Live 09 is fine. While it does have annoyingly long loading time, the simpler gameplay worked better for a noob like me. It's fairly easy to pick up and play, you have all the licensed teams and players from that year, it's fine. Play NBA Jam or 2K instead though.
In-game presentation was great, soundtrack was solid, and loved the International teams that weren't present in 2K games at the time. But the gameplay itself was just lacking.
I loved drinking spoiled milk with my wife when we played this game. Every time Micheal Beasley would miss a free throw she would hit me with various webkinz
Probably the biggest issue with this game is absolutely pathetic AI, the game has no idea what to do if you just go up the middle, turbo in and go for a lay-up/dunk. Defense is similarly pretty difficult, AI teammates can struggle to keep on the ball at times. The franchise mode is fine, but when you compare it to other games that you could buy it was nothing impressive. It simply lacks the gameplay to be a particularly fun basketball game, you'd be better off buying an older NBA Live game or an NBA 2K game.