Starting with the opening video sequence, you could tell that NBA Basketball 2000 was going to be solid in area of presentation. The menu layouts are easy to use and it's easy to navigate through the stats and roster management features. The stats offered include everything that hardcore fans look for in a game including individual stats, team stats, standings and league leaders. All of the important statistics are kept track of like points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots; plus some weird ones like dunks per game.
The roster management gives the player full control over the teams in the league. Players can adjust the team's starting five, trade players and even create players. Once a game is started, the excellent presentation continues as the player will see the basketball players shooting around in pre-game and when the home team's starting line-up is announced, a full NBA-style flashy introduction is given.
Once the player starts an actual game is when the negatives of the game begin to pop-up. One of the first problems that show up is the lack of control that you get over the player. For instance, the game lacks a button for "backing up" that is common in most other basketball videogames.
There's a button mapped to special moves - like spin moves, behind the back dribbles and dribbling between the legs - but the move that's made is determined completely by the computer. This poses problems when you press the button near the sidelines and the player being controlled performs a move that takes him right out of bounds. Basically, too many of the moves and the action of the controlled players are taken out of the hands of the player playing the game.
It's very easy to call plays, but the problem is that there's only a very limited number of them. On offense, you can only call four different plays; motion, 3 point setup, pick and roll and isolation. However, the player can easily execute simple plays like give-and-gos and alley oops without too much effort.
Another area that could use a lot of improvement in NBA Basketball 2000 is the computer AI. One gripe is that computer controlled teammates don't react realistically to a lot of different game situations. I rarely noticed players boxing out for rebounds on foul shots and the CPU controlled teammates sometimes ran away from loose balls on long rebounds instead of going after it.
My biggest criticism with the game is that it really ends up being an all-out dunk fest. One of the reasons that this happens is because it's way too easy to drive, even on the game's hardest difficulty setting. Also, once you get close enough to the basket, your player will automatically dunk the ball. Since the defender will usually be moving, you'll either just knock him over with no offensive foul called or the defender will be called for the foul. Only a small percentage of the time will the dunking player be called for an offensive charge.
The game also features some weird problems and bugs like getting goaltending calls when a player grabs a rebound that's shot off of the side of the backboard and the fact that the player shooting a foul shot will run after the ball when an official should throw it to him.