 Did y'all catch the NBA 2k clash? What they call it? It was at PAX East. I know at least a handful y'all seen it. It was a 5v5 NBA 2k league players and they were playing at it. We were there on the stream. It was kind of fun. But as I was going on, my mind was just running with a million ideas and questions because there's a lot we don't know about the NBA 2k league. And there's a lot that's consistent with pretty much every single e-sport that I hope I hope 2k does as well. Y'all who knows man, honestly, if the league does 5k views on games or 50k views, I'll be equally surprised. I have no idea how big it's going to be, but I'm kind of interested to see day one. Okay, so the number one thing you want to do is you've got to. And I've been saying this for a while. You've got to be able to differentiate skill. There has to be a skills gap. Now no need to go into detail. You can watch a million videos where I talk about it. But there's a few key things that the 2k league I'm hoping does, because not only will it make for a better viewing experience, but I think it'll be better for the players as well. So number one thing, and this goes without saying, you don't even need me to do it, but I'll do it just for the sake of you have to reduce the blowbys and snatchbacks. We cannot have Vin Piz 2.0 in the league. It will be a catastrophe if there are players left and right just abusing snatchbacks and blowbys. If you want to, all you have to do is revert to park sliders. Because for whatever reason on Pro Am, those snatchbacks and blowbys is like you live and die by them. Even if you're in good defensive position, if you don't have a defensive archetype, I can have a playmaker or a slasher and blow by you. You want to know how I know? Go ahead, ask me. Agent, how you know about? Because I have a slasher and I do it to other people. If you give me the ball on the wing and you ISO on that side, I will take you 100% of the time because the blow by will always be there with my build. I'm just saying it doesn't take a lot of skill. We can't have VimPins 2.0, bro. We got to keep that in regular Pro Am. If I see one person just steady, like all they do is abuse blowbys and snatchbacks, I'm just saying, you can't be there. Number two, touched on at the sliders. Yo, I have a feeling they're going to do this and I don't know because they haven't said anything. The combine sliders were atrocious for plenty of reasons. To simplify it, I'm going to put it like this. If I release the ball as perfectly as I possibly can and I miss, you're effectively reducing the skills gap. Logically, you might think to yourself, if you make it harder to shoot, the best shooters will shine. But you're missing the point. If you reduce certainty, there'll be no stars in the league. How can you tell who's a better shooter if every single time someone releases a full white bar, it's up to chance? You got to throw it up through the prayer hands and hope that Mike Wang does enough disco tech so your shot goes in the basket. I've been using this analogy for the last few weeks. It's as if if I play a shooter, let's say I'm playing Rainbow Six. I'm over here, mouse and keyboard doing my thing. Every time I pick up a gun, it's a different recoil pattern. You know how ridiculous that would be? For example, on CSGO, it has a pretty decent skills gap on that game. They have predictive recoil pattern so that if you play with a specific gun long enough, you can master the recoil. You can't master a shot if even when you release it perfectly, you miss. On that note, I think it would also be dope, a small thing but I think would make a big difference. On whatever broadcast mode is being used, I want to see everybody shot meters. So whether the point guard, the power forward, the center on whatever team shoots the ball, I would like to know how well they're releasing it. If it's a full white, if it's a green, if it's a half bar, that's all important information because there's a difference if someone has a full white and misses and if someone has a half bar and misses. One person did everything he possibly could have and it just didn't line up and the other person just did a horrible job. You have to differentiate the good shooters from the bad shooter and that goes not just with shooting but with dribbling and everything there is with the game. Yo, if you guys have been following the channel for a minute now, you remember two times actually we played a team called Must See TV. They were top five ranked when we played them and their point guard was a guy named a walking bucket and to me, he was easily the best point guard I've ever played on Pro-M. I'm actually surprised he didn't make the 102 because what he did, a lot of people will consider cheese. The thing is 2K18 is different, unlike 17, unlike 16, you can defend the dribble cheese this year. It's not even necessarily cheese because in previous years someone could dribble spam behind the back, float this way, momentum, momentum, momentum, float that way and then you can't really do much about it. I mean, it was cool to watch, it was nice on the mix tapes, it was fun to be a part of but in a competitive atmosphere, you'd have to tone some of those down. In NBA 2K18, every single dribble move is defendable. As long as you have good rotations, you're an active defender and if the latency was lower, that would also help. You can defend against these dribble moves. I'm worried that the NBA 2K League is gonna see these quote-unquote unrealistic dribble moves and go, it should be in the game, let's remove the momentum crossover from the league, let's remove any sort of dribble move that takes even an ounce of skill to use. Because what a walking bucket did, every time he beat my team was special. I didn't see any other point guard doing that. It wasn't just his ability to dance on pick and roll, the second he saw an open person, he's dishing it. And to have that quickness and that IQ, that vision and also the ability to move the sticks, I felt like he was the most skilled player I've ever played against. I'm just saying, you remove that skill away when you call these moves cheese and you take him out the game because they're quote-unquote an abuse of the intended animations 2K was going for. I'm just saying it'll be a real shame. 2K is in a weird spot for plenty of reasons because they're bound by realism. On Fortnite, you fly in on a battle bus with a parachute and pick up guns around the map, you have guided rocket missile launchers and you build wood out of your ass. On 2K, you can't do any crazy stuff because the second someone sees a ball go through someone's body, they're yelling unrealistic. And so because 2K is bound by realism, a lot of their decisions are, is it realistic? And so it's difficult to implement a nice skills gap when every single time they're bound by that. In 2K's mind, they're thinking, yo, even the best shooters in the NBA shoot 45% from 3. And so they lower the combine 3-point percentages and sliders down. But what they don't realize is they just took away the certainty from these gamers. It's different when you're gaming and you want to be skilled and when you're in real life and you want to be skilled. I'm not going to lie, but the sky behind me looks beautiful. They're besides the point. In any esport, you want to give the gamers control. You want to allow their ability or inability to make a shot to make or break those players. There's going to be some players that go in the league and can't hit a shot because their release isn't on point. But there's going to be some players who every single time just on the dock. And because they're playing online and they're not playing online, they have no connection issues and variable latency. So the people who want to master their jump shot should be able to master. And so when the chat sees my guy jailing and he perfected his and he hops on the court, he's going to light it up. And they know it's because he's the top of the field at what he does in that shooting. It should be like that across every single category, whatever the case. I'm really hoping the league does well, man. I watch a lot of esports. I've recently dove into PUBG. I watch a lot of Rainbow Six. I watch a lot of Tekken 7. I watch a decent amount of Call of Duty. And I'm hoping that NBA 2K can fit really well in that rotation. But for me, like, what if you can't go without this, bro? And it's a necessity. And I hope it's there. But I don't know is the casters. Now, hold up. Now you guys know for a while now, I've been trying to go for a casting role because I didn't want to be a player in the league. What I recently found out sideplot from the whole video is usually when casters go to events, they show up a couple days before to do rehearsals, check equipment, to make sure everything's running smooth. Not only that, but you pretty much have to do research on literally every single player in the league, know their backstory, et cetera. That part I knew. But if you're there two days before, the day before, and the day of, you're somewhere else, whether the games are played in New York, LA, Chicago, I don't know. And so I don't know if it's realistic for me to be a caster or not. But here's what I do know. Get back to the point. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please choose casters that understand the game. When we were watching that clash at PAX 5E5 with the 2K league players, it was clear that the casters knew basketball, but they didn't understand 2K. Remember, four, six-minute quarters, three different exhibition games here from PAX East in Boston. Another little step-back pull-up. Let's see if Team Red can continue that momentum train. Hot shot on the inside. Spin move, nice post move from Hot Shot, and he finishes. There's certain terminology, lingo, or just like, you know, when you're a 2K player, if you do this in this specific circumstance, you're going to force this animation, and it's going to be out of bounds, or you're going to get a charging foul. That stuff you should know across the board. My favorite e-sport to watch by far is Tekken 7. That's not what you want to happen. Jump. This is an outlet. And one of the main reasons is because of one of the main casters, Eris. And he understands the game inside and out. He knows if you do a one, two plus three, it's 16 frames, and if it hits, then you have plus three on the next move. But if it gets blocked and you have a minus 16, and he could do a while rising two to punish with this character, he knows every single detail about every single player. He lives and dies Tekken. Okay, good job blocking that laser scraper. It looks like he went for a power curser. Interrupt turn stealing. Oh man, he's going to extend. Is he going to get the whole thing? Yeah, he gets it. Two part. That's a big chunk. Oh, he went for the slide. And so he sets some stuff in game where, oh, he actually could have punished there because that was minus 15 on block. And I'm like, yo, I didn't know that because I don't know any frame data in these fighting games. But it was that information that just gets me more intrigued to watching and understanding the game. It provides a complexity, some sort of insight that only the top tier players have. And you just don't get that when you put someone on there who doesn't understand 2K. Now shout out to my guy, Dirk. I feel like he's literally the perfect guy for the role and I hope he ends up getting it, although I don't know what other responsibilities he has or whether he can even take it because I know he's doing stuff all the time. But whoever they get, I hope it's someone that understands the game that will add a lot to it for sure. Yo, there's so much questions, man. I just wish some of them would start to be answered. They recently announced the schedule for the league. They're actually going to have, I believe, three tournaments including the final one. Of course, they have over a million dollars in prizes, which is dope. Imagine if one team wins all of them. Like, you're going home with a lot of money, man. And they get to live in some of the most phenomenal gaming houses, man. I just saw the Mavericks gaming house. Bro, the King's gaming house. I have four monitors here. I have about, like, a million microphones in the house. I sound proof the walls. I feel like I have a dream setup. But I'm looking at the setup these guys got. I'm like, god damn, it's so beautiful. So, like, if you're a player in NBA 2, you can't leave watching this. You gotta enjoy it. First of all, you gotta grind. Like, this might be your only shot. You gotta go hard. Second of all, bro, every night, you gotta kick it for like five minutes and just look around you like you're blessed. Smile. I hope, like, everything, I hope it does fantastic. It would be so awesome to see the 2K League do well. The first competitive game I played was Socom. And at the time, Socom was a game with a very high skills gap and it was very difficult to get into. But once I got into it, I slowly worked my way up to the second best clan in the game. And at the time, I remember everybody was saying, yo, I wish more people supported the Esport for Socom because they felt like it could be so huge. NBA 2K was literally giving a hand out here because the NBA came in. They said, yo, let's get involved in Esport and they're really just helping build this. They're helping fund this. That is crazy. For a lot of people that enjoy some of these games that don't get as much attention, you recognize how blessed NBA 2K is right now. I hope they have somebody who understands 2K, advising them. I hope they have. Of course they do. People in the Esports industry that have been around CSGO League of Legends, all these successful Esports telling them, like, yo, you got to do this and you make sure you have to do this. I'm just one guy with an opinion, just based on stuff that I watch, things that I enjoy and my understanding of the game. This has potential. I'm saying it could do 5K views, like road to the All Star game live on YouTube, or it could do like 50K. The draft is 20K, but I'm saying like when the games start, I'm sure like a lot of people will tune in and we'll see how many of those viewers get retained throughout the rest of the year. Some players are gonna fail. Not everybody's gonna be great. That's the reality. Some teams win, some teams lose. It's sports, it's gaming. I really hope 2K doesn't make it so that like it's failproof. I don't want any, there needs to be guys who are garbage in the league to make room for guys that are great. Not everyone can be in the middle. It's just not gonna be interesting. And so at that point, it's just on the players to practice so hard that they're gonna be the guys at the top. I've been getting into PC gaming recently. I've been playing a decent amount of Rainbow Six, just slowly like dipping my foot in the puddle. I've been playing a lot of Fortnite and it feels fantastic to again be on a game with the high skills gap and just improve, improve, improve, and just see that improvement. I'm streaming a lot of it over on Facebook. If you guys aren't already following me, I'm gonna leave a link in the description. I'm usually streaming around like 8pm Eastern after I upload on YouTube. But I came to a realization just watching streams and videos. NBA 2K will never really be a competitive game. I think it's a casual game, kind of like Fortnite. An example I saw Nick Merks give on stream was, competitive is just one branch of the tree that is an actual game. So you can't base everything in the game off competitive play. It just wouldn't be fun. So I understand why 2K has a lot of the casual things it has. But when it comes to playing in this specific branch of this specific atmosphere, in esports they ban specific guns, they ban specific maps, or anything that could potentially be deemed overpowered. I just hope that they make the right decisions. That's all I'm saying. I'm gonna be watching from here. I got it on notifications already. Happy that a lot of my guys made it into the league. I feel like they deserved it. If you guys missed it, I actually pulled up at the NBA 2K League draft. I'm gonna leave a card above. You can click in and watch. I'm gonna leave it on that, man. If you guys enjoyed, drop a like. Subscribe if you guys are new. I'm gonna catch y'all later. I'm out. Peace.