NBA 2K17

Grinding For Greatness

by Matt Bertz

Elite NBA players enjoy the 24/7 spotlight of national television, lucrative endorsement deals, and even occasional crossovers into Hollywood. But underneath this veneer of the charmed life are thousands of hours spent in gyms perfecting shooting strokes, honing dribbling moves, and sculpting physiques to withstand the rigors of an 82-game season. For better and worse, NBA 2K17's popular MyCareer mode looks past the glitz and the glamour to focus on the practical side of being a professional athlete.

A year after the Spike Lee debacle, MyCareer returns with a new narrative penned by screenwriter Aaron Covington (Creed). Regardless of which organization drafts you, your team's rookie class includes an overlooked gem named Justice Young, played by the talented Michael B. Jordan (Creed, The Wire). Together, you strive to become the next great NBA tandem, following in the footsteps of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Your chemistry develops through cutscenes and hours of practice at the gym, and if you play off each other enough during a game, you unlock the ability to take control of the tandem. Controlling two players at the same time almost feels too empowering; lethal give-and-gos are unleashed at the push of a button, and Young rarely misses an open look.

Performing well in MyCareer is paramount to improving the skills of your player, who once again starts with an absurdly low rating in a shameless ploy to get users to take the easy path and spend money on the virtual currency. Regardless of which approach you take, you need to put many hours into the practice mode to round out your player. Earning currency via games played and endorsement deals is still the way to upgrade your primary skills, but certain critical skills like stamina and free-throw shooting can only be improved by grinding at the gym. Unfortunately, the path to upgrading these is needlessly opaque; even if you shoot free-throws for 20 minutes, you may not raise your rating a single point. After putting 20 hours into the gym activities – which offer great variety, by the way – I still don't understand the logic of when skill points do and don't get awarded.

See more of the review at Game Informer