When it comes to NBA 2K, the developers who have to figure out the best way to create an environment where both defense and offense are rewarded has to be a tricky balancing act. I would even say it has to be frustrating at times. Some of the decisions you have to make in terms of deciding what two-man interactions you implement, deciding how dribble moves work, how the defensive slide works, how defensive assist plays into the equation, how the ball itself acts in this situation, and how physical you can even be all play into a showdown that occurs 100 billion times a game. 

 

In other words, it feels really complex to me. 

 

Some folks have been poking me to write about on-ball defense, and I’ve sort of tried to avoid writing about it because it’s a quagmire of sorts. I don’t know if it’s really possible to nail a perfect balance when you have a million animations, a ton of attributes, oodles of dribble moves, and a lot of various player types and bodies all bouncing off each other in all these scenarios. It’s not a simple paper beats rock scenario (though come on, we all know rock flies right through paper). 

 

That being said, I’ve come to think of on-ball defense like a mini-game version of a fighting game. It’s reading and reacting as one player tries to do an input that the other is predicting or trying to counter. I’m not sure if that’s the right way to think about it or not, but it’s the way I’ve settled on thinking about on-ball defense as I’ve written this all up. 

 

After the jump, I’ll talk a little bit about the real NBA vs. NBA 2K. From there, I’ll dive into what I see as the positives, the negatives and the I-am-not-even-really-sure territory of on-ball defense in NBA 2K16.  

 

This one might get a little weird. Let’s do it.

 

When it comes to on-ball defense and how to beat it, both the real NBA and NBA 2K are about creating space. However, I want to compare the video game to real life to start because I think there is one crucial difference between the two worlds. 

 

In the real NBA, both ball handler and defender are mostly trying to avoid contact with one another, sans when looking for a charge or trying to force a blocking foul. The ball handler is trying to create space, and the defender simply wants to close down that space without actually bumping the ball handler to a large degree. The ball handler wants to beat his man, but he also can’t just barrel into the defender. You give and you take. 

 

So in the above GIF, John Wall is initially defended well by Kemba Walker -- Walker beats him to the spot. Wall doesn’t smash into Walker and halt his own progress (big difference already from many 2K outcomes), he just reverses course and waits for the pick. Walker trails on the pick, which creates the first portion of the space for Wall. Spencer Hawes sits back on the screen and roll (as he should), and so Wall has his second portion of space to rise up and shoot the jumper. Wall could have barrelled into the big, but instead he takes the space he is given.

 

Now, before I move on to 2K, let me be clear that I don’t think many users are happily giving up wide open mid-range shots off this pick and roll, especially when we talk about random room users (these are generally not Tom Thibodeau disciples looking for Thibs’ dog smile to indicate they’ve done good by forcing an open mid-range shot rather than a layup or 3-point basket). To many folks, any open shot is too good a shot to give up.

 

Instead, Hawes would likely rush up and try to body up Wall rather than sit back. And at the same time, I don’t think many users are settling for that jumper with Wall once they get that initial space. Instead, people want to go to Slam City with John Wall. 

 

So on a fundamental level, I think we have a difference in mindsets between video game players and real NBA players. In the video game world, you can never give up anything on defense, and you have to always take it all on offense. In the real NBA, there's an understanding of sorts on defense that we can't take everything away, but let's at least try to make you take shots you're not in love with as much as possible. That being said, I do think there are reasons video game players go this more aggressive route in the first place on offense and defense, and I’ll attempt to get more at that idea as I move on here. 

 

Either way, In NBA 2K it doesn’t feel like the game is about reading and reacting to space all the time. The defender instead will actually seek out body to body contact. The defender is rewarded much of the time for this contact; I think it’s fair to assume part of the defensive gameplay mechanic is built around making this contact to cancel out a ball handler’s momentum.

 

By making contact with the ball handler, you’re in effect attempting to cancel out the ball handler’s attempt to create space or beat you off the dribble. The defender sets the momentum of the ball handler back to zero in an effort to start the whole showdown over. So in many cases, contact is the best form of defense, not simply being in the spot first and halting any further progress.  

 

I’m oversimplifying things a bit to get this down to the most basic video game terms for both the real NBA and NBA 2K, but the point is the main way you go about closing down the space is different in each world. 

 

-In NBA 2K, it’s about creating contact on defense to halt the play over and over. The best defenders are many times the aggressor (bonus points if you make the ball handler pick up his dribble).

 

-In the real NBA, the defender is not trying to initiate contact very often. Instead, he’s trying to make the ball handler think that making contact is a bad decision by beating him to a spot.

 

Anyway, maybe  that seems like a small difference (even semantics), or maybe we just don’t agree here, but in either case I had to make that point because it’s what I’m basing everything else on from here on out.

 

I want to start with something I think we can all get behind. Can we all agree the above GIF should just be a foul? The big intentionally stops a break by ramming into the ball handler. Maybe the defender is not straight up reaching out and grabbing the ball handler to stop the break, but you just can’t impede the progress of the ball handler to this degree.

 

There would be nothing wrong with this being a foul, and honestly, it’s a smart foul. The big (Nene in this case) bangs into the ball handler as the long rebound would be leading to a fast break the other way. He bangs into the ball handler twice and completely stops the ball handler’s progress by ramming into him from the side. Also, and this should not be overlooked, the defender is the one initiating the contact. 

 

Even as a defender, I would be cool with this being a foul. After all, it can be frustrating at times to try and intentionally foul to stall a break only for it to lead to a clear-path foul because there’s too much delay before the intentional foul animations come to life.

 

Here’s one more situation involving blatant physicality:

 

 

One way to deal with the pick and roll is to try and sneakily “ice” it late by turboing past the pick and ramming into the ball handler as he tries to go towards the screen. I understand people get frustrated at times feeling like they’re being sucked into the pick on defense, but it still doesn’t mean you should get to counter the suction by using turbo to fly up and smack the ball handler multiple times in quick succession.

 

Again, though, I think these are the easy ones. From here on out, we start to get into give-and-take territory.

 

I don’t think you see the above very often throughout a typical NBA game. Three separate times you have Lowry banging into Reggie Jackson. Reggie Jackson initiates the first contact, and then Lowry initiates the other two. 

 

I will use another basic John Wall example as the sort of thing I would think you’re more apt to see in a NBA game: 

 

 

Wall gets cut off just a bit by Walker, pulls the ball back out, then gets into the set. Again, Wall isn’t going to try and force it through Walker; he’ll instead trust the offense after his initial attempt to break the defense down fails.

 

Of course, this is not real life, and so you have hard heads who will instead plow into a defender multiple times like we see with Lowry and Jackson in the 2K GIF. Any one of those two-man interactions do not seem that bad on their own, but at some point I believe something would have to be called by the refs. It’s just a ton of physicality playing out here as this pick and roll set plays out. 

 

Here’s another example:

 

 

Conley is able to slip by Nene’s screen and cut off the ball handler. Now, I think a big gets called for a foul a lot of the time in real life if he does what Conley did there -- it almost looks like a slight hip check. Nevertheless, from there Conley then rams into the ball handler after he’s already won the first shodown, knocking back the ball handler.

This leads into my last major point, which has to do with what animations play out. For example, I don’t think Conley intentionally tries to ram into the ball handler that second time. After he’s slid past the screen and tried to halt the ball handler from turning the corner, the point guard is simply trying to go back to the top of the key. However, this is where Conley seems to just blatantly run into the ball handler and stick an arm into his chest.

 

However, now let’s remove that animation and replace it with a different one:

 

 

To me, this looks perfect. The point guard is not really trying to make an aggressive move, and Conley just slides with his hands up. The whole two-man interaction comes to a soft conclusion with neither party bouncing backwards. I do think angles also matter in all of these situations because I assume some animations look worse than they should based on the angle the two players hit each other -- that is, the animation just isn’t built to really function and look as good at certain angles.

 

This sort of animation priority is something you can see all over the game. Here’s another example of the right animation making everything look solid.

 

 

Deng bodies the ball handler while in the defensive slide, but neither party bounces back very far, just a little chest to shoulder takes place. Then Deng stays in his slide, slips through the pick and cuts off the second attempt at a drive without needing to make any contact. This looks great because the animations that play out all look natural, but also because the ball handler isn’t aggressively trying to take the sharpest angle to try and get into the paint. Again, it takes two to make these situations look magnificent. 

 

Here’s one more:

 

 

Back to Conley, he meets the ball handler a little high up, but he’s not really impeding progress so much as going along for the ride until the ball handler decides to pull it back out. He’s trying to force the ball handler towards the baseline, but he’s not making the ball handler go into that animation where his head flies back and he’s stopped dead in his tracks. 

 

In short, the visuals matter as much as the inputs when it comes to making both parties feel like they’re in control in these scenarios. If the overly physical animations are playing out (or no fouls are called when they do), it can look and feel like human bumper cars at times.   

I’ve highlighted three things here: animation priority, blatant physicality going unchecked, and multiple two-man interactions causing unrest when they happen in quick succession.

 

That being said, I still don’t have a clear solution or cure-all for these showdowns. I can point to what’s good here and what’s bad, but something fundamental about on-ball defense still feels like it would have to shift, and I’m not sure how that solution gets pulled off at this moment.

 

Perhaps I’m just completely off-base, and I’m sure you all will let me know if I am, but I think by design NBA 2K has to stay more physical than the real NBA as a way to indicate who has won or lost that individual battle. But even if that is the case, I think you could soften those physical edges a bit more, and not lose anything, while gaining a ton more clarity on both ends of the spectrum.