NBA 2K

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on how online play encourages a mindset of “on to the next one”.

During our discussion of the presentation developer blog for NBA 2K26 in Episode #592 of the NLSC Podcast, we once again broached the idea of 2K bringing back the Pressbook in a future game. While it isn’t absolutely essential for offline gamers who can easily pause to use instant replay and Photo Moments, it’d still be handy to have. It would be even more useful in online play, since it would provide cinematic replays and stills that would otherwise be impossible to capture. While we both like the idea, Dee made a very important point about the mentality of many online gamers.

He pointed out that when it comes to online play, a lot of people take the approach of – to quote a Jay-Z song from the NBA 2K13 soundtrack – on to the next one. In other words, there’s no waiting around to reflect on your last game and to view screenshots and highlights from it, as is often the case in offline gameplay. As someone who did play online for several years, Dee is absolutely right here! Even though I’m still in favour of it returning, there’s no question that the Pressbook might not be very popular with online gamers, despite how fun and useful it could be for content creation. When it’s all about moving on to the next one though, the sentimentality just isn’t there.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five ways that MyCAREER has impacted other modes of play in the NBA 2K series.

MyCAREER remains one of NBA 2K’s most popular modes along with MyTEAM. To that point, both modes inspire weird tribalism between factions of NBA 2K gamers, with ardent fans of MyCAREER insisting that no one plays MyTEAM, while MyTEAM diehards claim that no one is playing MyCAREER or its connected modes. I know, I know; it’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s just a passive-aggressive way of declaring support for your chosen mode, and mocking people who play something else for choosing “incorrectly”. Honestly though, that’s no better!

Besides, even if you don’t play MyCAREER – and as someone who grew weary of the grind, that’s completely understandable – it’s still relevant to what you play in NBA 2K. From integrated content to gameplay design, what happens in MyCAREER has an effect on other modes. While that sounds bad – and in some cases it certainly may be undesirable – MyCAREER and its connected modes can positively impact the rest of the game. Other times, it’s a fairly inconsequential detail, or a fun Easter egg. And yes, the integration between MyCAREER and other modes can even be mutually beneficial! Here are five examples of MyCAREER having a far-reaching impact.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some reflections on MyCAREER stories that have gone untold…at least from my perspective.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I’m glad to have escaped the basketball gaming habits that had me in a rut. Although I can still have fun with MyCAREER – as my ongoing game in NBA 2K14 clearly demonstrates – I don’t miss the annual ritual of starting over from scratch with a ridiculously low-rated MyPLAYER. I don’t miss diligently doing every extracurricular activity to maximise my VC earnings so that I don’t have to spend money to speed up the process. I don’t miss weathering an awful grind until MyCAREER is fun, knowing that I’ll have to do it all over again next year.

With that being said, I would’ve liked to have spent a bit more time in MyCAREER in recent years, if only so that I could comment on their stories like I have for previous games. Although I’ve been quite critical of some of the MyCAREER stories, I’ve also greatly enjoyed others, and come to appreciate the concept in general. Of course, what I really miss is the ability to go back and experience the MyCAREER stories in recent NBA 2K games. Now that the mode is no longer available in any form offline, a big chunk of eighth and ninth gen NBA 2K releases isn’t available for retro/throwback gaming. And so for me, these MyCAREER stories will sadly remain untold What Ifs.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five major problems with open worlds in sports video games.

Since the introduction of The Neighborhood in NBA 2K18, open worlds have been a core part of the MyCAREER experience. Whether an urban complex, a cruise ship, or a beachfront town, they’ve taken MyCAREER and its connected modes from menus to an environment that can be explored. The Neighborhood has since given way to the much larger open world of The City in the flagship version of NBA 2K, although it was condensed slightly in NBA 2K25. Elsewhere, WWE 2K25 now features The Island, and EA Sports are reportedly also looking to bring open worlds to their games.

Now, I have nothing against open worlds in video games. I’m a fan of both the Grand Theft Auto and Fallout series, so I know how much fun the concept can be. However, I don’t believe open worlds belong in sports video games like NBA 2K or WWE 2K. Sure, they can be made to work, facilitating the MMORPG aspects of career modes nowadays. To that point though, I don’t think that it results in a better experience for gamers, particularly anyone who prefers traditional career mode gameplay. With that in mind, here are five big problems that are created when open worlds are forced into sports games, and therefore five reasons why they shouldn’t be a part of those titles!

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some reflections on developing more of an appreciation for MyCAREER stories over the years.

I’ll admit that as a creature of habit, I can be resistant to change. I’d like to think that I’ve grown in that regard. For example, I’m no longer the really picky eater I was as a kid! When it comes to basketball video games, I’ve come to enjoy a number of titles that left a poor first impression, and modes that I never thought I’d be interested in. What still bothers me though is change for change’s sake, or any changes where the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. I think we can all relate to the frustration of having something we really like being drastically changed in a way we didn’t want or ask for.

That brings me to MyCAREER, and the stories that the mode has featured since 2013. Originally, I had no interest in the mode. I was a franchise gamer, after all! However, just as I overcame picky eating habits by deciding to try new cuisine, I came to enjoy MyCAREER after giving it a proper shot in NBA 2K13. A year and a new generation of consoles later, the mode introduced a narrative-driven approach, and I felt that it took away from an experience that I was now enthusiastic about. As such, I’ve been critical of MyCAREER stories, yet also fascinated by them. Now that I’ve finished all of the stories up to NBA 2K20, I now appreciate what they’ve meant for the mode.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #573 of the NLSC Podcast!

The alley-oop is one of the most exciting plays in all of basketball, and to that point, it’s vital that we can expertly throw lobs on the virtual hardwood as well. This week, we join the community in recalling the best and worst alley-oop mechanics that we’ve experienced in basketball video games, primarily focusing on NBA Live and NBA 2K. We’ve also been connecting to play co-op over Parsec a lot recently, which includes sessions with NBA 2K7 for PlayStation 3, NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo, NBA Street Vol. 2, and NBA Live 06 PC using an old 1998 season mod. Naturally, this leads to some reflections on the teams we used, as well as the benefits of emulation in 2025.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:37 — 40.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #572 of the NLSC Podcast!

The seventh generation saw NBA 2K pull ahead of NBA Live – and for good reason – but which 2K titles stand out as the best releases during that run? This week, we join the community in ranking NBA 2K6 through NBA 2K13 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – as well as the PC ports from NBA 2K9 onwards – discussing the key strengths and weaknesses of each game, while also sharing some of our personal memories and experiences with them. We also discuss some of the factors that make games stand out as classic and nostalgic releases, such as the season they’re set in, and the presence of fun teams to put on the virtual hardwood years and indeed decades later.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:01:30 — 42.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

March, already? That’s right, and it means we’re tipping off the eighth annual March Modness! For those who are unfamiliar with the event, throughout the month of March, we make it a point to celebrate our modding community. We support modding all year around of course, but March Modness is a time to reflect on the hobby, and really get into it with enthusiasm and creativity.

As usual, the event includes a giveaway. If you upload a mod for any basketball video game to our Downloads section during March 2025, and include “March Modness” in the description, you’re automatically in the draw to win a copy of NBA 2K26 PC later this year (full terms and conditions can be found below).

I’ll also be covering topics related to modding in Monday Tip-Off, Wayback Wednesday, and The Friday Five. I’d suggest that it’s quite likely that Dee and I will be discussing mods on the NLSC Podcast, too! As always, I have preliminary plans to get involved with some modding myself, and will hopefully have a few releases to share throughout the month.

I’m looking forward to a fun celebration of modding this March, and more great releases from our talented community. Thanks as always to everyone who contributes to our Downloads section, and supports the modding community here at the NLSC! We really do appreciate people freely sharing their work, and enhancing the gaming experience for their fellow virtual hoop heads.

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As you may know, Dee and I are consistently uploading highlights from our basketball gaming sessions to the NLSC YouTube channel, often featuring an assortment of NBA Live and NBA 2K titles. To that end, here’s an opportunity to catch up on what we’ve been playing recently!

Dee and his brother have been fixing up a Kobe Era roster for NBA 2K25, and as you’d expect, they’ve been testing out the teams as they complete them. This resulted in an excellent showdown between the 2003 Celtics and Knicks, which demonstrates what the game is capable of with proper ratings and tendencies for the historical players.

You may have heard us reflecting on our sessions with various NBA Live games in Episodes #566 and #568 of the NLSC Podcast. In case you haven’t caught those highlights yet, you can check out co-op games featuring the 76ers vs. Magic in NBA Live 2005, Bucks vs. Kings in NBA Live 16, and Nuggets vs. Magic in NBA Live 10. Also be sure to catch up on those podcasts if you haven’t tuned in yet!

My solo sessions included a game of NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo, in which I took control of the young Orlando Magic against a Los Angeles Clippers team featuring a couple of out-of-place (and out-of-patience!) veterans. I’ve also posted a new entry in the NBA 2K14 Retro Series, which flashes back to the 1998 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz. As an aside, I’ve also finally gotten around to posting my video retrospective of NBA Street Homecourt.

Check out all of those NBA Live and NBA 2K highlights (and the NBA Street Homecourt retrospective) below, and make sure that you’re subscribed to the NLSC YouTube channel! As always, Dee and I are open to suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play, so feel free to hit us up. Stay tuned for more basketball gaming content, including video essays, highlight reels, and the weekly Top 10 Plays!

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on how the lines between Triple-A gaming and mobile gaming have well and truly become blurred.

We’re living in the age of hot takes, clickbait, and extreme opinions. With that being said, as much as algorithms may not reward it, I prefer to steer clear of hyperbole and reactionary viewpoints in my content. To that end, if I express a strong and potentially controversial opinion, it’s because I mean it. I don’t want to devalue adjectives, be they positive or negative. If you call every new release the best, or frequently declare games to be garbage without further explanation, then eventually you undermine your credibility. Well, your credibility should be in question, anyway!

Mind you, sometimes harsh, unvarnished criticisms that may seem like hyperbolic insults are in fact fair and accurate. A good example is the assertion that Triple-A games are becoming more and more like mobile titles. There’s plenty of evidence that the suits at major studios have taken notes on mobile gaming’s ability to milk gamers for recurrent revenue, and pushed for those mechanics to be incorporated into console and PC games. As such, it hasn’t gone unnoticed how games like NBA 2K now have features and economies akin to free-to-play titles. Recently, I had an experience that made it clear just how blurred the lines are between Triple-A and mobile gaming.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #567 of the NLSC Podcast!

At the suggestion of one of our listeners, this week we’re breaking out the proverbial crystal ball to gaze into the future, and discuss what we think NBA 2K – and video games in general, for that matter – will be like in five years. This includes our expectations for innovations in gameplay, graphics, and modes, as well as fairness to gamers and the possibility that NBA 2K will finally have competition again at some point, be it NBA Live or another title. We also touch on the idea that consoles will be replaced by a Netflix-like streaming service for games, VR, and some other predictions regarding the future of gaming.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 36:46 — 25.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on the ups and downs of the early stages of MyCAREER.

It’s been an interesting, but at times frustrating, journey for career modes in NBA 2K. As popular as franchise modes became after being introduced in the early 2000s, there was undeniable interest in a similar experience from the perspective of a single player. Being an RPG style of mode, as My Player evolved into MyCAREER, it began to incorporate cinematic stories. These days, many gamers see the traditional/NBA side of MyCAREER as a means to an end; a way to grind and level up their MyPLAYER avatar for the online scene. Of course, others still enjoy the NBA career experience.

Something that has remained fairly constant, however, is that it’s a long way to the top. Sure, the grind is worse now, in no small part because it encourages paying for quicker upgrades, and boosting Take-Two’s recurrent revenue. Even if you’re willing to pay to skip the grind, it costs more than before. I’ve talked about that many times, and that isn’t really what this article is about, but it does bear acknowledging. In any case, while there are issues with pushy microtransactions, and occasionally a story that doesn’t match up with our starting ratings, the early stages of MyCAREER are about a raw prospect’s journey to success. As tough as it is, it can also be quite fun.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with an attempt at crafting a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest mode in a future NBA 2K.

Although the original Jordan Challenge was the catalyst for a new era of historical content in NBA 2K, NBA’s Greatest was an innovative follow-up. Many of the classic teams that were added as part of NBA’s Greatest are still in the game today, setting a precedent for expanding the roster of retro squads to celebrate a variety of players. It wasn’t the first basketball game to feature throwback presentation – NBA Jam 2004 had utilised the concept almost a decade earlier – but NBA 2K12 did a spectacular job with it, ultimately paving the way for what we now have with MyNBA Eras.

As a game released in 2011, NBA’s Greatest celebrated fifteen of the most prominent players in league history to that point: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Oscar Robertson, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Scottie Pippen, and Isiah Thomas. Needless to say, those players still deserve to be celebrated today, but after all these years, there’s a new class of all-time greats that a future NBA 2K could build a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest around. With that in mind, here are fifteen players that should be celebrated in such a mode, as well as my picks for their games.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a few thoughts on what it would take to get me to play online again.

From NBA 2K16 through to NBA 2K20, I was invested in playing the connected experiences in MyCAREER. I wasn’t exclusively an online gamer of course, as I got great enjoyment out of playing the NBA side of MyCAREER too, including making it to the Hall of Fame in NBA 2K19. However, one of the reasons that I kept returning to the mode every year was to level up a MyPLAYER so that I could join the rest of NLSC THRILLHO for some online games. As the grind became more of a chore and the rest of the crew’s enthusiasm waned, I too lost interest in MyCAREER.

Long gone are the days when I’d consider jumping into The Rec every night of the week, just to see what it was like! Indeed, outside of playing through the story in NBA 2K21 and occasionally jumping online, and a very brief return in NBA 2K23, I’ve stuck to the offline MyCAREER experience in NBA 2K14. Of course, it’s not just disinterest in the online scene that’s turned me off MyCAREER in recent years. From gameplay gripes to frustration with grinding and quests, I’m weary of the NBA side of the mode as well. Considering my willingness to change up my basketball gaming habits though, as we enter 2025, could anything persuade me to play online again?

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off by envisioning a return to modding.

I’ve said it before, but even though I haven’t been regularly maintaining a roster update for over a decade and my modding output in general has been sporadic, the interest – indeed, the itch and the urge to mod – is still there. Lingering memories of burnout and the more finicky and frustrating aspects of modding don’t exactly help me to get motivated, but I also fondly recall the creative satisfaction of the hobby. It’s why I’ve dabbled here and there, without committing to any larger projects.

To that end, this isn’t some grand announcement of a huge return. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from other attempts at returning to modding over the past decade or so, it’s to avoid jumping the gun and announcing a big project that I can’t guarantee I’ll deliver on! At the same time, my casual dabbling with minimalist modding and other ideas has encouraged me to get more involved again, and even consider tinkering with NBA 2K25. I touched on this when I shared some of my roster mod philosophies, but as I envision a possible return to modding, it’s essential that I choose projects that appeal to my interests, not to mention suit my current habits on the virtual hardwood.

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