There was a moment during last night's Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers game when Kobe Bryant froze as if "the controller was disconnected on him." As soon as I saw the freeze, the first thing that came to my mind was the infamous freeze by Jesus Bynum!
No, Jesus Bynum was not a nickname for Andrew Bynum -- a two-time NBA champion and teammate of Kobe -- during one of his wacky hairstyles and phases. It was a glitch in the the never-released EA Sports video game NBA Elite 11. The demos of the NBA Live reboot were plagued with many issues and when videos of the Laker center freezing at midcourt with his arms out like he was Jesus went viral, EA put the game out of it's misery and killed it faster than Bynum's time with the Indiana Pacers.
For the past few years, EA has been doing their best to resurrect the franchise by changing the name back to NBA Live and getting popular players like Kyrie Irving and Damian Lillard to be cover athletes. Unfortunately, the rise of NBA2K, their ratings importance to NBA players and a generation of 2K gamers has created a wider gap between the two games than the arms of Jesus Bynum.
Another interesting thing about Elite 11 was the talent: The cover boy was Kevin Durant, who is now gracing the cover of 2K15. The soundtrack was produced by 9th Wonder and featured up-and-coming artists like J. Cole. They also had MVP candidate Stephen Curry endorsing the game. Everything about the marketing made this game sound like a winner.
It did sound like a winner until the sounds of YouTubers laughing and cursing at the Jesus Bynum glitch happened.
"Shoot the f*****g ball, man, s**t!"
Although it wasn't officially released, demos of NBA Elite are still floating around with a price tag around $5,000 ($10,000 if graded). I've even seen the Game Stop promotional covers go for up to $300 on Ebay. If you are in the market to add one of these to your game collection (like mine in the following photo), please be careful because I've heard of counterfeits.