Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had a fantastic week and have a great weekend ahead of you.
I’ve been playing the NBA 2k video game series for almost as long as it has existed. I picked up NBA 2k3 on the PlayStation 2 back in 2002 and have, generally, been a fan of the franchise ever since.
So when the opportunity to review Visual Concepts’ latest entry into the series with NBA 2k25, I didn’t hesitate to jump on it.
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Now, let me be clear here. As a longtime fan of this game and the series, I do love it. But that does not mean that I love everything about it. Like everyone, I’ve had plenty of complaints about NBA 2k through the years — especially recently.
Every year, it feels like the microtransaction economy the game is now known for keeps slowly eating away at the playing experience. After playing the game for two days, I can confirm (to no one’s surprise) that it remains the same. It’s impossibly hard to play the game’s MyCareer mode without spending a little extra cash to improve your player and have a pleasant experience with the game and its PvP features. That will forever be a blight on this game to me.
READ MORE: Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the best players in NBA 2k25
But let’s put MyCareer on hold for a second. First, I’d like to talk about my experience playing this game. It was truly delightful.
As a longtime fan of the NBA, you’ve always seen players doing the impossible in games with dribble moves, crazy finishes, dunks, wild 3-pointers and more. The goal of this game has always been to capture that essence and package it for the rest of us to experience that in our own way.
I think 2k made immense progress with that through 2k24’s ProPlay feature. Instead of using motion capture technology to try and recreate player’s moves, the game used actual footage from NBA games to make them as accurate as possible.
For 2k25, they’ve improved on that ProPlay feature. And let me tell y’all: It works. Really, really well.
For 2k25, they’ve added a “go-to shot” feature that lets you do James Harden’s stepback, for example, or Stephen Curry’s sidestep 3-pointer or Luka Doncic’s slow-mo step.
Seeing is believing, though. So here I am playing as Kevin Durant in the 2k Freestyle mode, just messing around. Look at how insane this stepback is.
They’ve even got his “too small” celebration in the game.
The attention to detail is insane. It’s what makes the game so fun to play. The presentation is nice, but it’s not just fluff. There’s an infrastructure that comes with it that makes it truly feel like you’re in control of an NBA superstar. You can feel the difference if you’re playing with, say, Steph Curry or Trae Young. No two players feel the same — especially not the ones at the top of the ladder.
As far as the game modes go, there’s not much new added. But the selection was already robust between MyCareer, MyTeam, MyGM and, last season’s new add, MyEras.
The 2k eras mode now features a Steph Curry era timeline starting from 2016, which is a bit odd considering its a year after the Warriors won their first title. But it runs right up against the LeBron era, so I get it.
MyGM mode isn’t really that interesting. It feels more like an RPG now. There are six different GM archetypes you can choose from. None of them were really that interesting to me and, honestly, I didn’t play the mode too much.
What I’ve spent most of my time in (predictably) was the MyCareer mode. The start of it completely hooks out in.
You begin your journey as a player playing in the 4th quarter of a decisive Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Of course, you win the game. And you’ll probably finish with a 50-point triple-double, which feels awesome. But then you realize after the game that it’s just your player envisioning the future they’ve dreamed of.
From there, you build out your player. You can either build your player and adjust your attributes as you see fit or choose from several player and pro archetypes the game makes available.
I’ve found that it’s best to use those archetypes as a baseline for what you want and then blow everything up completely to figure out how you want to build your person.
Building your player is a delicate balance — several stat attributes are tied together, meaning sacrificing in one key area could mean a loss for another. For example, the higher your mid-range jumper is, the higher your close shot will have to be. That can create quite a conundrum for you in the builder as you try and balance things out.
This is what I landed on. 
I’ve had fun playing with my player so far. We’ve already run a muck in the Rec so far. I caught my first body of the season, too.
https://twitter.com/MikeDSykes/status/1832116906699989436
It’s been a blast to play. The only issue is, again, the extra money you’ve got to spend on virtual currency to get your player to a point where they can compete online. It’s easily the most frustrating part about NBA 2k. It takes nearly 200,000 in 2k’s “virtual currency” to upgrade your player from a 60 overall to an 85 overall.
Sure, you can play enough games to get there eventually. If you’re raking in, say, 1,000 virtual currency points per NBA regular season game, that’d nearly be 3 full NBA seasons before you reach an 85 overall from your player’s baseline. And we haven’t even begun to discuss how long it’d take for you to get to the highest overall possible at 99.
That entire concept is frustrating and should be done away with. The game is so good otherwise that you just have to wonder how much better it could be if it weren’t going to cost you an extra $100 actually to get the most out of it. For how long some play it? Maybe it’s worth it. But if you’re only looking for a casual playing experience in MyCareer, this might be a hang-up for you.
With that said, I’ve enjoyed playing this game both in and outside of the MyCareer setting. As far as sports games go, NBA 2k is still the creme of the crop.
This is a solid 8 out of 10 game that could easily be bumped up to a 9 without VC struggles. That won’t happen. But, hey. A guy can wish, right?
Shootaround
— Here’s Bryan Kalbrosky speaking with Joakim Noah on the rise of Frances Tiafoe. This one was fun.
— Shaq is still roasting Rudy Gobert. Yikes, gang.
— And so is Dereck Lively II? Man. Come on. Rudy ain’t bad, y’all. Plus, Lively, my guy. Look in the mirror.
— Here’s Meg Hall on fuel being added to the fire for dating rumors between A’ja Wilson and Bam Adebayo. This is fun.
That’s a wrap, gang! Thanks so much for reading today. We appreciate you. Have a good one. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️