Tag Archives: The Rec

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #632 of the NLSC Podcast!

Although we’ve been playing basketball video games for decades now, the hobby is still capable of surprising us. To that end, what are some of the biggest surprises – both positive and negative – in basketball gaming in 2026? This week we’re sharing and discussing what amazes and astonishes us when it comes to the virtual hardwood, from the quality of the games and modern design philosophies, to the lack of competition and changes in community attitudes. That includes touching on the shift in modding culture, and the general discourse when it comes to basketball gaming issues. Our listeners also weigh in with what surprises them the most – for better or worse – with basketball video games today.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:50 — 40.8MB)

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!

Patch 5.1 is now available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of NBA 2K26. It should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console, or checking for updates manually. The following statement accompanied the release of Patch 5.1 for NBA 2K26:

Protecting fair play and competitive integrity is a core priority for NBA 2K. We know how frustrating it is when games are disrupted by players who choose to cheat, and we’ve been actively monitoring emerging exploits.

Update 5.1 on PlayStation®5 and Xbox Series X|S adds new protections against network manipulation, including measures designed to combat intentional “lag switching” tactics used to gain an unfair advantage. These protections apply across online multiplayer modes such as Park, The Theater, and The REC.

This update is now available and includes a required patch download and additional live updates. Please fully close and relaunch the game to ensure the latest changes are applied.

Anti-cheat efforts are ongoing as behaviors evolve. We’ll continue testing and evaluating additional protections focused on reducing the most impactful forms of cheating, and we’re committed to the long-term work of keeping competition fair for players who respect the game.

The PC version of already includes its own anti-cheat measures, which is presumably why Patch 5.1 only came through on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. In any case, these details have been added to the NBA 2K26 update history in our Wiki. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion of NBA 2K26’s official patches here in the Forum.

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 revisiting games in which I mostly played MyCAREER, and enjoying some fresh experiences.

When it comes to our impressions of basketball games with an array of modes, what we play is a significant factor. After all, while the underlying gameplay mechanics are obviously the same, their suitability and our tolerance for any issues can vary from mode to mode. There have definitely been games that were more enjoyable in certain modes, depending on the tuning and whether or not we could alter it. As such, if you mostly stick to one mode, you may not be aware of some of a game’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s why we can remember the same games very differently.

After really getting into MyCAREER in NBA 2K13, it became my mode of choice for the next seven years or so. That’s not to say that it was the only mode I played, but when it comes to NBA 2K on PlayStation 4 and PC, many of my fondest memories are of MyCAREER and its connected experiences. I don’t regret that, as it represents hours of fun on the virtual hardwood. At the same time, it does mean that there were modes and content I wasn’t able to truly enjoy, since levelling up a MyPLAYER and playing through an NBA season is a huge commitment. To that end, revisiting some of those games and playing something other than MyCAREER has been refreshing.

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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 the dichotomy of shooting mechanics in modern basketball video games.

Over the decades, developers of basketball video games have strived to make their controls and gameplay mechanics deeper and more skill-based. This has of course resulted in hits and misses throughout the years, as some ideas have proven to be better – and more fun – than others. The successful ideas have become staples of the genre, persisting even as other elements of the games are revamped. To that end, just as modern basketball games aren’t about to eschew right stick dribbling controls, it’s difficult to see them shying away from shooting mechanics based on Green Releases.

Once again, there’s a reason that both of those concepts have prevailed as staples of NBA 2K, as well as the last two NBA Live games. Modern dribbling controls offer precision that wasn’t possible by simply tapping a crossover or spin move button, while today’s shooting mechanics avoid the somewhat contrived ambiguity of RNG; well, for the most part, anyway. At the same time, this skill-based approach definitely isn’t perfect either. There’s undoubtedly merit in rewarding gamers for precise timing with a 100% chance of success, but it can be punishingly challenging, not to mention unbalanced and unrealistic. And so, there’s a dichotomy to these shooting mechanics.

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Patch 1.3 is now available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S versions of NBA 2K26. As always, it should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

As with the other recent updates, Patch 1.3 addresses user-reported technical issues with NBA 2K26. These include hangs, problems with missing Cap Breakers and Badge Perks when leaving a Crew, broken MyCAREER Quests, and other bugs. Once again, the Season 2 patch will be the first major update, so don’t expect any gameplay changes or likeness updates until then.

The full patch notes can be found below, as well as in the NBA 2K26 update history in our Wiki. As always, feel free to share any thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum!

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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 takes a look at the five biggest problems with grinding in basketball video games.

One of the main reasons that I can’t get into MyCAREER or MyTEAM in newer NBA 2K games is the grinding. It also doesn’t help that those modes are no longer available once the servers are shut down, meaning that I can no longer continue the journey and enjoy all of the progress that I made. Mind you, while I might be more inclined to sink time and effort in those modes if I could still fire them up years later, I remain discouraged by how grindy they’ve become. They’re designed to make us choose between grinding or paying, prioritising recurrent revenue over enjoyment.

To that end, grinding shouldn’t be confused with a long journey, or the need to master controls to excel at a game. It’s a specific type of gameplay loop that artificially pads out a game’s length; again, usually for the sake of encouraging microtransactions to lessen the tedium. It’s baffling – though sadly not surprising – that too many gamers defend grinding, even when it results in weaker game design and a vastly inferior experience. After all, there are some recurring drawbacks with grinding, and I’m spotlighting five of them today. Please note that while grinding is present in both MyTEAM and MyCAREER, I’m mostly focusing on the MyCAREER grind here.

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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 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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Although gamers who picked up the Superstar and Leave No Doubt editions of NBA 2K26 are already hitting the virtual hardwood and blacktop, the latest Courtside Report provides details on The City in this year’s game. That includes insights into Park and other modes, as well as this year’s MyCAREER story.

Notably, the framerate in The City is now a smooth 60 FPS, and it’s been designed in a way that makes it quicker and easier to navigate. Parks will have a more realistic aesthetic this year, and we’ll be seeing some remastered NBA 2K16 Parks return as Seasonal content. There will be more opportunities to gain rewards, such as beating a server’s Park MVP. Crews have been added, along with some new leaderboards. It will also be possible to swap between multiple builds without having to exit The City in NBA 2K26.

Additionally, MyCOURT features some new practice drills and customisation options. As mentioned, the Courtside Report also provides a brief synopsis of this year’s MyCAREER story – Out of Bounds – in which MP is an unknown prospect from a small town in Vermont looking to gain attention and make it to the big time. It also mentions a couple of other MyCAREER features, including Key Games and passion projects.

As always, I encourage you to check out the Courtside Report for the full scoop, but I’ve summarised the key points below. Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum!

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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 my suggestions on how to fix the connected experiences in MyCAREER.

This is far from the first time that I’ve discussed criticisms of the competitive scene in NBA 2K, specifically the online team play experiences connected to MyCAREER. To that point, I’m going to be treading some familiar ground here today, from grinding to proper matchmaking functionality. That’s because the same issues continue to hold back the connected experiences in MyCAREER, and improvements are well overdue. As popular as the online scene in NBA 2K may be, the quality of the experience lags behind other games, and is nowhere near where it needs to be.

You can see the frustration everywhere. It’s been mentioned in our Forum, over on Operation Sports, on social media, and in numerous threads in the official NBA 2K subreddit. So many gamers see the issues, and apart from the ones who want to shout down all criticism – usually thanks to selfish zero-sum thinking – people want to see the scene improve. The concepts of the connected modes in MyCAREER have the potential to be so much better than they are, and I speak from my own experience when I say that they’ve shown flashes of that brilliance. Until these improvements are made however, the connected experiences in MyCAREER will continue to suffer.

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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 “realism” is rapidly becoming a dirty word among basketball gamers.

We all have our own ideas of what makes for a fun basketball video game. Beyond a preference between the sim and arcade styles, we each have a vision of what games in those subgenres should be like. Obviously, sim gamers have traditionally preferred a realistic approach to the virtual hardwood, though opinions will vary as to what that realism should entail. However, when the sim titles were primarily aimed at hardcore basketball fans, there was usually more unity in calls for the games to be as realistic as possible. The notion that realism didn’t matter was certainly an unpopular view.

It’s why Da_Czar’s catchphrase of “don’t play video games; play basketball!” became a creed that resonated with so many simheads, and why there was excitement when he joined the development team at Visual Concepts. After all, if Take-Two was going to hire anyone to help in the continued efforts to strive for realism in their NBA series, Da_Czar was an ideal choice! As NBA 2K’s popularity has grown however, there’s been a noticeable shift in attitude. More and more people are saying “who cares about real basketball, it’s just a game!” Sim gamers are suddenly the ones being labelled as “casuals”, and realism is being treated as a dirty word when talking about sim titles.

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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 modes that I came to enjoy after initially being uninterested in them.

As I’ve freely admitted before, I’m a creature of habit. Whether it’s sticking with my preferred mode, choosing retro gaming over a modern title, or messing around with any available historical content while on a retro kick, I’m drawn to the familiar. To that end, for a long time I was all about franchise modes. Multi-season play was a concept that many of us playing basketball games back in the 90s were keen to see, and it was a big deal when NBA Live 2000 PC brought us Franchise, complete with free agency, salary cap, the rookie Draft, and 25 seasons of play.

My enjoyment of franchise play continued as the mode evolved into Dynasty. To this day, my various franchise games remain some of my all-time favourite experiences on the virtual hardwood. At the same time, I’m not completely averse to change! Whether it’s been inspired by content creation, suggestions from my fellow basketball gamers, or just curiosity, I’ve branched out from franchise modes and ended up really enjoying playing something different. That includes modes I never expected to find appealing! I’m still interested in franchise and traditional season play, and some of these modes did ultimately turn out to be a passing fancy, but nevertheless I came to enjoy them.

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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 important it is to support your fellow basketball gamers.

In many ways, gamers don’t have a lot of power or leverage as consumers. We can choose not to buy games – and I’d certainly advise that if you’re not sold on a new release – but generally speaking, widespread boycotts are ineffective. The same goes for abstaining from pumping extra money into games via their recurrent revenue mechanics. Whales will still spend, apologists will bleat “it’s optional”, and the gaming experience will remain weaker for anyone who doesn’t want to pay. Even constructive criticism gets shouted down as “complaining“.

Obviously this frequently happens on most any platform where basketball games (or titles from other genres) are discussed. However, it’s particularly disheartening when content creators with significant influence jump on that bandwagon. I’ve seen some creators with large audiences share some truly terrible takes that throw their fellow basketball gamers under the bus, yet somehow they don’t seem to lose any credibility when they do so. Along with so much zero-sum thinking in the wider community, it underscores a lack of willingness for basketball gamers to support each other. That only plays into the hands of the suits, making it high time that we change this attitude.

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Patch 6.0 is now available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of NBA 2K25, with the PC patch set to drop in time for Season 6 this Friday. As always, the update should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or check for updates manually.

This far into the game’s lifecycle, the title updates aren’t making too many major changes or additions. To that point, Patch 6.0 is mainly preparing NBA 2K25 for Season 6 in MyTEAM and MyCAREER, though it does include likeness updates for Patty Mills and Shakira Austin. There are also some minor stability and bug fixes, and a couple of Quality of Life improvements with the MyPLAYER Builder and Exchange menu in MyTEAM.

You can find the full release notes below, as well as in the NBA 2K25 update history over in our Wiki. Feel free to comment below with any thoughts and impressions, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum.

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Patch 4.0 has come through for NBA 2K25. As of writing, it’s available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S version of the game, with the PC patch set to drop in time for Season 4 tipping off this Friday. As always, the patch should come through automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console, or checking for updates manually.

In addition to preparing NBA 2K25 for Season 4 in MyCAREER and MyTEAM, Patch 4.0 includes more player likeness updates, cosmetic updates to jerseys and courts, and bug and stability fixes across all of the game modes. A few minor gameplay tweaks have also been included, as “Light Pressure” has been separated into three bands, trailing defenders can no longer force skill dunk attempts into layups with a bump from behind, and rim physics have been adjusted to reduce long rebounds.

Check out the notes for Patch 4.0 below, as well as in the update history for NBA 2K25 here in our Wiki! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum. Also tune in to Episode #562 of the NLSC Podcast, where Dee and I join the community in giving our “final review” of NBA 2K25.

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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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