nba

2K Sports recently announced that Michael Jordan will grace the cover of the company's acclaimed basketball game, but now we know that Jordan will not just be another typical cover athlete.

In fact, NBA 2K11 will offer an entire Michael Jordan-focused gameplay mode called The Jordan Challenge. We got a chance to speak with Jason Argent, vice president of marketing for 2K Sports, who explained that this addition to the traditional game will allow players to relive 10 of the most legendary games and moments from Jordan's illustrious career.

These historic game scenarios will task players with matching the hall-of-famer's mind-bending stats. A few of these just-announced scenarios include moments like "The Shrug," where on June 3, 1992, Michael gave the now infamous "I'm not even sure how I'm doing this" shoulder shrug after draining his sixth three-pointer in the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

Better yet, these throwback games will feature the look of the era in which they were played, including accurate uniforms, court paint, and even Jordan's specific appearance from the actual game. Players will also be able to take control of the classic Chicago Bulls teams from '85-'86, '89-'90, '90-'91, '94-'95, '95-'96, '96-'97, and '97-'98 seasons.

NBA 2K11 hits stores on October 5 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, and PSP, though the Jordan Challenge will only be available on the 360, PS3, Wii and PC versions of the game.

Be sure to check out the full list of 10 Jordan Challenge game scenarios.… Read more

The NBA's most beautifully dysfunctional franchise has not, reportedly, fallen into the hands of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

According to reports from both the Bay Area News Group and CSN Bay Area, the winning group has, as one of its pillars, Joseph Lacob, managing director and partner at Silicon Valley venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

CSN Bay Area reports that Lacob will be the front man for a group that is co-led by Peter Guber, the chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, while the Bay Area News Group suggests that Lacob, currently a part owner of … Read more

King Tawdry of Cleveland donned a shirt that looked like it came from Mervyn's, took out his earrings, and spoke down to his people. You knew he was serious because he was on ESPN and referred to himself in the third person.

He declared his commitment to leave the joys of his kingdom and "take his talents" to South Beach.

I like South Beach, a little more than I like LeBron James. So, in an attempt to see joy battle punishment, I decided to follow the Twitter feed specially created just for his vastly inflated moment of … Read more

With one leap, he leaves followers in his wake. With one tweet, more than 122,000 followers come to his fingers. Until I finish this post, when it will be at least a few thousand more.

Yes, LeBron James, he who used to laugh at how other NBA players post their latest on Twitter, has now succumbed. He has created Twitter.com/KingJames, a feed which, before it had even been fed, had 45,000 followers.

At around 1:30 p.m. PDT Tuesday, the man who would be king finally tweeted. And the followers kept coming to his court.… Read more

On today's show, size matters. You're going to hear that a lot. So, apologies in advance. Also, we have a great interview at the top of the show with Stephen Volz and Fritz Grobe, otherwise known as the Coke and Mentos guys. They've got a rocket car, a Coke Zero contract, and a dream. Also, Goatse wants to clear up some things, Mortal Kombat is back, and once again? Size matters.

Last year, Take-Two Interactive secured Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant to be the cover athlete of its annual installment in the NBA 2K series of basketball sims.

So how does the company top having arguably the best current basketball player in the world on its cover? It goes out and gets perhaps the best player of all time, a 14-time All-Star with six championship rings and five league MVP awards on his resume.

There go the last bragging rights NBA 2K5 cover star Ben Wallace had on Jordan.

Take-Two on Thursday officially announced that Chicago Bulls legend Michael … Read more

I cannot predict (though I can dream it) Kobe Bryant being sunk by Los Suns de Phoenix in the NBA playoffs. Can the alleged Superman Dwight Howard defeat those hardy assailants from Boston? My heart says probably not. My brain says absolutely, positively no way in this lifetime or any other.

But these are mere emotions. They fail us. And the more our emotions fail us, the more money the left-brainers make. (Look at Google, having invaded our laptops, now marching its armies toward our TVs.)

Yet what is lovely about some left-brainers, especially mathematicians beyond Wall Street, is that … Read more

The fact that Twitter is making all tweets easily embeddable is on the surface benign, but it does give pause when you think about a tweet being used as a quote.

It gets under my skin when a news broadcast uses tweets and Facebook screenshots as an indication that the network is "interactive." That isn't real interactivity. That is anecdotal proof of what a producer has already decided is the narrative of the story. Twitter's new feature will facilitate this a bit more easily across various media platforms: broadcast news, online news, blogs, etc. I'm … Read more