Recently EA Sports had a contest between several gamers with the new NBA Live game with the winner getting the chance to play the first official copy of the game with none other than Gilbert Arenas. There’s a lot of great stuff in this clip, including a dramatic finish. Since it’s Gilbert Arenas you probably already know how it ends, but even so I won’t give away the ending. While you’re watching, see if you can spot Gilbert doing DeShawn Stevenson’s I can’t feel my face routine:

To get you ready for NBA Live 08, which is out today, here’s Gilbert’s newest ad for the game:

Ever wanted to be in a shootaround with Gilbert Arenas? Well now you can, sorta….

If you have an XBox, you can go into the Marketplace and download a free demo of NBA Live 08 (562 MB) and try out the game before it releases in October.

In the demo, you are first put on the court with Gilbert for a shootaround that gives you time to get used to the game’s controls and new features. You can then play two 2-minute quarters as either the San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Cavs or two international teams.

Steve Nash is a two time MVP and often regarded as the top point guard in the NBA. Gilbert Arenas is his equal. At least, in NBA Live 2008. Arenas, Nash, and Allen Iverson tied with a 91 rating (out of 100) for point guards. LeBron, Kobe, Wade, TMac, KG, and Tim Duncan were the only other players with a rating equal to or greater than Gilberts. I guess being on the cover does have it’s additional perks. A list of the Top 10 Rated Players:

1t. LeBron James: 96
1t. Kobe Bryant: 96
3. Dwyane Wade: 93
4t. Tracy McGrady: 92
4t. Kevin Garnett: 92
5t. Tim Duncan: 91
5t. Gilbert Arenas: 91
5t. Steve Nash: 91
5t. Allen Iverson: 91
9. Dirk Nowitzki: 90
10t. Elton Brand: 89
10t. Paul Pierce: 89

Remember the Buzzer Beater trailer EA came out with a few weeks ago that ended with Gilbert’s signature walkoff after releasing the shot?

It might actually be in the game, from NBA Live 08’s Producer Blog:

1.) Will players have their individual signature movements like shots and emotions (ex: After clutch shot Kobe Pumps his fist)?

Signature Go To Moves is a pretty cool new feature that we are doing this year. There has been quite a bit of coverage in the gaming press on this the last few weeks so if you haven’t heard about it yet I would suggest you check out some of those articles. The important thing to know about them is that they don’t require a special button presses or controller move to make happen- they are just shots that happen under the right contextual circumstances for certain players. For example, if you get Kevin Garnett in the post and shoot a fadeaway jumper you will get KG’s fadeaway and not a generic one. This is really the evolution of the signature jump shots that we did last year, but this year you get full on signature moves instead of just jump shots.

We also do a lot of signature dunks, lay-ups, and passes for certain players, but these are baked into each player’s table of possible actions so they don’t happen 100% of the time. You will on occasion see Steve Nash pull off a pass that no one else in the game can do, or have T-Mac throw down a signature dunk on the break.

Finally, we have added in about 15 to 20 signature celebrations this year as well as some more generic ones that can be used by a variety of players. We wanted to make sure that these don’t get overused, so we tuned them so that they will only play in big game situations. We didn’t want people to see these all the time and get sick of them, so it may take you a while to spot them all.

So it doesn’t say definitively that they’ll have Gil’s walkoff move on there, but I can’t envision a scenario where they wouldn’t have it, considering he’s on the cover.