NBA 2K15's Biggest Gameplay Improvement

Last night, the fine folks over at 2K hosted a livestream which featured video of the first full game of NBA 2K15 released for public consumption. Of course, as someone who had huge problems with NBA 2K14′s on-court gameplay, I tuned in with great interest to see if the myriad issues that hindered 2K14 had been fixed. I’m happy to report most of them have, and the biggest one–spacing–may be a true gamechanger.

The choice of matchup–Bulls vs. Lakers–gave us an opportunity to see two different offensive philosophies at work. The Lakers focused primarily on getting Kobe Bryant isolated (more on that later), while the Bulls used a ton of pick and roll work to free up open shots on the perimeter:

You can see immediately that the spacing is much better. The players not involved in the play flood the weakside, giving Dunleavy and Gasol space to work. There wasn’t much time on the shot clock by the time the play was called, but there is still enough space to punish Lin for drifting too far into the paint. There’s nothing here to gum up the action, and there would be even more room to work in the middle if Lin isn’t sagging so hard off Rose.

Here, again, the spacing creates an open shot for Derrick Rose. The right play here is for Gibson to pass it directly to Rose instead of first passing it back to Butler, but this play is heartening because it allows Chicago’s best player (Rose) space to operate without being involved in the play. Rose catches the ball here with Robert Sacre running right at him, and that’s an easy attack for Rose if he doesn’t want to take the jumper. You can envision Rose attacking the middle and finding the shooter in the corner open as the defense collapses.

This play shows some realistic action that is what I’m envisioning for the Bulls offense in real life this year. Rose and Noah run a standard Pick and Roll with a shooter (Dunleavy) in the play-side corner (to give Rose space to go left) and the weak-side wing (Butler) as a potential outlet, should Kobe collapse on the paint. When Rose makes the pass to Noah, Jordan Hill has to step forward and away from Gasol to help, leaving the Spaniard open at the edge of the paint to do whatever he wants. Hill has no choice but to foul.

The Lakers strategy centered around a lot of isolation plays, and the results here should make end-of-game scenarios look and play much more realistic in NBA 2K15:

Here, Kobe Bryant sets up in the post around the foul line area, and look at how much space there is for him to work. The help has to come from so far away that it’s easy to recognize and spin away from. Kobe also had the option on the help to pass to a cutting Hill (who smartly cut from the corner at the instant Noah came to help) for an easy two points. Kobe being Kobe, though, just hits the shot instead.

Here, a Kobe dribble move frees up Jordan Hill in the short corner, but Hill actually makes a mistake in not passing it to a wide open Jeremy Lin on the wing. The extra pass will be a necessity in NBA 2K15, since it appears the rotations and spacing are authentic to NBA basketball. Rose contests this shot well, and Hill is a below-average shooter. The same scenario could have conceivably been opened up on the left side, as well, as you could imagine Gasol stepping up instead of Noah, allowing Kobe to pass to Boozer or Wesley Johnson, and then perhaps receiving the ball back for his own open jumper. The spacing in NBA 2K14 was often so bad that it forced star players to create all open shots for others, since they would never be far enough away from the action to get open jumpers themselves. Seeing the possibilities on the simple drive to the middle are exciting. All 5 players on the floor could conceivably get a shot within 2 passes. Can you figure them all out?

There’s also some nice court awareness shown by the AI on this play. Watch Jeremy Lin and Carlos Boozer. Lin was planning on making a run to the rim, but pulls up as Kobe enters the post. Boozer was planning on posting up, but spaces out at about the same moment. It will be interesting to see if this was just a random blip or if the AI does this regularly. If Kobe has a little more patience, this could have been an easier shot.

There were some instances of weirdness in the stream, however:

This looks at lot like 2K14. All 5 Bulls players are within arms-distance-or-so of Bryant, who kicks it to a wide-open Jeremy Lin, who cans the jumper. In fact, every player on each team is below the free-throw line on this play, which is just bad offensive play from the Lakers (that’s an easy run out if Lin misses), and this was so early in the shot clock that the Bulls should have really been set and not messed up like this. It was just one instance, so my hope is that this is a rarity.

Originally published at www.goodgamebro.com on October 1, 2014.