Monday Tip-Off: A Court to Call Home

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 my thoughts on how having a personal court is an underrated feature in career modes.

As you can probably glean from how often I’ve talked about an extended playthrough of MyCAREER in NBA 2K14, I’m enjoying the experience immensely. For years I snubbed the mode, and NBA 2K14 in general. I’m not too proud to admit that I was wrong about both of them. While NBA 2K14 does have its quirks, its gameplay still holds up tremendously well in 2022. As for that first MyCAREER story, it isn’t as “on rails” or as intrusive as I’d long believed. Again, I do have some criticisms, but after finally giving it a chance, my impressions and experiences are largely positive.

On the subject of my criticisms however, there’s the matter of what I do between games in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER. I check the league leaders of course, as well as the stats for my MyPLAYER and my teammates. I keep tabs on the standings and the emerging Playoff picture late in the season, envisioning my likeliest path to the NBA Finals, and the opponent that I’ll probably face for the championship. I’ll check the news, and track career milestones. Something that I don’t do, however, is partake in a shootaround. I don’t do that because, quite simply, I can’t. For all the great aspects of NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, it unfortunately doesn’t have a court that you can call home.

This is one of the unfortunate side effects of NBA 2K14 Next Gen being rebuilt and revamped. A number of staple features that we’d come to expect didn’t make the cut. Among the most frustrating were multiple roster saves, Create-a-Player, and Playoffs mode. Replacing The Association with the RPG-based first iteration of MyGM was also a miscalculation, as I discussed in my Wayback Wednesday retrospective. As for MyCAREER, it not only dropped the regular training drills, but unfortunately also lost the option to freely practice. It doesn’t make the mode unplayable or unenjoyable, but you don’t realise how much you miss having a practice court until it’s gone.

I’ll admit that when MyCOURT was announced for NBA 2K15, I wrote it off as a gimmick. Granted, I was still holding on to some residual sourness towards the 2K brand due to some developer comments that rubbed me the wrong way, but even putting that aside, it sounded like fluff. At best, it was bringing back a concept that shouldn’t have been removed in the first place. To that latter point, I’ve come to see that way of thinking as myopic. Sure, it’s easy to be cynical about features being removed, only for their return to be touted as a big deal. However, the bottom line is that something we wanted to see brought back has returned, and that’s good news.

There’s undoubtedly a gimmicky aspect to MyCOURT. Changing up its design every few games, and allowing us to further customise it with various cosmetic options, doesn’t exactly address some of our most pressing concerns with NBA 2K. Whether MyCOURT is in an apartment, or a luxury cabin on a cruise ship, has little effect on the quality of modes and gameplay, as does my choice in floor, backboard, and mural. And yet, there is an undeniable appeal to having a court to call home, and being able to decorate it the way you want. The practical benefits of having your own practice court are obvious, but the personal touch of customisation options is important, too.

EA Sports clearly recognised that when they presented us with the customisable One Court in NBA Live 19’s career mode, The One. In addition to being the setting for Court Battles, online games, and (following a patch) practicing with our player, our One Court was an outlet for creativity and self-expression. The tools at our disposal were similar to the ones NBA 2K provides for creating courts in MyTEAM, Pro-Am, and team re-branding/relocation in the franchise modes. EA were even spotlighting the community’s best creations, and yes, I was chuffed when my re-creation of The Hangar was featured among them, along with some kind words about the NLSC!

As much as we scoff at cosmetic items for taking attention away from more important aspects of video games, whenever we’re presented with a home base of operations, there’s often a desire to make it our own. Before MyCOURT in MyCAREER and the One Court in The One, there was The Crib in earlier NBA 2K games. I also remember taking the time to unlock items and decorate my locker room in WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2006, despite there being no benefit beyond the novelty of doing so, and desire for 100% completion. To some extent, I believe we do enjoy personalising the games we play, even if it’s just setting our favourite NBA team to change the menu colours.

These virtual homes – practice courts, locker rooms, apartments, and whatnot – also serve as visually appealing records of our achievements. Many of them provide access to records of our accomplishments, or feature a literal trophy case that we can view. As I played through NBA 2K17 MyCAREER, it was fun to see Player of the Week plaques begin to cover the walls, and trophies appear on the shelf. MyCOURT in NBA 2K19 likewise had a trophy case that began to fill as I played through a second season, winning back-to-back MVP awards and championships. It’s all well and good to have a list of your achievements in a menu, but you can’t beat that for immersion!

Whether or not we can customise our own courts (and to what extent), as I noted, they do have a practical use: shooting around on them. Obviously, this allows us to try out new animations and get accustomed to them, as well as generally sharpen our stick skills and practice different moves. Even if we have no need to do that, there are times when it’s fun and relaxing to just step onto a private court with your player, and mess around for a little while in between games. It’s great if there is a tangible benefit to doing so of course, such as the “Doin’ Work” mechanic in NBA 2K17. Even if there isn’t, it’s still enjoyable. Think of it like the fishing mini-game in Ocarina of Time!

To that end, the absence of MyCOURT in NBA 2K21 and NBA 2K22 Next Gen has been noticeable. Sure, you can play on the courts at the Gatorade gym, but you need to travel through the expansive City to get there. They also cost VC to rent in NBA 2K21, and although they weren’t too expensive, it reminded me a little too much of paying for haircuts in NBA 2K18. Thankfully they backed off the idea in NBA 2K22, but it showed that 2K is still willing to press its luck as far as making everything a drain on our VC wallets. And of course, even at the manageable price of “completely free”, the Gatorade courts aren’t nearly as convenient as having our own MyCOURT.

Although I miss being able to shoot around on my own court in between games in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, it doesn’t invite the same cynicism. MyCOURT was still a year away, and the old practice court wasn’t removed in order to place a price tag on anything. It does emphasise the appeal of shooting around with your avatar, though. Even if you don’t need to test out animations or hone your skills, it’s a fun way to fill time. When you don’t feel like jumping into a proper game, but still want to play some virtual basketball, messing around in practice mode is an ideal way of scratching that itch. If there are some built in mini-games as in MyCOURT, so much the better!

And yes, we do need to have those customisation options as well. I’d suggest we’re past the days of unlocking basic cosmetic options such as team branding, and we certainly don’t need to go back to the days of buying them with VC. I’m also a little iffy about NBA Live 19’s loot box approach to its cosmetic items in general, even though they are exclusively purchased with an in-game currency that can’t be bought and is separate to skill upgrades. Generally speaking, I’d be in favour of saving special rewards for unlockable content, while providing gamers with a plethora of standard NBA-oriented branding with which to decorate their personal practice courts.

While it shouldn’t be a priority, I’m also in favour of having some mini-games at our disposal in our base of operations. Again, I don’t think we need to revisit the Road to 99 method of unlocking the same old features time and time again, but having the mini-basketball arcade machine in MyCOURT was another fun distraction when you had some time to kill. We could probably skip the rather useless DJ machine, but if they wanted to slip in the darts and air hockey games from College Hoops 2K7’s Student Lounge, or give us a working pool table, those would be fun extras. Put it this way: it’d be no less gimmicky than vehicles and other City/Neighborhood rewards!

If nothing else, we need to have a court of our own in career modes; a place to put in work, test animations when we change up our build, or just spend some time between full games. Customisation, mini-games, and everything else is flavour content, and while it’d certainly be welcome, we can definitely forego it if need be. I realise that 2K has invested a lot of time and effort into expanding MyCAREER into an open world experience, but when it comes to a basic feature like MyCOURT, it needs to be in the game, and closer to home. Indeed, it needs to be a part of our home! The mode hasn’t evolved beyond the usefulness of a readily-accessible private practice court.

As for the absence of a court to call home in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, the downside of playing old favourites is that they may be missing a desirable feature found in the games that followed them. There have been so many other rewarding aspects of going back to NBA 2K14 that outweigh the absence of MyCOURT or the last gen practice facility however, so it’s hardly ruined the overall experience. Still, it’s conspicuous by its absence, and a reminder that NBA 2K15 made some great moves as far as adding missing depth, from bringing back Create-a-Player and a traditional sandbox franchise mode to introducing MyCOURT. It’s a gimmick, sure, but also a nice, homey touch.