I mean college basketball has nowhere to go but up, so sure.
I don’t think the NBA has anything to gain from it. GMs and scouts are generally smarter than they were 15 years ago so I think you would see fewer high school flameouts. I also don’t think 3 years in college was going to make Eddy Curry hate pizza or make Kwame Brown a fearless offensive force. Donovan Mitchell had nothing to gain from two more years of college play. Ben Simmons as well.
No, I think forcing three years of college ball on players is a bad idea. Requring one year sucks, but the best players put up with it because it’s only one year. If you force three years, the best guys are going to play in China or Europe til they’re 21. The NBA doesn’t hold overseas experience at a lesser value much anymore.
Well, also, maybe college sports should never have been truly “good”.
I played college football at an D3 school. It was literally in the tradition of what college sports used to be. You played sports if you wanted to. The team had a limited amount of your time every week and couldn’t prevent you from scheduling even labs over practice.
The competition wasn’t incredible, because it wasn’t supposed to be. It was literally students who happened to have an interest in sports (on the same plane as theater, music, the school newspaper, etc.). No one got scholarships and you basically got a credit for participating.
It’s perverse to me that it ever even developed into a billion dollar product considering what it’s supposed to be.
Off topic, of sorts, but the EA Access version of NBA Live 19 just dropped. I absolutely loved the demo, and for the first time I am planning on playing primarily in a MyPlayer type of mode. It was fantastic in the demo, and I ended up capping out my player for the demo.
I have a thread on the game, but I do assume that 2K is still probably going to be the main game folks play. And if franchise mode is important to you, there is no other choice. but I have links to some articles and videos on the game if you are interested, at all.
Live 18 got more play from me last year when I owned both games, and the gameplay has just gotten smoother and better this year. Won't say that Live is better than 2K, but I will say I have a lot more fun playing it. Would love it if some folks got the game and teamed up for some online 3 on 3 or 5 on 5 play. I expect it is the primary mode I play this year. I think it is going to cut into my Madden time, too.
Court Battles looks like a really fun way to play with and against the AI, As you create your own court, and your own rules, and stack it with 5 players. You can then add rules and obstacles for opponents, who will challenge your team with their player and 4 CPU teammates.
So I could set my team up with a bunch of three point guys, and then make 3-pointers worth 5 points and dunks just 1 point, giving my team an advantage. Then I can force a team to have everyone score, or maybe that no one with a 3 point rating over 80 can play. So it becomes a strategic challenge to protect your court, but also create a team to take on on similar challenges others put up.
I may give NBA Live a look. NBA2k is still really good, but they've basically ruined the SP product by driving so hard into microtransactions.
Every year I buy NBA2k and all I do is play online games. Once or twice a week I come home, play a couple of games and that's it. So far I think I've played like 130 online games in 2k18. I'm in the top 30,000 players on PS4 in terms of tiers. I'm not great, but the point is I enjoy that mode.
Conversely, I purchased NBA2k18 for the Switch with the intent of playing the SP modes while on a plane, etc. The first time I tried it it errored out because I didn't have a constant Internet connection. I assume this was in support of the microtransactions.
How open is Live to the casual* player?
I had to drop 2k (this was a couple years ago) because I couldn't figure out the button combos to do normal basketball things like run a screen.
I've got minimal game time and need something that I can pick up and play using, like, 4 buttons.
*Casual = a dad with little kiddos
Run a screen in 2k18 is the left bumper, I believe. 2k has a pretty robust tutorial, actually. It's just optional and buried in a submenu.
I think Live is more forgiving to the casual player. I find it a lot easier to pull off moves because the game seems more willing to apply the right animation based on the context of the shot. Overall, it's shallower, but I feel like I have way more control over everything.
I'm pretty much the definition of a casual baseball game player.
I just spent about 5 hours playing, and I swear, Court Battles is no joke. It's some of the most fun sports gaming I've done in a long time.
Thought this was a fun little story on Jel Embiid that you guys might like.
Joel Embiid on his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first day at KU
"My very first scrimmage at Kansas, I got dunked on so hard by Tarik Black that I almost quit,” Embiid wrote. “Tarik dunked on me so hard that I was looking at plane tickets home. This guy was a senior. He was a grown man. I didn’t know what was going on. He got his own rebound and dunked over me so hard that everything went in slow motion.“He dunked the ball off my head, for real. But I didn’t even tell you the worst part. The worst part was that the entire Kansas women’s hoops team was sitting in the bleachers watching the scrimmage. The whole gym was laughing at me. It was crazy. Seriously, it was like a WORLDSTAR situation.
“So I went straight to Bill Self’s office afterward and I said, ‘I can’t do this. You have to redshirt me. I can’t play with these guys.’
“And Bill was like, “What? Are you serious? In two years, you’re going to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft.”
“The thing was, I had been told that all these college coaches lie. So I really thought he was trying to be slick with me. In my head, I was like, Alright, I’m just going to keep showing up and at least I’ll get a degree out of this. That will make my mom happy.”
Self wasn’t far off. Embiid was the third overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft after just one season. Embiid was a second-team All-Big 12 selection and the conference’s defensive player of the year.
In a way, it was Embiid’s mother (and father) who helped him get through those early struggles.
“The only thing that kept me going was the way that I was raised by my parents,” Embiid wrote. “They always told us to keep working, no matter what. I had this DVD that my coach in Cameroon had mailed to me when I first came to America. It was an hour-long tape of Hakeem Olajuwon and some other legendary big men. I probably watched that DVD every single day for three years. I would study the way Hakeem moved, and I would go out and try to imitate him.
“I did it in high school, and I did it at Kansas.
“I was basically just imagining that I was a good basketball player. The power of the mind is kind of amazing. I mean, I sucked. But somehow, I convinced myself that I was Hakeem. And I started getting better and better. And then I sort of started killing it.”
You can read the entire essay here.
Neat story.
I will try the NBA Live demo but I don’t get much bigscreen time now and with a baby a few weeks away, they probably need to make a Switch version before I buy into the franchise.
I'm not going to bother with an NBA 2k thread for now as there's usually limited interest.
That said, I picked up 2K19 for the Switch and really like it so far. It's much smoother than 2k18 even though it's still running at 30 FPS. They've fixed issues with input lag and the framerate is much more consistent.
Also picked it up for Switch: I like being able to skip cutscenes in MyCareer, but unless I’m wrong it’s already “over.” Generally these story modes end after one season and then roll into a traditional career mode: this one is focused quite differently.
I can also say that VC accumulation is a lot faster. Your first contract is (assuming you did ok in the story games) in the 800-1000 per game range with multipliers available for playing on higher difficulties. That said, once your player was an 85 overall or so last year, breaking the stat caps was more of a grind than the actual VC accumulation. Hard to say how that shakes out just yet. I got my guy to 94 last year before losing interest and focusing on MyGM, hoping that I can stick it out and get to 99. Probably not going to happen with a new bebe.
That’s really funny.
There were a few LoL moments, especially the three point shot at the end.
My only real gripe with NBA 2k19 is they seemed to have forgotten to code in friendly bounces. Shots are generally never going in if they hit enough rim to not sink immediately thereafter. It’s a small thing but it sticks out to me.
My God, the season started and no posts!
Anyway, glad to have basketball back. And the Knicks gave me a brief moment of joy by crushing a somehow even worse Atlanta team by 19.
And finally:
BOBAN BIG MOOD
EDIT: Oh, and...
Vince Carter just got double-teamed by Kevin Knox and Mitchell Robinson.
He's two years older than both of them combined.
This is the old thread, too.
Yep, time for a new 18/19 season thread.
G League is going to offer $125k contracts to select HS grads to come play with them instead of doing the NCAA indentured servitude route.
This is fantastic for players. Death to the NCAA.
I don't get it. What's in it for the G league? G league currently consists of players on loan from NBA teams and players trying to make it into the NBA. Those players generally earn $35k plus some small bonus potential. Why would a G league team sign a high schooler to a $125k contract and spend a year training them for them to not be able to sign the player long term and have the player declare for the draft?
You might get a ticket bump for the top 5-10 kids, but that's it.
22 G league teams are owned by NBA teams. You get the top highschool prospects, you have them in your ecosystem. It's not about making money for themselves but better preparing players and training them for the NBA.
Yeah. You can either have them in college learning the 4 corners from some terrible college coach or you can get them into your system early. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
This is fantastic for players. Death to the NCAA.
Yeah. You can either have them in college learning the 4 corners from some terrible college coach or you can get them into your system early. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I guess that's what I'm saying, you're not getting them into your system, you're just training them up for the team that drafts them next year.
Full on agreement with the NCAA hate. Anyone who will be 18 by the start of training camp should be able to declare for the draft.
I guess that's what I'm saying, you're not getting them into your system, you're just training them up for the team that drafts them next year.
I agree with that. I think it's just the NBA doing the right thing, to be frankly honest. There's not much in it for them. You're right about that. They get them in *an* NBA system, but not the team who will necessarily draft them.
It would be better for the league if they did this like MLB where a draft determined where they played.
DSGamer wrote:Yeah. You can either have them in college learning the 4 corners from some terrible college coach or you can get them into your system early. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Top_Shelf wrote:This is fantastic for players. Death to the NCAA.
I guess that's what I'm saying, you're not getting them into your system, you're just training them up for the team that drafts them next year.
Full on agreement with the NCAA hate. Anyone who will be 18 by the start of training camp should be able to declare for the draft.
It's less about the specific system a NBA or G league team runs but getting the player used to a full schedule, proper diet, weight training, the basics of various NBA offenses & defenses, and better competition to hone their skills. The club gets inside information about the player and if the relationship is fruitful, the player may have a preference for your team in the future.
I do have a concern in that it gives the "hosting" team a huge advantage over everyone else in regards to that particular player. Still, 10000x better than the NCAA.
Maybe it will be what the NBA needs to expand to all teams. The NBA needs a minor league, and this seems like a good path to that.
And, Hell yes, death to the NCAA!
The G League is their minor league. It's still in its early phases compared to the NHL and MLB so their are constantly tinkering with rules (two-way contracts for example). The Raptors have used their G League team amazingly well if you look at how two years ago their rookies primarily were the focus of their G League team (Raptors 905), last year became the best bench unit in the NBA, and this year are taking even further steps in their development.
I'm really curious how this works out since the NBA has had the exact same development system for North American players for such a long time. MLB has a very linear system where the only variance is quickly a player progresses. NHL has multiple systems to feed from and two tiers of minor leagues while also expecting the top picks to jump right into the NHL as teeenagers. The NBA seems to insist (slowly changing) that all picks above the mid-first round play in the NBA and spend no time in the G League.
I'm really curious how this works out since the NBA has had the exact same development system for North American players for such a long time. MLB has a very linear system where the only variance is quickly a player progresses. NHL has multiple systems to feed from and two tiers of minor leagues while also expecting the top picks to jump right into the NHL as teeenagers. The NBA seems to insist (slowly changing) that all picks above the mid-first round play in the NBA and spend no time in the G League.
I'm not sure because there's no big basketball sports management game to learn this stuff from, but I believe a big reason for that is the collectively bargained incentives are also massively different. Isn't a guy on his NBA rookie-scale contract burning the years whether he plays in the NBA or the G League?
In baseball the free agency and arbitration clocks don't start until a player's playing in the big leagues, so you have MLB-ready guys like Kris Bryant and Vlad Guerrero Jr. unfairly held down in the minors to delay that from starting or to better line up with the team's competitive window (even though Vlad may have been the Jays' best position player last year).
In the NHL you can delay the start of their rookie contract by sending them back to their junior team and they reach unrestricted free agency after 7 NHL years or at age 27 so unless the player drafted is a transcendent star or the team's a contender they're better off sending them back. Since the NHL teams tend to be run like the Sacramento Kings teams don't do this nearly enough with their early first round picks when they aren't good.
You are completely right about all of that, Roke (and using Vlad is a great way to my heart!). The way NBA contracts work is part of the reason I'm fascinated with their handling of the G League.
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