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" My thumbs are sore. Sore from taking the hapless Chicago Bulls from cellar dweller to Eastern Conference champions. Doing what Jerry Reinsdorf could never do after Michael Jordan. It was a long road, complete with two orders of Thai takeout, five beers, a few blockbuster trades, a knock-down-drag-out five-game series with the Pistons, and a league salary cap that just doesn&amp;#039;t seem fair. Thus is the life of a Dynasty Mode man such as myself when given the keys to the completely exhaustive basketball kingdom of the new NBA Live 2005. And it only took me the better half of an entire weekend.  Sure, there&amp;#039;s the enhanced freestyle dunking of 2005, the newly added all-star weekend, and the bumpin&amp;#039; hip-hop soundtrack you can buy on iTunes. But the real reason I would waste the daylight hours of a beautiful 70 degree Saturday is that no matter the scenario, whether I was down by twenty-four with only a few minutes left or up by sixteen with ninety seconds on the clock, the game was never over. And if I was going to win it--which, thank you very much, I did the majority of the time--it was going to be with my own guys who I drafted and traded for, not fat-man Reinsdorf&amp;#039;s lousy squad. And therein lies the greatest advancement in the new breed of sports video games: the ability to build a dynasty, to make right what that dipshit owner of your favorite team screwed up over vanity. You make your team into what you want it to be, and you take on the entire world. For all the super-high-res hoopla and all the reverse dunks, the real gift of NBA Live is ownership of your own virtual sports fantasy--and turning what you&amp;#039;ve created into one long, shamelessly enjoyable slugfest with your PlayStation. It&amp;#039;s worth the carpal tunnel. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a2369/esq1204shameful-1/>