By DAN ELEKTRO

(IDG) -- Kobe Bryant headlines Nintendo's first "NBA Courtside" for the GameCube. Unlike some of the weaker earlier series entrants, this one shows promise.

As you might expect, "Courtside" features large, crisp player models with smooth animations. For once, the crowd in a basketball game looks halfway decent, and the bench players are full polygonal models. However, there's a downside to all that silk: Pressing a button starts an animation, not necessarily an action. Sometimes those animations involve an extra step or two, like an unexpected turn-and-shoot move from outside or a two-step drive under the basket, which can completely mess up your play. On easy mode (the game's default), there's virtually no low-post game; you'll see plenty of uncontested dunks. (You'll see even more in "Courtside"'s wickedly fun rooftop arcade mode.) On higher skill levels, you'll see much tougher D and realistic scenarios like aggressive fouling toward the end of a game.

"Courtside" uses the GameCube controller's C-Stick for passing, and it's intuitive -- just point toward the player and the ball is gone. Unfortunately, selecting a defender with the same method is less precise. It's hard to get control of the player you want at any given timeespecially when things get messy in the paint, you can't get your icon on the right man.

One major annoyance is sound. Commentators Ralph Lawler and Van Earl Wright sound so similar that you can't tell them apart -- it sounds like one guy is talking to himself. Lawler constantly calls players by their nicknames -- after so many blurbs about "Vinsanity" and "T-Mac," you really want to just hear their real names. Plus, the cut-and-paste commentary winds up being worse than simply not flowing or sounding stuttered -- sometimes it doesn't even make sense. The little quips after blown shots and player factoids loop too frequently, and many of the bits are corny. "You know, the sun must have blinded him -- oh, I'm sorry, we're still indoors, aren't we?" Hear it once and you've heard it enough. Worse still is Van Earl Wright's repeated agreement with nothing: "Truer words were never spoken, young man" need not come after such mundane comments as, "It's all good." The arena announcer adds little touches like crowd giveaways, but he loops a lot, too.

Customization of players is deep in some areas, weak in others -- there are more tattoos than hairstyles, which makes zero sense. However, if you turn off the commentary and learn to live with the animation quirks, "NBA Courtside 2002" offers a fair amount of fun.