Maybe their licensing deal is on different years. But I really don't see Live getting a different deal than 2k. 7 years 1.1 billion is a lot of money per year for licensing. 2k can essentially pay that 157 mill off of the microtransactions/VC sales alone. EA has the money, but Live hasn't been selling that well.
Starting next week, there is essentially 7 weeks until a projected release. Besides mo-cap/tweets/speculations, nothing official yet for NBA Live. I'm not saying it is canceled, it just brings up a lot of red flags. You usually don't see sports games updating rosters this late. I don't think it would be a good idea to cancel this year. It would be a bad look to cancel a game 2 out of 4 year span. Only way I can think they could do that is if they say they are fully committing to next gen consoles next year. Where they don't release this year and don't release a current gen next year. Where they put their primary focus on next gen, while just updating Live 19 in the time being