IGN writes: "Every basketball player dreams of hoisting up that last-second bomb from deep beyond the three-point arc, down two with a hand in his face. When touches nothing but the bottom of the net, he's the man. When it clangs off the side of the tin and trickles out of bounds as the final buzzer sounds, he's anything but the man. NBA 09: The Inside on PS2 not only misses the big shot, it doesn't even catch backboard.
Simply put, NBA 09 is simply a repackaging of NBA 08. The folks at Sony didn't do much to enhance this year's offering, with the notable exception of making the Main Menu easier to navigate. You'll find all the same features and problems in NBA 09 as you did in previous editions of the series, and it's obvious that the game's developers have completely forgone the opportunity to improve the basic mechanics of gameplay, add depth to this year's version of The Life, or introduce new mini-games to a lackluster lineup."