NBA 2K14 Review

It’s a rare video game that casts you in the role of the villain. A proper villain, that is. Not some open-world game's honorable outlaw, or the part-time sinner, part-time saint from a western RPG. Thankfully, NBA 2K14 is here with an answer for those hoping to finally walk a mile in the bad guy’s shoes. Size 16, black.

Did I mention that I’m a Spurs fan? Let’s not dwell on that little fact - I’m still avoiding Sportscenter for fear of traumatic flashbacks of the 2013 Finals. But it does make the LeBron James-centered NBA 2K14 a peculiar point of entry for a series neophyte like myself. It’s strange seeing him grace the front of the game, arms outstretched as if to grasp all the spoils that my Spurs nearly had. But cover boy honors are only the most recent of prizes laid at the feet of King James. He’s the reigning and defending champion, a four-time MVP, and nine-time NBA All Star. James is also the league’s most heavily courted free agent whenever he casts his divine gaze upon the open market, as he did during “The Decision”, 2010’s fateful exercise in televised egotism.

Enter NBA 2K14, with what seems like a devil’s deal. Take control of LeBron, and lead him down one of two divergent paths. One, to continued prosperity in Miami, the other, to take his talents to free agency once again. Who picks the former? Heat fans, probably, and few others. The latter - the brilliantly named "Fantastic Journey" - is far more compelling, an improbable tour that sees James jump ship to a nascent super team in the New York Knicks and make a patronizing stop at Cleveland. Along the way he runs a gauntlet of unlikely scenarios, featuring a revitalized Allen Iverson, an emergent arch-rival “King John” (the King in the North!) and - I kid you not - a few dream sequences.

In many ways, LeBron: Path to Greatness doubles down on all the self-involved speculation that made The Decision such a public relations nightmare for James. Playing through NBA 2K14, though, I'm finding that a little more time with the MVP dulls some of the indignation. Isn’t this exactly what I come to the NBA for, after all? This isn’t baseball, with its sabermetrics and its airs of objectivity; basketball has always been messy, personal, swaggering. It’s a cult of personalities, and in that sense I suppose King James reigns admirably as either its savior or its tyrant. If nothing else, the Fantastic Journey helps to hammer that point home.

In more practical terms, the mode is just another mildly entertaining diversion from the flagship "My Career" create-a-character suite. I hear that it's largely unchanged from last year's offering, but if that's the case then I've clearly been missing out. It's here where 2K14 truly embraces the RPG undercurrents that bubble beneath most sports games, supplementing on-the-court happenings with crucial narrative elements. The usual stats and customization options of an RPG are present too, of course, if a bit unbalanced. You're afforded roughly 6,485 options for your player's foul shot motion, but I was forced to content myself with the single offered voice and a haircut I've affectionately been referring to as "The Detlef Schrempf".

After a rookie showcase game, and a draft process so awkwardly half-baked I've taken to playing through it on mute, you're dumped at the end of your team's bench and left to work towards stardom. Participation is twofold: on the court you try to meet pop-up performance challenges and improve on a "teammate rating" that rewards everything from assists to proper floor spacing. After hours, you're signing endorsements, watching your social media ticker, and holding press conferences. Usual NBA star stuff, I’d imagine, with a lot of the lawyers and agents neatly excised.

The on-court proceedings establish a duality between selfish play and team-first balling that’s central to 2K14’s thematic drive. The teammate rating mitigates one’s natural inclination to play one-on-five "hero ball" by doling out big bonuses for charitable play within the system. It's comprehensive in its rewards, establishing basic basketball tenets like boxing out, setting hard screens, and always challenging a shot. Used in tandem with lovely overlays that diagram plays on the court in real time, the teammate rating acts as a great instructor. It does hate when you call for a pass though, which is only problematic because 2K14's artificial intelligence just isn't very proactive when it comes to getting you the rock when you’ve made a brilliant cut to the basket.

That can grate, because with the realistic ebb and flow of 2K14’s games, your teammates might not be faring so well on their own. Sometimes a little selfishness is the prudent decision, and sometimes your teammate rating needs to take a hit so that you can get straight to the business of leading the comeback. Learning when to play within the system and when to freelance takes time, but it’s a valuable skill that takes a clever mind, as any baller will avow. Impressively, the concepts that the teammate rating instils translate well to the online game. Run into a human player who jacks 3’s, runs out instead of crashing the boards, and fishes for steals (run into them you will, because they’re everywhere) and you’ll find that they’re even more susceptible than the AI was to your extra passes and pump fakes. Put a hand in their players’ faces to tank their odds of a successful three-pointer, and watch their one-dimensional strategy collapse.

2K14’s revamped control scheme makes that sort of defense simple, while still preserving the game’s integrity as a skill-based endeavor. A great many actions are now mapped to the right analog: shooting, passing, dribbling, and ball denial each see contextual usage with the stick. It’s intuitive and empowering; the stick can start an action, give it a direction, hesitate, change that direction, and then execute the action, all with a few minute flicks of the thumb (a small caveat: old controllers with sticks that are prone to getting stuck off-center can result in a few unintentional and ill-timed cross-court heaves) .

MyCareer mostly pays lip service to your player’s extracurricular activities, but it’s more than enough to create a reasonable abstraction of the athlete lifestyle. Meetings with your general manager proffer some sense of control over your career. Practice options are a tad exploitable, but they’re also varied and optional. Social media integration isn’t exactly new to the sports game scene, but the prospect of getting a challenge from an upcoming opponent that can confer bonus experience points is just enough incentive to check your feed every now and again. The fact that your player is followed by some of the most polite sports fans in the history of Twitter doesn’t hurt, either; I’d be curious to see how 2K14 would fare if players were subjected to a tenth of the online abuse real athletes receive.

Most interesting to me are the post-game pressers. Like in the NBA, they’re mandatory, and like in the NBA, the place behind podium is an uncomfortable seat after a loss. When you cruise to a victory you’re tossed softball questions about what went right. When you get beat down, reporters probe and lead, trying to get you to throw your coach under the bus or catch you in a weak moment. On a Bulls team struggling with transition defense and a tendency to wilt in the playoffs, I took the bait more than a few times. If you take the high road, reiterating your faith in your teammates and the system, you’ll probably still draw ire - a caustic commentary on fair-weather fandom. Here too, NBA 2K14 makes a case for LeBron’s Decision: what’s more dull than your umpteenth answer that chalks up a win to foul shooting?

That's the beautiful, bizarre, Janus-face of the NBA, gamified. A league that counts success in championships on one side, and in follower counts and endorsement dollars on the other. A league that courted inner-city athletes, fined them for dressing too street, and accidentally gave rise to nerd chic. That owes as much to the Princeton Offense as it does to Harlem’s Rucker Park. It’s only in a league like that where a player like LeBron James can be so vilified, and yet so vital. NBA 2K14 knows all this, and it wants to help you to understand.