Comprehensive NBA 2k14 Review (It's not going to be good, by the way) part 4

Let's get to it!

Defense

• Don’t worry, this will be quick: it sucks.  It sucks so much, I briefly wanted to replace the core of my Hoover vacuum with the A.I. coding which determines your defensive effectiveness, until I realized that that much suction would likely rip the carpet right off the floor, and possibly even damage the foundation of my home; so I didn't.
• I hate getting locked onto the ball handler, when he’s not the man I’m supposed to be guarding.  If I want to play tight on my man past the three point line to prevent him from getting a wide open 3, I am completely physically capable of doing so in the real reality in which physics, death, and taxes reign supreme; and the horrid offspring of Bruce Jenner.  But in 2K14?  The dribbling motion of the ball creates a miniature black hole within the center of the leather-clothed rubber, not strong enough to destroy the world or allow time travel; but apparently strong enough to pull any unwary defenders that happen to be nearby into it’s unimpressive vortex.
• Unless, of course, it is the man that I am assigned to defend that has the ball; then the black-hole vortex works as a negatively charged ionic field, repulsing my positively charged field, so it becomes impossible to stay in front of him.   See?  You thought that Mass Effect 2 was the greatest Science Fiction game ever made; but NBA 2K14’s simple ball-theoretical-physics makes that Bioware schlock look like comparing First Knight to Game of Thrones.  
• Post Defense?  What is that, some sort of military term used specifically in regards to defending the location which one is set to guard for a certain amount of time?  I don’t understand what sort of context it might have to the glorious 2K-Verse; for I have never seen it.  Thus, it cannot exist.  

Offense

• I’m just going to put this simply, without any exaggeration or hyperbole: the A.I. algorithms that determine the behaviors of your teammates on the offensive end are either the first lines of code that will give birth to Skynet, or 2KSports was the company that unwittingly created the robots that took over the world in the Matrix; I don’t which which of the two it is, but it’s definitely one of them.  Although considering that either possibility will eventually lead to the inevitable destruction of the human race, there’s probably more important things to do than quibble over how, while they might be really good at murdering all organic life on Earth, the Terminators really seem to suck at basketball.  That’s how they should have been stopped!  With a basketball game to decide the fate of the world, just like Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan saved us from space aliens in 1995!
• One of the biggest downgrades in 2K14 from 2K13 is the apparent inability to run plays.  You can tell it to run plays, and sometimes it will even try, but it is never very effective.  It will usually take about 15 seconds for your team just to get set up for the play, all the while the point guard just stands at some designated spot outside the three point line, pounding the ball in anticipation.  Which of course means that by the time the play starts, there usually isn't time to actually run the play, and a desperate shot is heaved to try and beat the shot clock.
• Okay, you then say; just don’t run plays.  Then the offense is even worse!  Because the sprites have no guiding principles anymore, and they run amok upon the court like spectral figments of Isaac Asimov’s robotic nightmares.  In 2K13, the play calling didn't work that much better, but there was at least a couple of upside to it:
• First: some of the plays actually worked.  Not a lot of them, and more often than not the play that was called was to dump it down into the post so that Bismack Biyambo could try unsuccessfully to hit multiple bad shots over Dwight Howard.  Good thing I've got Kevin Durant on my team to throw that entry pass!
• Second, you could at least call the plays after reaching a certain percentage of team chemistry.  But in 2K14, only point guards are ever allowed to call plays.  Here’s why I think the shift in philosophy occurred: 2KSports is a company that cares about the environment, and they saw all of the wasteful play calling that used to occur in their games, and thought: “Well we can’t allow that to continue; there won’t be enough plays to call in twenty years if we keep consuming them at this rate.”  So in order to curtail the irresponsible, and ludicrously wasteful calling of plays which its coding used to encourage, they decided to allow only those players who could pass a written Reduce, Reuse, Recycle test, to call the plays; and wouldn't you know it, every character in the game that passed the test was a point guard.  
• The ball movement is actually really good!  Every time the ball is passed to a member of your team that the computer controls, they first (sometimes) catch the pass, then stand there for a few moments without dribbling or moving, and then they jab step - once - and then, if they don’t have a long, contested jumper to throw up, they will pass the ball to the nearest player on their team that is outside of scoring position.  This exactly matches my own experience on the basketball court, well done 2KSports!     

-This bullet point written by former Detroit Piston’s small forward, Josh Smith.

• The best thing about the total lack of ball movement, though, is that if you actually do manage to swing the ball around the outside and hit an open three point shooter, they are either A) spotted up five feet behind the three point line, and thus outside of range to actually shoot the ball; or B) they are in perfect position, but just refuse to shoot the ball.  
• I mean, good goodness: if I had a dollar for every time a knock-down three point shooter refused to shoot a wide open three after I pass them the ball - including known three point enthusiasts like the Kevins Durant and Love - I would have enough money to buy out their contracts from their current NBA teams and hire them instead to cook me breakfast in the mornings.  Not any other meal, just breakfast: because it’s the most important meal of the day, it deserves to be prepared for you by professional athletes.  
• I guess it's not that big of a problem, considering your three-point shooters never really spot up in position to actually shoot a three anyway; preferring instead to just sort of stand around 5 feet north of the free-throw line like Steph Marbury in his last season with the Knicks.
• So we’ll cover the lack of off-ball player movement in the Passing section; and we just discussed the lack of ball movement.  Now we’ll get into another annoying idiosyncrasy (emphasis on the idio, in this case derived from idiot) that threatens to destroy the very fabric of the digital world which 2K14 inhabits: what is up with the offense in the post?  It is, for lack of three better words combined by a conjunction, completely and utterly broken.  
• It doesn't matter who the big man on your team is, if they don’t have an open shot in the post they are probably going to miss it.  But the best part of it is that, even though they are all 7 feet tall, none of them will dunk the ball without 4 steps to work up to it; so even if they are wide open under the basket, instead of just jumping up and dunking the ball like any actual NBA center or power forward is capable of doing, they do a layup.  
• But of course, even that animation is far too slow, and half the time the defenders - who again, when controlled by the computer are faster at everything than every one of your own teammates combined - get back into the position, and the dinky little layup is either missed or blocked.  Every big man in the game, once placed into the post, moves as quickly as a paraplegic on downers trapped inside of a Mr. McGiblets suit.
• Your teammates’ ability to help you win games is inversely proportional to the ability of the actual, real-life player.  Seriously; in the last five years of NBA 2K, in the MyCareer mode, I've played entire seasons on the same team with Dirk Nowitzki, Lebron James, Dwanye Wade, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Kyle Lowry, Tim Duncan, Lamarcus Aldridge, Damian Lillard, Chris Paul, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Carmelo Anthony, Kyrie Irving,  and Kevin Love.  You want to know who my favorite teammate ever was?  Terrance Freaking Ross.  You might not know who that is: he is the back up shooting guard for the Toronto Raptors.
• You want to know why?  First of all, because he was the only guy who didn't waste 15 out of every 24 seconds on the shot-clock doing absolutely nothing with the ball.  He also was the only one who would shoot the ball when I passed it to him; all of the supposedly better, superstar players would just wait for the defender to get back, then dribble into and subsequently attempt to shoot over, a triple team. They were useless!  Not only that, but even when I was sitting and the A.I. simulated the game until I was put back in, they were useless!  I’d play the first quarter, sit out the first half of the second, come back in and finish the half; start the third quarter, and a minute or two in Lebron James hits a jump-shot.  And then Kevin Harlan says: “And Lebron gets his first field goal of the evening”.  It’s the third damn quarter, and he’s finally just now hitting his first field goal?  It’s not even the 2011 NBA Finals yet!  You’re always better off getting the superstar traded for a gaggle of role players; and make sure to get a big man that can shoot mid-range jumpers consistently, if you ever want to average a significant number of assists.  
• And here’s the best part of that whole dichotomy: those players don’t suck at all when they are playing against you; they are damn near impossible to stop!  Then, of course, there’s always a set of guys who aren't really superstars in the real NBA, but every time you play against them in the 2K games, they have somehow morphed into a cross between Shaquille O’neal and Michael Jordan.  My favorite examples of this were Rudy Gay in 2K12 and Josh Smith in 2K14, both of whom in real life were having disastrously inefficient seasons, and were so cancerous to their team’s offense that as soon as they were traded, the teams they left instantly galvanized into respectable, playoff-caliber teams.  But in the 2K-Verse?  Rudy Gay never missed a shot, at least not that I saw, and Josh Smith was draining threes and mid-range jump shots like John Paxson’s brain had been inserted into his body.  

Passing

•  Basically, if you wanted to skip this lengthy sup-topic in the interest of saving some company time, just remember this: everything about the passing is worse than every other problem combined.
• One of the first rules of passing the basketball, especially in transition: pass the ball to where you want your teammate to go, not to where they are; because they will obviously have run past this point by the time the ball reaches them, and it will most likely result in a turnover.  2K’s failure to grasp this elementary concept is evident in every single pass you throw.
• Or the opposite will happen, and when you have a man standing wide open near the paint and pass the ball to them, the computer instead opts to throw a lead pass to them…outside the paint.  So they run out and grab the pass, and of course the wide open lane is no longer available.  Fantastic (in the same way the Fantastic Four movies were actually Fantastic: sarcastically).
• Outlet passes: see Long Distance Turnovers.
• Long Distance Turnovers: What passes for outlet passes in the NBA 2k Universe.  They are so comically atrocious that sometimes I just pull up a game and throw nothing but outlet passes; because everyone’s life can use a little more humor.  Seriously: if it isn't a turnover - which, believe me, is already a miracle on par with Moses Malone traveling over to the Middle East and parting the Red Sea with his rebounding and the smoldering ashes of Ridley Scott’s career - it’s almost always thrown to one of the deep corners.  Which, as anyone who’s ever actually thrown an outlet pass will tell you, is not exactly the best place to throw one.  It is, in fact, the worst.  You want to lead the man to the basket; you throw that ball as straight to the rim as the defenders allow.
• The passes are slower than the defenders in almost every instance. 
• When dribbling and you press the pass button, but immediately afterward your defender forces you to pick up your dribble, or you just bobble the ball or whatever, you then still pass the ball.  Of course, the player you wanted to pass it to is no longer open, and it results in a turnover.  Why would it queue responses like a tower defense game?  It’s supposed to be a responsive basketball simulation, and the last time I played real-world basketball - which was tonight - I wasn't forced to pass the ball until the ball actually left my hands; up to that moment, I was still able to make decisions about where I wanted to pass it.
• A.I. characters on your own team almost never make any attempt to get open for a pass, without you trying to control them - which usually takes too long and doesn't result in a better shot than you could have forced up yourself -  but every time they do try to show initiative (seriously, every time), they’ll make a cut to the basket, have an open lane…and then they f***ing stop!  So now, because instead of passing the ball to an open space, the game wants me to pass the ball to a specific player, I throw to a dude that is either out of position or is smothered by a defender, resulting in - yep, you guessed it - another turnover that wouldn't occur in a real game.
• Also if and when the small miracle that is one of your teammates making a move to get open for the ball actually occurs, they move slower than Eddy Curry’s footwork drills, but only slightly faster than the rate at which his man boobs grow per year.  
• When wide open on a fast break opportunity, you are required to call for the ball, or else your teammates will not even attempt  the outlet pa- sorry, the long distance turnover.  See?  Even the game knows that it’s passes suck!  I mean, in a situation where you couldn't hardly turn the ball over - let’s make it easy and say you leak out after your man shoots a three and the defenders don’t notice, so now you have the entire half of the court to yourself - your big man who rebounds the ball (also unlikely, but for the sake of the exercise we’ll pretend that defensive rebounding also exists in the 2K-verse) will under no circumstances look to pass you the ball, unless you yell out to him to pass it to you.  Otherwise, he’ll just stand there and wait for the point guard to free himself up, before plodding on down the court with the rest of your offense.  The point guard won’t bother to look up either, by the way.  Just thought I should mention that.
• Of course, calling for the ball in 2K is not just shouting “up!” and raising one hand in mid-sprint: it requires - wait for it - another interminably slow and completely superfluous animation!  So, while a real person would just yell and maybe slow down for a step, in the 2K’s from 2007 - the present, you slow down to a Kendrick Perkins-like trot - which might be considered brisk for, like, a really slow turtle - while you clap your hands three times and hold a hand up in the air, bring the hand back down, and then clap twice more before finally raising your hand again.  If you’re thinking to yourself, but wouldn't that allow almost every defender on the court to beat you down to the rim, thus effectively nullifying the potential advantage that your transition offense once presented for your team?  Yes; yes it would.  Even worse, this actually happens more than once per game.  NBA 2K: where NBA players can’t call for the ball and run at the same time.  Although I hear that in 2K15, they will be able to at least walk and chew gum at the same time, so we have that to look forward to.
• The frequency with which the computer ignores you in the half court set when you are wide open and calling for the ball, choosing instead to refuse to pass the ball to you and give to someone else who is not wide open and in scoring position, can only mean that it was done deliberately.  I would hate to think that someone who purportedly understood the game of basketball enough to try and make a realistic simulation of said game was so inept as to not even get at least that part right.
• The angles at which you throw alley-oops is almost always such as to allow a defender to steal the ball, even though I can count on one finger the number of times I have seen an alley-oop broken up by my own team on the defensive end.  And even then, assuming that the pass somehow gets through - I know, just pretend for me - the player on your team, to whom you wanted to throw the alley-oop because he had a wide open look at the basket…has stopped.  So then the pass just sort of…floats its way out of bounds, resulting in another unforced turnover.  Hurray!
• Entry passes are also impossible to control.  Every 1 out of 10 times you try to dump it down to a big man, it will actually loft it up in the air - the rest of the time it’s a bounce pass or a chest pass.  But wait, it gets better!  Because even if the big man is being fronted by a defender, and even that defender is a foot smaller than him and a lobbed entry pass from the wing should be the easiest thing in the world for a professional basketball player to do in this situation, 90% of the time instead of throwing it up in the air towards the basket for your 7 foot tall giant to grab, you instead throw a chest pass at the defender’s face.  He grabs it, winks at you and then runs it down the court for an easy layup, but not before making a mental note to put a thank-you card in the mail for the assist.  Actually, that would be the ballsiest thing in the world to do, in real life; right?  Imagine: Russel Westbrook steals the ball from you, and two days later you get a thank card from him in the mail?  That would be so gangster, and so absolutely appropriate for Westbrook that I’m surprised we haven’t heard about it already.

Random (Not-so-Naughty)  Bits

• The “Teammate Grade” is broken, for oh-so-many reasons.  Shall we count the ways?  Hell no, that would take for forever.  I’ll just pick my favorite example: assists.
• What’s wrong with it?  Well for one, your teammates don’t care if you get assists; they care that you are passing the ball to players who have the opportunity to get you assists, but the actual assist itself is secondary.  They will be happy with your performance whether the player you passed it to makes the shot or not, as long as it would have resulted in an assist had it gone in.
• And even that’s more restrictive than how it actually works.  A player that willingly passes the ball, and is good at it, can completely change the infrastructure of a team’s offensive, because passing is contagious.  Look at every team Jason Kidd ever played for, or the Celtics at their Larry Bird-iest peak in 1986; or the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, with Bill Walton running the offense from the center position.  The pass itself should get you the majority of the “teammate grade” points, with a successful assist as a little bonus on top of it.
• Also, if your teammate ever bobbles a pass, or a defender’s fingernail scratches a millimeter of the surface of the ball on it’s way to its intended target, you don’t get credit for the assist.  Which, as near as I can tell, has no bearing on whether or not an assist should be credited.  I read both the NBA and NCAA statistician’s rule-books on the matter, and guess what?  They do not mention at all that an assist should not be counted when the person catching the pass bobbles it before completing the shot.  It also does not say that it shouldn't count as an assist if the defender touches the ball but it still hands up in the hands of the intended receiver.  In either situation, if the pass was such which would lead the player receiving the ball to have an open shot at the basket, which shot he subsequently makes, that should most likely count as an assist.  The point is, it’s a gray area and would probably be determined by the score-keeper working that game; but in the 2K-Verse it is a hard and fast doctrine, and one which we must be careful not to blaspheme.
• Technical Fouls: this is new for the Xbox One version of 2K14; or maybe for the 360 version with a Kinect, I don’t know I never had one of those.  But you can be assessed a technical foul for cursing at the game - which, believe me, is going to happen a lot.  
• I actually don’t mind that; it’s kind of cool.  What I absolutely hate is that if your team has the ball when it occurs, the opposing team not only gets the free throw, BUT THEY ALSO GET POSSESSION OF THE BALL.  Obviously, the scholars at 2KSports never bothered to actually read the NBA rule-book, because a Technical Foul assessed for player misconduct does not result in a loss of possession; and use of profanity is listed specifically under the “player misconduct” subheading in the NBA rule-book.  Don’t believe me?  It’s all on the NBA website, you can check it out there.  Or, you could just read this:         

“The ball shall be awarded to the team which had possession at the time the       technical foul was assessed, whether the free throw attempt is successful or not. Play shall be resumed by a throw-in nearest the spot where play was interrupted.”  (Official Rules of the National Basketball Association, 2014-2015, Technical Fouls, Section V: Conduct; Pg. 41).

• Those aren't the only problems with the teammate grades, there are almost innumerable ways in which those specific algorithms misunderstand the game of basketball, but again, I don’t want this to turn into 20 posts so we’ll stop here: If I have 15 points, 5 assists, and 4 rebounds in the first half, my teammates are going to be pretty freaking happy with my performance; but in the 2K-Verse, you’ll be lucky to be sitting at a B.
• The In-Game Objectives, while based on a good idea, are often poorly executed.  My least favorite of all is the one that says: “I need you to take better care of the basketball.  I don’t want to see another turnover for the rest of the quarter!”  First of all, it usually shows up at the beginning of a quarter in which I have yet to commit a turnover; but that’s a small syntactical issue which doesn't really have any bearing on the objectives functionality.  Where I really get irritated is the fact that, unless you’re playing 1 minute quarters, its nearly impossible to not commit a turnover (as outlined in the above sub-topic).  Really, the commission of turnovers is not up to the player; because I can do everything right, and the game will still suck a routine, wide open 5 foot pass up into the nosebleed section.  Thus, in response to this goal I usually reply similar to Britta in her drunken weddings vows to an equally hostile Jeff’s inquiry about the number of children she wants to have: “Pick a number, dick; like it’s up to me!”
• My second most hated of the coach’s objectives is when it pops up and says: “I need you to concentrate on taking better shots.  I don’t want to see a bad shot for the rest of this quarter.”  A noble goal; but where I take exception to it is that it always without fail is given to me as a goal when I am shooting over 70% and have the majority of my teams points; and many of those which I haven’t scored have come off of my own assists.  Look 2KSports, if I've got 22 points on 85% shooting in the first half, the coach isn't going to worry about my shot selection; he’s going to worry about the rest of the team’s shot selection.  That goal should read something like: "shoot as much as you want, it’s not like any of those other deadbeats are going to make a shot."  So, you know, the Doug Collins Coaching Michael Jordan Offense.

Guess what?  Only one more post to go!  Later tonight, I'll do my final post of surprisingly-about-to-end review, in which I will detail a few of my suggestions to improve the franchise going forward.  I know that you're all waiting with bated breath, so I'll try to be quick about it.