Bill Laimbeer: The Once and Future King of Basketball
Christmas of 1991, I received a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as copies of Super Mario World and Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball, a game that has since gained notoriety as one of the worst games of all time. Granted, I played Mario a lot more, but being a Michigan kid, I thought it was so cool that the bad boy from the Detroit Pistons’ legendary ‘Bad Boys' squad had acquired his own video game. Despite its reputation, I actually played it quite a bit.
So is it one of the worst games of all time?
Probably, yes. Almost certainly.
But you know me, I still kinda like it, and I have one or two thoughts about it.
It’d be easy to make jokes about my loving parents getting me an infamously bad game as a gift, but the truth is they nailed it! There were about eight games total on the system, and one of them starred a Detroit Piston. If I had a seven-year-old son these days and was getting him a PS5 for Christmas and one of the only games available was a basketball game featuring a current Piston doing something video gamey, Jaden Ivey’s Streetball Knife Fight! or something, then I’d probably get that for the little fucker.
Though there were arguably three more famous players (Isiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman, and Joe Dumars)on the infamous team that won two championships in ‘89 and ‘90, Laimbeer’s physical style of play was the attitude of the Bad Boys personified. It wasn’t always pretty, but it’s the sort of thing you think is cool when your guys do it, and get enraged when the other team does it. I was a Pistons fan, so I admired the man a great deal. Bill Laimbeer didn’t invent elbowing his opponents in the face: he just did it so well that he landed a video game deal out of it.
Oh and by the way, this “Combat Basketball” isn’t your granddaddy’s basketball. This is extreme basketball where shoving is encouraged and there are no fouls as well as a surprising amount of violations intact!
What I’m getting at is it’s a very specific type of (mostly) lawless bloodbath out there, but the backcourt violation rule is in full order. Ditto for goaltending. It’s like they asked Bill Laimbeer what parts of basketball he liked and which parts he didn’t.
If my theory is true, then I think one day Bill came to the office and said:
Hey, you know what I’d like to see? A camera directly above the court, and zoomed way in so that players couldn’t possibly see if there were any defenders or teammates in their immediate vicinity. I’m Bill Laimbeer and I think that would be neat!
Also, I think he always wanted to see a little Zamboni-looking vehicle drive out and shoot the ball up in the air for the tip-off, ‘cause that’s in here too!
In addition to the obtrusive camera angle, the game’s most inexplicable decision is the one that saw every action mapped to a lone button on the SNES controller. That’s right, the B button does everything! Hold B and a direction to pass, do it without holding a direction to shoot. Same on defense, sub passing for shoving and shooting for blocking. It was an interesting decision to assign everything to one button and ignore the others, especially when it was the first system with shoulder buttons. Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball only used one of six buttons. The Native Americans used to do the opposite thing with a buffalo.
Laimbeer appears in the game alongside a bunch of made-up pricks. It’s like he’s the only one from the NBA of 1991 that survived into this new world. Or maybe he’s their messiah, the man who appeared to teach them everything they needed to know about fouling early and often. The Bill & Ted-like figure in this future filled with people kneeing each other in the groin.
I know the truth is that this is a game called Combat Basketball that was ported to the SNES and they signed a deal with Bill and stuck him in there. This isn't a game conceived by Laimbeer like I wanted to believe. It’s just another byproduct of Laimbeermania that swept the nation in the early ‘90s, resulting in media such as this video game, and the 6’11” center’s surprise pop collaboration with Paula Abdul, “Four Elbows, Two Hearts.”
The game takes place in 2031, at least it says that somewhere on the internet and I’d like it to be true. As that year approaches, clearly BLCB’s vision of the future was ultimately far-fetched. The game wasn’t handed over to futuristic street punks and they don’t drive Zambonis on the court to do the tip-off. Physicality remains in the sport, but nothing like the unhinged fighting and shoving that’s seen on display in the game, with the notable exception of Draymond Green.
Still, the once-proud Detroit Pistons are in the gutter these days. Perpetually rebuilding, they set the record for losses in a row for a basketball team last season. And while I don’t think the NBA is about to usher in a makeover that sees Combat Basketball rules adapted, maybe Detroit should still call Bill up and at least get the boys running some basic elbowing drills or something.
Sketching the Elephant T-shirt available here!
