I know a bit about creating custom players in video games. I’ve made wrestlers, Miis, my entire rec soccer team, and even basketball players in a long ago era of video games. It’s fun. It was an early indication that my life in my imagination would be so much cooler than the one I’d have irl. Yay!
But NBA2K today is an entirely different thing. I think there are stats like rebound spacing, and rotator cuff quotient, and carbon dioxide processing. I don’t know. I’m more familiar with the eight meaningful metrics used in NBA Jam Tournament Edition. When it comes to creating the stats and values of these players, I’m going to have to rely on any ambitious someone else to do it. That said, if creating any of these players seems worth your time, I urge you to find something better to occupy yourself with.
Anyway, let’s consider the Oklahoma City Thunder for a minute. They won the NBA Championship last year, seem to be the most likely pick to win this year, and should only be improving. The entire foundation of the team seems built from the bedrock stuff at the bottom of Minecraft worlds.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but as I look down the depth chart, I can see double-digits of players who could drop 20 on any given night in their system if they get particularly hot and take focus for a bit. Whether it be having a night with five threes, or forcing/scoring off turnovers, or just being that talented. The way you think to yourself in the third quarter, “man, not really sure where Shai’s been today” then check the box score to see he already has 26. I can see that kind of sneaky career-high coming for nearly anyone.
Then, of course, there are nights where a star might rest. Everyone slots up; there are minutes to be had. Maybe Mark Daignault wants to try a new starting five. The regular season is about experimentation, after all, trying to add to your base. It seems after winning a championship with a team you’re returning the vast majority of, it might be nice to see what some other players might be able to offer with more runway.
So you might be thinking, “Wow. It really sounds like the Oklahoma City Thunder is a perfect place for some of their young players to break out. I wonder if the author of this article is going to talk about Ajay Mitchell or Nikola Topic!”
No!
I’m not!
I made a bunch of people up!
Made up people who could score 20 for the Oklahoma City Thunder
Clive Mitchell
- Height: 216 cm (he’s British)
- Role: Stretch big
- Specialty: Embellishing fouls
Bio: Was always athletic, and very tall, but did not have a sport to which he felt comfortable applying his gifts. Grew up in Britain, where basketball was illegal until just before the 2012 Olympics. Once the ban was lifted, he first became interested in Steven Adams because he thought New Zealand was still a British colony. Learning the truth did not derail him, though. Steven Adams was funny, and he played basketball, so Clive was going to grow up to be in the Cambridge Footlights and also be the best British basketball player of all time.
He succeeded at the second goal by age fifteen, so he had spent the better part of the last eight years focusing on comedy and his BBC2 sketch program (going on its third season), but now that people aren’t giving him BAFTA’s anymore, it’s time to get back to being tall.
He plays basketball in an extremely British way, which is to say not well, but for whatever reason he can shoot really well, he is really tall, and just because the shape of his body is so weird it looks like he’s being hit by a truck any time there is a physical play on defense.
Somehow, statistically, the adds up to a net positive basketball player. I think a little seasoning in the G League and a couple nights trying to mimic the Chet Holmgren role could result in some numbers. Numbers of the big variety. In scoring.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
- Height: 6-7 (im not sure what the best way is to indicate I did the 6-7 thing on purpose but also with hate in my heart)
- Role: Unnerving energy guy, midrange specialist
- Specialty: Motion shooting (midrange)
Bio: The original Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will now go by Shai Gil. This Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be going by Shai Dub. They are unrelated, and don’t even particularly like each other.
Shai Dub’s evolution as a player was strange. He was a viral athlete early in his high school days for being a guard who seemed to get up incredibly high up to block certain shots. He was quite muscular for his age and could hold his own against many older, bigger players trying to back him down. Quick hands too. A great defender, but so many athletic indicators that if he could dial in his offense, he’d be an extremely high level recruit.
Shai Dub took great offense to that. He declared on his Twitter that he would prove you could make it to the NBA on defense alone. Every day in the gym working on conditioning, coordination drills, even cross-training in wrestling and track and field because he believed it could give him an edge.
But he would not participate in offensive practice drills, choosing instead to try and get in the way. His high school coach adapted to this over time, but it was really annoying for a bit. Practice basically became a regular practice with an eternal game of keep-away. Eventually, students would turn out just to watch practice.
Anyway, you know the rest of the story. He only got a few D3 college offers for a player demanding he stay on the defensive end of the court the whole game. He jumped around a few before running out of eligibility and hung around the outskirts of the G League. He wasn’t happy to admit it, but his hopes of making it to the NBA like this did not work out.
But you know what? The dude could shoot the whole time. He held private workouts for a few agents and scouts after quote-tweeting himself saying “Fine. I was wrong. I’ll play offense, but I’m going to be sarcastic about it.” Those who have broken the NDA say he put his own arc down on the court in tape six feet in from the three-point line. He then prowled the area 12-to-18 feet from the basket, sometimes prowling, sometimes, sprinting, but grabbing the ball off a pass, releasing a shot so quick as if the physical act of shooting caused him pain, and hitting middies at a 80 percent clip. There were fouls, hands in his face, all sorts of distractions (as best you can do in practice anyway) and it didn’t matter.
Thing is, he refused to dribble. Refused to move his shot closer or further. When it came time to take questions at the end, he refused to leave the zone he had created until he pulled the tape off the floor. He made his point.
Anyway, hoping to see him in a game soon.
Aaron Vanderbilt
- Height: 5-foot-10
- Role: Spacer
- Specialty: Consistency from the four-point line
Bio: This isn’t working. Aaron is a female-to-male transgender person, and their story is extremely interesting. Unfortunately due to transmasculine erasure every time I finish typing it out, Google Docs freezes, the screen goes kind of gray for a minute, and it all disappears. The fact that this paragraph is still here twenty minutes later is astonishing, frankly.
Jeurffel Nurfell
- Height: 6-foot-6
- Role: All trade Jack
- Specialty: Just kind of being there
Bio: Juerffel is from Europe. He’s from all over Europe. He did have a home country, but he had a falling out with them when he was 16 and revoked his own citizenship. Which is apparently something you can do.
Unfortunately, no other place really wanted him all that much? Not as a citizen anyway? Like, he was a great basketball player, filled whatever role a team needed. Cities and countries wanted him around for a year or two, but when it came time to decide whether Jeurffel was going to be part of their future, he never stood out. Which meant he never spent enough time in any European country to earn citizenship. Really, he would have taken almost any of them.
And even more super unfortunately, now that Jeurffel is in his late 20s by most guesses, his chance’s of being considered that anchor piece are all but dead. He’s had to go to his backup option: the NBA. Lots of states, but one big country! For now anyway.
Anyways, Oklahoma City thought the fact he was really, really good at basketball was worth the work visa. I’m really hoping it works out for him long term this time. I think.
Stretchy McWestern
- Height: 7-foot-3
- Role: Diet Wemby
- Specialty: America
Bio: Yeehaw!
A’ja Wilson
- Height: 6-foot-4
- Role: Offensive, Defensive anchor and arguable GOAT
- Specialty: Winning
Bio: You can access a reasonable bio here.
Not so much a Create-A-Player as a real person I really wanted to put in here because I absolutely believe that A’ja Wilson could drop 20 in a Thunder jersey today. I believe this for all sorts of reasons. I will not get into them here.
Unfortunately, the only way to kind of have that happen right now is in digital environments, so for the sake of this article A’ja isn’t real. Just like the Mercury have been telling themselves at night for the last few days in hopes of getting to sleep.
I can’t believe it was a sweep, man.
Jalen Junior
- Height: 6-foot-2
- Role: Ball-dominant playmaker
- Specialty: Ridiculous vision for his height
Bio: His last name is Junior. His dad’s name was Justin. Apparently Justin thought really hard about naming his son Justin as well so he could be Justin Junior Jr. (a temptation that’s haunted fathers in this family for generations) but eventually decided against it as it would be evil.
Unfortunately, the other name he chose, Jalen, destined his son to be a basketball player, so it was still quite deterministic. But between the two it was basketball player or self-loathing mockery too guilty to change his name. The preferable choice between the two options, to be sure, but if his name was Jason instead, might he be a dentist right now?
Anyway, Jalen Junior reached his height of 6-foot- in the fifth grade. Doctors have said he would likely have ended up 7-foot-5 or taller had his family not been cursed by that witch.
Nevertheless, Jalen knew the universe demanded he become a basketball player. He devised a go-pro, periscope attachment to wear on his head during games so he could go back to game footage from a first-person-perspective of someone a foot taller and begin to imagine the game that way. He also is really scared all the time, and learned to dribble as a defense mechanism long before he knew what the sport of basketball was. No one is getting that ball away from him.
Unless he gives it to someone. Jalen likes sharing.
Sned Curry
- Height: 6-foot-0
- Role: Sned : Seth :: Seth :: Steph
- Specialty: Three-point shooting sometimes
Bio: There’s another Curry brother. They didn’t want anyone to know about him, but he broke containment. It was already a debate among the family whether Seth was good enough at basketball to be allowed to play at a professional level, but it was always just assumed Sned never would.
Sned worked at a library in North Carolina for three and a half years.
But he can shoot! And he’s been jogging again for the last five months!
Dude could drop 40. You know he could.
Johnny Davis
Lol, now we’re just being silly