I've been playing basketball video games since the days of the Atari 2600. Back then the Intellivision basketball game was the best. Then Dr. J and Larry Bird One on One Game came out and ruled the world for a couple of years.
I started playing NBA LIVE (along with TECMO) on the SNES in the early 90s, and loved it. Since then I switched over to an XBOX, then an XBOX 360.
NBA LIVE was surpassed by NBA 2K in 2003. For the last 5 years 2K has been king. It pains me to say because I was loyal Live fan for 10 years, but all hail 2K.