In this week's Friday Five, Andrew calls another five times that his MyCAREER and franchise mode games imitated real moves.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Times My Games Imitated Real Moves (Part 2) appeared first on NLSC.

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five recalls another five times I encountered real life moves being made by CPU-controlled teams in my games.

As I’ve previously discussed, it’s difficult to determine what constitutes a realistic or unrealistic trade or signing by CPU-controlled teams in franchise and career modes. After all, the real NBA has seen a number of lopsided deals, unexpected departures, and unlikely reunions. At the same time, too many highly unlikely deals, or downright illogical moves such as readily trading away your best player in the midst of a good season, are examples of unrealistic trades that sim heads don’t want to see. Still, we have to acknowledge that reality can sometimes be stranger than fiction!

To that end, some of the real moves that have coincidentally happened in my career and franchise mode games might seem far-fetched, if not for the fact that they came to pass. While four of the examples that I’m sharing today happened after the fact, one of the moves did actually occur in my game before it became a reality, making it eerily prophetic. Whether they serve as surprisingly accurate predictions or they’re simply fun coincidences, I do enjoy seeing CPU-controlled teams making moves that turned out (or will turn out) to be real; even if they don’t involve any big names. With that being said, let’s get to five more examples of my games imitating real NBA moves!

1. Trevor Booker to Philadelphia (NBA 2K14 MyCAREER)

In my previous Friday Five reflecting on real moves that found their way into my games, I noted that my team in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER – the Philadelphia 76ers – imitated reality when we traded Spencer Hawes to the Cleveland Cavaliers, albeit a couple of seasons later. Not too long after that, we made another move that the real 76ers did, only this time a season earlier. That move was bringing in Trevor Booker, with my 76ers trading our first and second round picks in 2017 to acquire him from the Washington Wizards. The real 76ers got Booker in a December 2017 trade with the Brooklyn Nets that also included Jahlil Okafor, but waived him on February 28th.

Conversely, Booker is still a 76er in my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER game. As noted, he was also a Wizard when we acquired him, having spent his first six and a half years in Washington. The real Wizards didn’t re-sign him in 2014, once again spotlighting the general lack of player movement in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER that leads to far too few role players becoming journeymen. Booker’s role on the team also demonstrates an issue with the rotation logic, as he and the rest of our bench play far too few minutes unless there’s a blowout. It made trading away both of our picks in 2016 a high price to pay, but fortunately my MyPLAYER is there, always putting the team on his back!

2. D.J. Augustin to Oklahoma City (NBA 2K14 MyCAREER)

With the way that journeyman change teams, there’s admittedly a higher probability that any fictional moves involving them in franchise and career mode games will either send them somewhere they have actually landed by that point, or will do in the future. D.J. Augustin ended up playing for 11 NBA teams between 2008 and 2022. Eight of those stints occurred after NBA 2K14 was released, so once I started playing through MyCAREER in 2021, there was a decent chance that he’d be traded to or sign with one of those teams. That has indeed happened, as virtual Augustin is now on the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team that he played half a season for way back in 2015.

Mind you, his tenure with OKC in my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER is already a much longer stint, as he signed with them in 2017 and is still on the roster halfway through the 2019 campaign. He’s also been less nomadic, enjoying the stability of three years as the backup point guard in Utah after playing the entire 2014 season in Toronto. In real life, Augustin went to Chicago early on in the year, and then split the next couple of seasons between Detroit, Oklahoma City, and Denver, before beginning his four-year stint with Orlando in 2016. He’s yet another player that should’ve moved around more in my game, but it’s still cool to see him end up with one of his real life teams.

3. Dion Waiters to Los Angeles (NBA 2K14 MyCAREER)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a player who bounced around a bit in real life instead stuck with their original team in NBA 2K14, enjoying a lengthy tenure in my MyCAREER game. Yes, Dion Waiters is also on that list, as he remained a Cleveland Cavalier right through to the end of the 2018 season, before joining the Los Angeles Lakers in the offseason. The real Waiters would be traded to Oklahoma City during the 2015 season, instead of leaving via free agency. His memorable performance as your MyPLAYER’s mentor on the Cavs in NBA 2K15’s MyCAREER was already hilarious, but it became even funnier when he didn’t even finish the year with them!

On top of featuring a longer stay in Cleveland, I’d say that his virtual career has been more successful, though not by as much as I thought until I double-checked his stats over on Basketball Reference. Waiters’ real stats aren’t too far off what he’s done in my game, though his virtual counterpart has remained healthier, and been a bit more efficient. It’s made him a solid pick-up for the Lakers come 2018, and together with Bradley Beal, he’s doing an admirable job of replacing Kobe Bryant alongside LeBron James. In reality, injuries and off-court incidents derailed Waiters’ career, with his brief Lakers tenure in 2020 – his last NBA stint to date – lasting all of seven games.

4. Wayne Ellington to Brooklyn (NBA 2K14 MyCAREER)

This is a fun one, because the fictional move resembles the real one beyond simply placing a player on a team that they did play for after the game came out. It wasn’t a prediction, as Wayne Ellington joined the Brooklyn Nets as a free agent in the 2015 offseason, and I didn’t begin my playthrough of NBA 2K14 MyCAREER until 2021. Furthermore, I didn’t reach the 2016 season until 2022, so Ellington’s Nets stint was becoming a speck in the rear view mirror by the time it was reflected in my game. However, while it wasn’t a prediction, it was a case of art imitating life with greater accuracy than the other real moves, which had differing timelines and circumstances.

That’s because in my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER game, Wayne Ellington signed with the Brooklyn Nets as a free agent in the 2015 offseason! None of the other real moves in the fictional realities of my games have lined up so perfectly as far as the time, team, and how the player got there. Ellington’s journey before and after that signing does differ from reality, though. In real life, he played for the Lakers during the 2015 season, whereas in my game he spent a second year in Dallas. He also remains a Net as of the 2019 season in my MyCAREER, whereas the real Ellington only signed on for a single year in Brooklyn, subsequently moving on to the Miami Heat in 2016.

5. LeBron James Back to Cleveland (NBA Live 08 2013 Roster Test)

Since I started the first article with an example involving LeBron James, I’ll wrap up this one with another time that he took his virtual talents somewhere he ended up in real life. It’s also the only example for me that occurred before the real move, making it an amusingly accurate prediction in hindsight. Now, this was actually a simulation through a Dynasty game in NBA Live 08 PC to test my 2013 roster for any crashes, so unlike my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, it’s not a game that I was actively playing. Still, while running that test, the player movement logic in Dynasty mode ended up making a real move, namely sending LeBron James back to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

As usual, the exact circumstances differed from reality, and it wouldn’t be until a couple of years later that it became a real move. At the time, it was just a crazy outcome of the sim engine, with the Miami Heat randomly trading LeBron back to Cleveland during the season. In hindsight, that unlikely reunion became a glimpse into the future! LeBron of course returned via free agency in 2014 rather than a midseason trade in 2013, but as with the other real moves that my games imitated, I’m looking at the destination rather than the path. I don’t recall any other times that tests of my roster updates produced accurate predictions, so this one definitely stands out.

Once again, have you ever had any real moves occur in your franchise and/or career mode games after the fact? Have you had any that became accurate predictions in hindsight? Tell your stories in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Times My Games Imitated Real Moves (Part 2) appeared first on NLSC.