten stints. Although there are many examples, Tom Gugliotta’s is particularly interesting to me. Not just because he’s a nostalgic name from when I was a young fan, but because it involves three teams.
It’s such a rare combination of factors: a player being traded twice in the same season, the timing of each trade, and the release date of different versions of the same game, allowing each stint to make the cut in one of them. There are several players who have appeared on two different teams in two different versions of the same game, or in different games set in the same season. Jerome Kersey and B.J. Armstrong actually appear on three different teams in various 1996 season titles, albeit thanks to a lockout and phantom stints. Googs appearing on each of the three teams that he suited up for in 1995 in the three different versions of NBA Jam TE might be a unique case!
Following the end of the lockout in 1999, Gugliotta drew interest on the free agent market. Unimpressed by the Timberwolves’ offer and feeling no sense of loyalty having already been traded twice, he ended up signing with the Phoenix Suns. This move would be added in the official roster update for NBA Live 99 PC, and Googs can be found on the Suns in video games over the next few years. A knee injury in 2000 was unfortunately the beginning of the end however, and he never played more than 57 games or averaged double digits in points in a season thereafter. This led to some forgotten stints, a couple of which aren’t even represented in any video games.
Googs began the 2004 season with the Suns, though his role was further diminished as he played a career-low 10.1 minutes per game. He was traded to the Utah Jazz in February, in a deal that included the 2010 first round pick that would become Gordon Hayward. He actually started 24 of the 25 games he played for the Jazz, who had lost Karl Malone to the Los Angeles Lakers in the offseason. His numbers were still a far cry from what they’d been however, and he’d soon be replaced by free agent signee Carlos Boozer. Tom Gugliotta’s brief Jazz tenure and subsequent signing with the Celtics in August 2004 means that no games officially account for his time in Utah.
NBA Live 2005 and ESPN NBA 2K5 reflect his signing with Boston, and he went on to play 20 games for the Celtics that season. He would be traded to the Atlanta Hawks in February however, in the deal that brought Antoine Walker back to Boston (and temporarily had him wearing #88). Once again, a midseason trade actually gave Tom Gugliotta a chance to play more minutes and even start a handful of games, as he averaged 10.3 points per game in 27 outings with the Hawks for a combined 8.3 ppg on the season. Like his half-season stint in Utah, there aren’t any basketball video games that account for Googs’ time with the Atlanta Hawks in their official rosters.
The 2005 season marked the end of Tom Gugliotta’s NBA career, but not his final appearances on the virtual hardwood. Obviously he’s been featured as an historical player in NBA 2K in recent years, but he can also be found in the Free Agents in NBA Live 06 and NBA 2K6. Indeed, quite a few players who came along in the 90s and have at least one All-Star appearance played their final season in 2005, and can be found in the Free Agents Pool in those 2006 season games. With Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman, Latrell Sprewell, and Glenn Robinson joining Googs as free agents in NBA Live 06 and NBA 2K6, there are some fun minimalist modding opportunities!
Although the main point of this retrospective was to highlight the oddity of Googs appearing on three different teams in three different versions of NBA Jam TE, I do think it’s important to spotlight players like him. We remember the big names of the past, but we forget about the really good ones, especially if their prime was cut short. Tom Gugliotta also had a skillset that might seem ahead of its time, but it wasn’t as uncommon back in the 90s as some may think. That’s worth bringing up in historical discussions to combat recency bias! Beyond that though, video games preserve the unique situation that was Googs’ 1995 season, making for some interesting trivia.
The post Wayback Wednesday: Tom Gugliotta & Basketball Video Games appeared first on NLSC.
