Many rights could not be obtained for certain big name NBA players on a seperate contract to those under the regular NBA rights. These teams featured a generic unnamed character that bared resemblance, had equal stats but not the correct jersey number. These players where Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Gary Payton.
The cover art features Milwaukee Bucks legend Mitch Richmond.
This follow up to the previous version on SNES and GEN was deemed rather mediocre as the graphics and A.I where not improved, and instead seemed to make players look like they had wide shoulders and waddled. Some praised the new crossover dribble system but most preferred NBA Live 96, especially since using sliders meant accuracy could be 99% where as NBA Live 97 was more 80%. It affected the games popularity and sales so much that the follow up NBA Live 98 on SNES and GEN was of so little interest to players that many fans of the series never knew it was even available on the mentioned consoles.