It's certainly not a bad game, far from it. In fact NBA Courtside 2002 has a very intuitive control system and novices will appreciate the fact they can pick up the controller and play a decent game of basketball without too much frustration. The flip side of this is of course reduced complexity for the more hardcore of gamers. Those who want a number of moves and stacks of control options may feel a little hampered with the control system on offer. It's hardly dumbed down but skillful gamers may feel slightly unchallenged.

The artificial intelligence in the game also reduces the difficulty level as well unfortunately. Again it's not a case of the game being dumbed down but the AI basically tends to repeat itself. It becomes fairly easy to predict which moves the AI is going to employ and which players it will use to pull them off. This reduces the playability of the single player game, especially in season play. The deficient AI isn't as noticeable in the games fast paced arcade mode but it's definitely something to be tidied up for the next in the series.