Move over Madden because NBA 2K16 officially released Tuesday and the infamous game franchise has taken a big step forward. The game is gathering attention from not just NBA fans, but college hoops fans who have the chance to bring back memories prior to the fallout of March Madness.
The last March Madness game released was in 2009, with high-flyer Blake Griffin on the cover when he was in his glory days at Oklahoma. NBA 2K16 contains a new feature in the “MyCareer” story mode that begins with the created character as a highly touted recruit from Harlem, New York, who is attempting to play his way into a scholarship to an elite program.
One of those elite program schools is Arizona and now the students who weren’t athletic enough or tall enough can fulfill their dreams of playing in McKale Center. The other schools are ASU, Connecticut, Georgetown, Kansas, Louisville, Michigan, Texas, UCLA, Villanova and Arizona’s least favorite team Wisconsin.
In the commitment video the created character holds at his house, the player mentions playing for Wildcat nation.
Even though it seems nice and dandy, NBA 2K16 has a misspelling in the subtitles. When the commitment mentions playing in Tucson, the game spelled it as “Tuscon” (sic). Other than that, the commitment video is surreal and gives a feeling of committing to a blue blood program.
Let it be known that featuring the Wildcats in a respectable basketball game is a genius scheme Arizona head coach Sean Miller is using. Miller has a reputation for snagging top recruits consistently and now hopeful recruits can visualize how they might look in an Arizona uniform. Granted, in the video game there’s only four games available to play in college, but there are two familiar faces.
Former Wildcats Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Stanley Johnson are back in Arizona uniforms, and in the very last game of the season there’s a chance of redemption against Wisconsin. And oh yeah, Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker are playing for the Badgers, so there’s more of an incentive to play for Arizona.
Once players are competing at the college level, the NBA draft is held and based on the player’s performance; the draft stock will either rise or fall.
Usually video games have a difficult time outdoing the previous year’s game, but NBA 2K16 adding colleges to the mix takes the experience as a basketball player to another level. From playing in a high school gym to playing in front of 14,545 fans at McKale Center before taking off for the association, NBA 2K16 truly shows the daily life of an aspiring basketball player.
Follow Ivan Leonard on Twitter.
