Beyond the scope of the American sports scene, basketball has grown leaps and bounds on an international scale. No longer is there an “America and nobody else” feel for the sport. In fact, most of the best players currently in the NBA aren’t even American. Instead, top players such as Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, and Giannis Antetokounmpo rank among the elite, and none of them were born stateside. And none of these three came up through the American collegiate system, but rather cut their teeth overseas.
With this constant influx of elite, foreign talent, maybe it’s time that the NBA 2K series bring back the EuroLeague.
For anyone not in the know, the EuroLeague is a club competition that includes some of the best basketball teams in the world. More often than not, these clubs are branched off from other more popular athletic clubs who specialize in football (soccer) such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich, or Real Madrid just to name a few. And once upon a time, the EuroLeague was featured in NBA 2K.
From NBA 2K14 through 2K17, the EuroLeague was featured in some fashion. But outside of being a separate league that you could fool around with, there wasn’t much depth to the experience. No franchise mode, no MyCareer story thread, nothing. It was literally just a slab of licensed teams that you could play with. After 2K17, 2K Games decided to drop the EuroLeague license and it hasn’t returned since.
And from a business perspective, it makes sense. Even according to many in the OS community, the EuroLeague licensing wasn’t really worth keeping since it was seldom used for anything significant within the series. And quite frankly, not many of 2K’s predominantly American player base particularly cared about its inclusion (or used the teams) to begin with. And trust me, I get it. I won’t pretend to be some kind of European basketball aficionado or anything. Even still, I feel reinstating the EuroLeague could be a net benefit for the 2K series should it be implemented correctly.
From a gameplay perspective, the 2K series has maintained a high bar of quality in comparison to most of its competition. But one of its biggest problems — outside of bleeding its player base dry with microtransactions — is its lack of depth and cookie cutter format, especially as it pertains to single-player modes. MyCareer is essentially the same thing every year — a rags-to-riches story of a young player trying to make his name in the NBA. And MyNBA — the series’ equivalent to a franchise mode — while it has a lot of depth does not have tons of character.
This is where something like the EuroLeague comes in. If we’re not going to get the deeper “drama” of the NBA, just continue to hammer home how much more depth there is to 2K’s franchise mode and MyCareer than any other console sports game.
Instead of a MyCareer storyline being focused on immediately trying to make a mark in the NBA, why not have the player venture to Europe after having an underwhelming career? Or better yet, why not see if your player can circumvent the NCAA by plying your trade in the European circuit?
This can be applied to MyNBA as well. Instead of immediately being able to get a reputable job within the NBA, why not cut your teeth overseas with a Partizan or Baskonia? And even if you don’t want to be running the front office of a EuroLeague team, you could at least make it so that the league is played in the background and is serving as a pipeline into the NBA.
The other aspect to this is the WNBA action in 2K is arguably the best gameplay in the entirety of the series right now. It feels different. It plays different. It feels fresh. EuroLeague would be another chance to make the gameplay feel unique in comparison to the NBA games themselves.
With all that said, it may be a challenge to bring back the EuroLeague in NBA 2K.
Allegedly, 2K didn’t have what one would call a good experience trying to integrate the EuroLeague into its premier NBA title last go-around. According to 2K Insider on Reddit, most 2K players despised its inclusion. On top of that, a third party was brought in to create the rosters, and supposedly they didn’t do a good job and were hard to get contact regarding updates. Furthermore, it didn’t move the needle in terms of international sales.
But the sports world has changed since the 2010s. The decline of cable has meant more sports moving to streaming services, which typically host a heap of different content from both the States and beyond. Also, the rise of sports reaction culture — uninformed sports fans watching leagues or sports they’re unfamiliar with — could also benefit things in the modern era.
Either way, not having the EuroLeague available in the world’s top basketball game feels wrong considering the possibilities and the plethora of foreign-born elite players in the NBA. Is that enough to entice 2K to bring it back? Probably not. But one can still hope.
Published: Jan 23, 2025 03:47 pm