NBA Courtside is a pretty below averge basketball game. it mostly plays sim-like but many aspects still feel arcaic and non realistic.
Now this is a game that came out in 2002 so i wont judge it too harshly on the visual department. the textures do not look real at all and the faces dont look good. On a bright note the visuals are actually pretty colorful. For some odd reason almost all the players have this weird proportion issue where they either look huge.
Their are your standard modes in this game. Quickplay, Season, Playoff, 3-point shootout and a 3 on 3 arcade baketball mode. all of the game modes are quite self explanitory. the 3on 3 mode is really terrible. It oddly plays super slow just so it can slow down the speed and many of the moves become very exhaderated like jump shots steals and dunks and it is just really tacked on and sloppy.
The gameplay in courtside at first seems decent as you can do what you would expect to do in a basketball game. After a few playthroughs you realize the game is really one sided. Either all you do is just easily drive the basketball to the hoop or you just keep shooting three's. This makes the game dull after a while and the CPU is not very smart or dynamic as the only thing they will do on offense most of the time is just try to drive the ball into the lane.
Season mode is what you would expect accept for one really stupid and idiotic decision. All trades will always be accepted. This is just plain terrible and why would any developer let this happen. That means you could trade lets say keith van horn for tracey mcgrady and etc. Other than that flaw the season is just a single season and thats it.
Overall NBA Courtside 2002 isnt the worst basketball game ever, but its just not good as it fails to show any sort of realism, good gameplay or any strong game modes.