5 takeaways from the first week of NBA 2K League action

After months of speculation, anticipation and excitement, the NBA 2K League made its debut with a Tip-Off Tournament, which started on May 1. People have been trying to gauge the potential of this league both positively and negatively, so I’m not here to make snap judgments. Instead, I’m going to give my thoughts and takeaways from the first week.

After watching the NBA 2K League draft clash, I was a little bit concerned about how the commentary would sound when the league started. Don’t get me wrong, the commentary crew was okay there, but it’s going to go over better when you have a crew that knows about strategies and lingo that are specific to 2K.

So I was delighted to see that the commentary was fire this week. This is thanks in part due to the charisma of esports play-by-play legend Scott Cole and the analysis of Jamie “Dirk” Ruiz.

Cole has been lending his talents on the competitive Madden realm for a while, and it was impressive for him to seamlessly transition into competitive 2K. Ruiz’s expertise and analysis stem from him calling Pro-Am games that featured a number of players in this league. It was a no-brainer to add him to the broadcast team.

The thing that makes this commentary crew really good, though, is their awareness. Over the several-day tournament, Cole brought up topics and arguments he saw on Twitter and Twitch chat in his postgame interviews with players.

Dirk uses his expertise and analysis to take things that are known only to NBA 2K fans and explains them to people who might just be joining the stream out of curiosity, or the NBA 2K League fans that don’t play 2K. That’s a very important part of esports broadcasting to a mainstream audience. Just listen to this analysis:

I’m torn as a fan of both basketball and NBA 2K. For everyone who’s ever played NBA 2K, you know that during the game you often get graphics that show the score, runs, hot streaks, and much more. I didn’t see a single one during gameplay. Yes, after the game you would see the box score, but that’s about it. I’m not talking about the full-on cutscenes during dead balls or the halftime show. (The last thing I want is cutscenes.)

Here’s what I’m talking about. This is from 2K17, but it still applies because I know these features are also in 2K18:

See how you can view the stats/attributes of the player you’re controlling and the way the “Raptors Run” shows up on screen after that? The current NBA 2K League broadcasts are devoid of in-game chyrons. The broadcast does cut to the faces of the players with the controller in their hand and that’s good, but someone like me wants to know about the stats that don’t show up in the regular box score.

One of 2K’s strengths is making many game modes feel like a broadcast, so it’s weird as to why a lot of these elements are missing from the NBA 2K League broadcasts. It would be cool to know when a team is on a run, or if they’ve been on fire from the paint.

Here’s an example of what the Overwatch league does when they want to tell us a special stat.

While one of the strengths of the league so far is the broadcasting, people shouldn’t feel lost if they’re watching with the sound off. I know NBA 2K can make these changes to the game — it’s only a matter of if they do it or not.

On the bright side, they did make changes to certain things during the week, like letting us hear what the players are saying over timeouts and post-game interviews with players. Those are changes on the positive track and won’t be surprised if they steadily improve in this aspect over time.

This is an interesting partnership between 2K and Twitch. When you see a league like Overwatch or League of Legends, a lot of people who watch it reside on Twitch. For NBA 2K18, the platform of choice for people watching 2K has been mostly YouTube. This is the same for competitive Madden broadcasts, but they combat that by simulcasting on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Live and Periscope.

I’m curious how the league will fare in converting normal NBA and NBA 2K fans into fans of the league. We’re talking about a game that has over 2 million followers on Twitter, 1.9 million followers on Instagram and over 6.5 million likes on its Facebook page. It will be interesting to see how the social media team’s strategy for cross-platform promotion, especially since you can’t watch live Twitch streams on other platforms until the broadcast is over.

Yes, It’s cool to see the game dip its toe into esports, but I can understand why people would be frustrated with how NBA 2K is prioritizing the league. For example. the regular NBA 2K game doesn’t have private matchmaking for Pro-AM mode, but the NBA 2K League does. That’s frustrating to every competitive Pro-AM player that isn’t in the league because it’s something the community has been asking for for some time now.

I have watched countless Twitch streams where two teams are actively trying to play each other, but it takes 20 minutes because they might be assigned to other teams instead. Private matchmaking being available would be helpful for the ProAM community. Also, this game mode is different from regular ProAM — the badges aren’t as powerful and sliders are different. What if NBA 2K made a mode similar to the combine available all year? That way players who have aspirations to be in the league can get used to the league-approved archetypes and stuff. The relationship between NBA 2K and the community has been tense this year and it won’t look good if NBA 2K19 doesn’t have private matchmaking.

NBA 2K will be under the microscope from both 2K and basketball fans alike. It will be interesting to see what NBA 2K will do when clear exploits and gameplay problems arise. Will they go in and patch/fix them, or will they just let it ride? For example, NBA 2K18 has this glitch that allows teams to call a timeout even during the loose ball animation. This has been a thing since the game’s release.

It’s on NBA 2K, not the players, to do something about this. Certain issues like this will arise and be put on a whole new pedestal, especially since these tournaments and games could lead to a lot of money being won. Will the fact that these things could affect the league spur NBA 2K into fixing them?

I guess we’ll find out.