Nowhere does the quarantine withdrawals feel worse than looking at the world of sports. Whereas most TV shows have been in the can for months now, the average game is held live. You need a crowd there, cheering on competition as players get in each other’s face. It’s quite possibly the most counterintuitive thing to be doing right now. Whereas other media has the advantage of being distant, your average basketball game is canceled because we can’t be having everyone bumping into each other. Not when The Utah Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert have been tested positive for COVID-19. No, we need to play things safe, stay at home, and just have to put up with reruns.
On the one hand, it’s been exciting to watch the legends of yesteryear in their prime dribbling up and down the court. You remember how amazing Kobe Bryant was when playing alongside Shaquille O’Neal. There are so many exhilarating reasons to watch the games. Though, if we’re being honest, part of the average season’s charm is not knowing how things will play out. Will anybody be beating Giannis Antetokuompo and The Milwaukee Bucks? Even if you know the answer is no, who is the team and by how much? The variables are so exciting that it inspired one of Adam Sandler’s greatest performances in Uncut Gems (2019). You just can’t help getting caught up in the unknown. Meanwhile older games, even from that week, tend to be described by the winners and losers.
And you thought that movie spoilers were bad.
Everyone’s going insane, but the people whose job is to stay in motion probably have it worse. Their livelihood is staying in shape, getting to that basket and having a crowd yell back at them. As great as family has been, you have to believe that they miss so much of the superfluous stuff, of the traditions of preparing to get on the court as the mascots have t-shirt canons ready at their disposal. So much is missing, and it’s been exciting to watch every player try to stay sane during these times. There are those like Steph Curry who missed the game so much that he bought a basketball hoop and confessed to having trouble setting it up. Others, like Antetokuompo, take up hobbies like learning guitar.
But really, what are we doing with ourselves to keep the love of basketball alive? Since there’s no practical time frame when we’ll return to normalcy, there has to be something to fill in the downtime. The reruns can only have so much appeal. At some point, there has to be some gimmick to get people caring again.
That is when it was decided that the NBA was going to do some cross-promotion. If you’ve watched even one game in the past year (or even decade), you’ll likely have seen an advertisement for the video game NBA 2K. Every year they update the game with the new players, making you feel like you’re playing as all of your favorites. You want to be Curry? Well, guess what? You might even get to play more minutes than he did this season.
But wait, that’s it! If we can’t play basketball then we’ll act like we’re playing basketball. It’s simple as that.
And thus the NBA 2K Tournament was born. There have actually been different forms of this in the past, but they have felt secondary compared to most years for obvious reasons. However, it was put on the main stage as compensation. The premise was simple: 16 players enter a bracket tournament and the winner donates $100,000 to a charity of their choice. You loved watching them on the court, but what about when they’re playing video games? Just tune in to EPSN or ESPN 2 to catch all of the wild antics.
Okay, this is where things become a bit convoluted. On the surface, it makes sense. This is the equivalent of hanging out with your friends on Zoom, catching up on what’s been going on since you’ve been locked in your homes. There’s very little appeal about it. It’s not great TV, at least in the conventional sense. If you have Twitch, you’re familiar with the idea of watching others getting into a moment, adding colorful commentary to make the home viewing experience more enjoyable. It’s become such a renowned industry that people like Ninja make millions just breaking in a new game to even more viewers at home.
The first night of the NBA 2K Tournament was on Friday, and there’s a bunch of things that are clear. While these may be great athletes, very few of them have a Ninja-like charisma to make this hour of programming tolerable. The first team-up especially felt excruciating as The Brooklyn Nets’ Kevin Durant took on The Miami Heat’s Derrick Jones Jr. in a match that was largely quiet.
As the screens alternated between the game and the two men sitting at home, there was this sense that Durant likes to stay focused, never giving into the trash talk that would elevate this experience into an art form. In fact, the only memorable comments he made were often about glitches. When the funniest part of the game was seeing Durant make his first game “playing” for The Nets have him using The Los Angeles Clippers, you know that it’s going to be a long night.
If there’s anything humanizing to the experience, it’s that the various intermissions found Durant and Jones both opening up. They asked each other what they had been up to, getting a rare insight into their personal friendship. The same could be said for every player to follow. Even then, one begins to notice what the biggest difference between them playing on the court and sitting at home, game controller in hand, looking at a screen. It requires different wiring, and not every player could even make their video game equivalent play as well as their worst night.
With all logical reasoning aside, there is a reason that the NBA 2K Tournament doesn’t resonate nearly as well on TV as a regular game. Even if the graphics are exceptional and the game handles nicely, there is still this divide between realism and the vaguest sense of fantasy. Everything feels like it has a glossy texture and because of gameplay, you can’t exactly be switching up angles all that much. It’s often an overhead shot to allow both players to strategize their play, especially in the incident of a turnover or complicated pass. So much is lost because of this, and it makes parts of the experience impersonal.
Some match-ups went better than others. The Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young going up against The Sacramento Kings’ Harrison Barnes showed the one benefit of hiring younger players for this tournament. In general, they have a better handle not only of playing the game but being able to hold amusing conversations while performing these operations. Whereas Durant seemed to have laser focus, seeing Young and Barnes were more laidback, able to incorporate their personal conversation into the mix. One thing in particular that amused Young was The Bucks’ Eric Bledsoe. Whenever he was on, Young would say “Bledsoe” as if it was the greatest word in the English dictionary.
The novelty of watching these guys play each other still has some appeal, but one has to realize that they’re not getting their best work here. In fact, the game really works only if you’re a nobody fantasizing about being Trae Young. That is what makes other games on Twitch so exciting to watch. There is that realm of fantasy that you can get with Super Mario Bros. that you can’t with any form of basketball game. Basketball, even in video game form, is regimented. There’s not a chance to revel in these abstract wonders. It’s all about the personalities behind the controller at this point, and since most of these guys have spent years on a court they don’t have the skill to just pick up a controller and play as good while giving biting commentary.
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| Patrick Beverley |
With all of that said, the real masterpiece came in the final game of the night between The Clippers’ Patrick Beverley and The Portland Trail Blazers’ Hassan Whiteside. Labeled as two of the biggest trash talkers in the league, this was a rare gateway into what the series should be, provided that the players get more comfortable. At many points, Beverley would suggest that he’s so good at the game that he’s won many other NBA NK Tournaments.
You wouldn’t doubt it. The man is Speedy Gonzalez, sprinting around every player. If he shoots the ball from under the basket and it falls to the three-point line, your best bet is that he’s already over there. It’s unknown if he actually sleeps because of how hyperactive his gameplay is. He is wired to win at all costs, which sometimes even means failing to foul out Durant by constantly touching his butt.
So to watch him play is a delight. While Whiteside held his own, you understand that Beverley brings with him a dedication to strategy. Even in the low-stakes world of video games, he’s orchestrating plays and using the full court to his advantage. There is no wasted space in his plays, and it explains why he can get away with telling Whiteside that he’s going to beat him by 30, and have some plausibility to the scenario. In fact, the fourth quarter segment found both men getting so into the game that Whiteside inexplicably shouts “Cookies!” at one point. Why did he do it? Nobody knows. Even with Beverley’s kid trying to distract him, there was nothing that could stop him. It was an artful way of disarming your opponent and undermining their confidence.
If there is any issue, it’s that the game is very hard to take seriously. While it’s fun to see these NBA players take to casual conversations, the game almost distracts from something more constructive and interesting. Sure, it makes sense to cross-promote with a game that could be used to make this troubling time less interminable, but few players have the skills to make it exciting and a necessary use of your time. At a certain point, you’re just watching a basketball simulation, and unless you’re the one in control, the quiet focus doesn’t add a whole lot to the fun.
For those who still have an interest in the tournament, there are even more games in the week to come. Following Durant vs. Jones (winner), Young (winner) vs. Barnes, Beverley (winner) vs. Whiteside, and The Phoenix Suns’ Deandre Ayton (winner) vs. The Chicago Bulls’ Zach Lavine; there are four more games to be had:
The Clippers’ Montezl Harrell vs. The Indiana Pacers’ Domantas Sabonis
The Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell vs. The Washington Wizards’ Rui Hachimura
The Suns’ Devin Booker vs. The Denver Nuggets’ Michael Porter Jr.
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Andre Drummond vs. The Los Angeles Lakers’ DeMarcus Cousins
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| DeMarcus Cousins is coming for y'all |
These will be held on Sunday on ESPN and ESPN 2. The winners of these four games will join Friday’s winners for the quarterfinals this Tuesday. Finally Saturday, April 11 will conclude with the semifinals and championship game.
The good news is that some of the more competitive players have made it an enjoyable use of our time. However, it’s still one of those great existential questions as to whether it was all worth it. As a massive marketing ploy, it’s kind of brilliant. If anything, the quarantine culture makes the idea of videos games all the more alluring, especially the more involved ones that will take up a whole day of your life. It may not amount to much in the way of productivity, but it keeps the brain from going stale. It keeps them active.
As we wait for the NBA to resume, I guess we have to find novel ways to stay entertained. With limited resources, many have found incredible ways to reach this goal. Considering that this is only a week of our lives dedicated to watching our favorite players have a good time at video games, it’s not the worst way to keep publicity alive. The only wish is that sports in general could be more interactive in a way that made this experience feel more fruitful.
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