As we get ready to start a new NBA season and being in full swing with the newest edition of NBA 2K (NBA 2K24), I decided to take it back and do a roster set for the game. I used to do these all the time with the older versions of 2K, back when they used to let us use custom rosters for My Career. This was always very helpful because you couldn’t always use sliders or make adjustments in My Career so if you wanted the game to play a certain way, you needed to tweak the rosters.
I had been so heavily engulfed in My Career that I stopped making the rosters and just was playing “as-is” but then last year and going into 2K24, I decided that I wasn’t going to play My Career any longer and focus on the My NBA mode. So instead of creating a character, I created a player (pictured below) and will utilize the player lock in My NBA and play it just as I would in My Career just without all the rest of the BS in that mode. This was I have all the control to play the game how I (emphasis) wanted to and thus…here we are with my return to roster creation for 2K.
Currently the rosters are available on the PS5 under my PSN name “ImMrAllen” or they can be looked up under “2023-2024 Rosters By Neo“. The rosters work in conjunction with a slider set that I created BUT it is not totally necessary to use them together, if you have a different slider set that you would prefer to use. One of the things I have always tried to do is create a balance in the rosters so that you don’t always NEED to use specific sliders. The rosters and my sliders together work FOR ME, but they may not for you, but the rosters should be fine to use with whatever set you choose and if you need to make specific slider updates and changes, they will hopefully be minimal at best. My sliders can be found under “Sliders By Neo“.
Below I will highlight some of the things I have done within my roster as well as letting you know how I plan to keep it updated, as best as I can, and try to ensure that it provides not only a good gaming experience, but a realistically accurate one. With the roster creation, it is always important to me to have the players, play, look and feel like their real-life counterparts and I hope that I was able to enhance that from the already good work the 2K folks did with things out the box.
One of the first things that I did was work on the aesthetics of the game so I tried to look up as much as I could to make the players accessories, shoes and things match to how it looks for real. This isn’t and cant be exact due to some creative restrictions with the game, but I think I got most things close.
What’s Updated?
- Sneakers – One of the biggest things to me is and has always been the sneakers. This is an important aspect as it’s one of the key items that differentiates the players and gives them identity and individuality. Out the box, if you look at many of the sneakers on the players, it’s generic and uniformed, all home players tend to wear white with the team colors mixed in and road unis will have them wear all black sneakers with team colors and this is just not realistic.
- I have gone to each player in the game and updated the sneakers so they aren’t as generic looking and some variety is present when playing. It makes the game look a lot better to see guys with off-colored shoes (pink, neon green, etc.) or even white sneakers with road-colored uniforms. This was done at random so every player isn’t to the letter…YET, but once the season starts I plan on really nailing this.
- Created some custom shoes for a few guys such as LaMelo, Zion, and Anthony Edwards, with more to come as the season goes on and I have more time to create colorways. Edwards are just the Hardens but colored to match the new signature kicks Ant will have since they actually look somewhat similar.
I even created some Sketchers that Julius Randle posted since I believe that both he and Mann from the Clippers signed with them to wear their kicks. To do this, I had to tweak some of Lebron’s kicks as I didn’t feel like doing them from scratch because I hate the sneaker creation options, so I just made them and off-colored the Nike logos so you don’t see them. Randle previously wore Nikes, specifically Kobe’s.
- Accessories – Tried to match the accessories up to the specific players and will continue to do so with updates for colors, item types and frequency.
- Player DNA Updates – As done recently with players such as AJ Green on the Bucks that recently had a face scan update, I will download the Player DNA from the most recent 2K roster and then upload it to my rosters to ensure that the faces are always as current as possible. As a roster creator, I truly love the fact that 2K has this as an option in the game.
- Signatures
- Jump Shooting – Did not have to tweak many of these as a good portion of the players all have their own specific jumpers so for the most part, I left this alone.
- Layups – There is not a lot of variety in these to create many options so most of these remain the same with just some minor changes to a few guys.
- Dunk Packages – Since the most recent patch by 2K finally fixing the dunk animation selection for when you edit players, I updated many dunk packages to try to make them a bit more accurate to the players while also using the same mentality that I used when changing many of the sneakers by adding some variety instead of majority of guys having the same packages.
- Attributes – Updated many to reflect what I (emphasis) feel fit the game and the players better. These will be updated throughout the year based on how players are actually performing. If they don’t do it in real life, best believe they wont be doing it on my rosters!
- Play Types – Many updates throughout to put guys in positions that they would typically be in on the court due to plays being called.
- Contracts – Only had to update about 2 contracts thus far, Payton Pritchard for the Celtics and Devin Vassell on the Spurs. This will be another area where I will do my best to match it up to the live roster update by 2K as guys get new deals.
- Unique Roster Situations – As we have situations like the one with Kevin Porter Jr. in Houston, Lonzo Ball’s injury, and Morant’s suspension, I adjusted the “Healthy” status for those guys and selected reasons that fit the criteria.
- Kevin Porter Jr. has been placed on 365 plus days of “Personal Reasons” until he is suspended or some actions are taken for his recent activity and domestic case.
- Lonzo Ball has been placed on 365 plus days of injury since he will be out for the year. I believe I listed it as knee surgery or something.
- Ja Morant is listed as suspended for 25 games so I set the days to about 50 or so which would put him back in mid-December, as I believe he is eligible for return on December 19th. (UPDATE: I need to set this on the rosters as I think there was an upload error when I did it originally so it never saved. It should be done by the time this posts)
- Miles Bridges has a situation that I am monitoring as I was reading that a warrant has been issued for his arrest because he been wildin again with his ex I believe, smh
- Badges – A lot of badges were updated, not perfect as I need to really go in and comb through and update a lot of them. The updates that have been made are again to add more individuality and personality to the players.
- Coach Sliders & Points of Emphasis – Still working on these but I have been attempting to make the coaching styles match a bit better to real life such as with a team like Miami using a lot of zone defense or some teams utilizing the “Play Through The Star” setting for plays.
- Tendencies – This is quite possibly the MOST important piece of my roster updates as this is the true differentiator between the players and ensuring that they play as close to their real-life counterparts as possible. I spent the most time with the tendency adjustments because as I said earlier, if they don’t do it in real-life, I DO NOT want them doing it on my game. I will break this down more in a separate post where I speak solely about the tendencies because it is a LOT to unpack. I will highlight a few below, just to give an idea of what I have done.
- Freelance – Spent a lot of time in this section as it holds the key to many important parts of the tendency adjustments.
- Shot – Determines how often a player shoots so this had to be adjusted for many guys. Certain players like Trae Young and James Harden were particularly difficult to balance because they are willing passers and tend to be in the top 5 in assists every year but they are and can be very ball dominant and high shot takers. So creating a perfect marriage in the setting was/is important. You want guys to shoot when they should, while also being mindful to pass as it presents itself as the better option at times. Then you also want to be sure guys like Ben Simmons are NOT shooting the ball, even when the opportunity presents itself, so again, finding that balance is tricky but I think I managed to get it.
- Touches – Also just as important as “Shot” and ties in heavily as this will determine how often a guy touches the ball in half-court sets when plays are being called and ran. Someone like Embid or even Jokic, will typically have a high number here as the offenses for their teams flow through them, but in 2 very different ways. Embid is typically the final spot for the ball and Jokic typically runs the offense so they both need high touches but for different reasons and thus why I said “Shot” plays a role in this as well as “Play Types”, “Coach Sliders” and “Points of Emphasis”.
- “Iso vs…” – These 4 (Elite, Good, Average & Poor) are also very important as it will determine a lot of how the players react, especially the stars. Many stars need to play like stars and a lot of them have the ability to iso or create their own shots either by design or when a play breaks down (which will tie in to the next bullet for “Play Discipline”). I will use a guy like Durant for example as Durant will try do his thing against whomever the defender is, be it an elite defender or a poor one, so in turn his iso ratings will be higher to be sure that Durant is taking shots whenever he feels like it. Set it too low for “Elite” and he will not try to get a bucket if things break down if he is being guarded by someone the likes of Kawhi Leonard, so I set it a little higher to ensure he will attack regardless. But I didn’t want to just uniform it all the way across the board because again you want a certain level of balance and nuance to the players, especially when being controlled by the CPU.
- Play Discipline – This will be the last one that I cover here as like I mentioned earlier, I plan on doing a complete breakdown of how I changed tendencies and my thought behind them. So, “Play Discipline” will determine how much a player stays within the flow of a play set that is called and doesn’t go into iso or complete freelance. You have some players that play to the play no matter what , you have some that don’t give a damn what play is called because once they get the ball “it’s on!” and then you have some players straddling the middle. A lower discipline helps for those that are good iso players that have the ability to create their own shots in situations when a play breaks down, higher rating is good when you have a team or player that runs plays heavy, tries to get guys open with back door cuts etc. Using Steph Curry as the ultimate example of having to set the tendency a particular way for a player to play properly, because Steph does so many things, you need to make sure that his settings trigger all activities that relate to him. As it’s set now, if you aren’t careful Steph will pull up from the logo, drive by you, wait patiently for a man to get open, drive by you for a layup, come off a handoff from Draymond and pull up if you pick over/under the screen wrong or pull a stepback when coming off of a screen. Not to mention that he will run around with back cuts, curls, draw the attention and dish to open guys…it’s just a beautiful thing to watch. 2K had him set good out the box but the tweaks really bring his “personality” out on the court. Steph is balanced by his attributes, tendencies, coach settings, play type etc. so that is why I say it’s all important to creating the right balance.
You’ll notice I use words like personality and balance in and throughout this post because those 2 things are vital to me when I am playing and thus I try to create my rosters in that manner. I like for my game to play a certain way and yeah I know we cant eliminate everything and make it perfect because it is a video game but if I can get it close, then my job is done. I make my rosters for me and what I like and that may not necessarily be your cup of tea but give them a try and let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome. I have tested them for countless hours, so much so that I have had a few folks tell me that I need to add my information for CashApp, Zelle etc. so that peeps can maybe treat me to some roster work snacks or something so I will include that below.
- CashApp – $ImMrAllen
- Zelle – mrallen120308@gmail.com
- PayPay – paypal.me/ImMrAllen
Roster Update Schedule
- As of now, the rosters will be updated as frequent as necessary. As I am watching games and highlights, if I see things happening, see players wearing certain shoes or accessories etc. I will do my best to update them.
- Each update on the system, currently on the PS5, will be dated with “Last Updated 10/11/23” for example, and will sometimes include specific changes and updates done to the roster.
I absolutely love doing these as many folks may remember from when I used to do them back in the day. I want them to really be plug & play for you all, to the point where you don’t have to rely so heavily on the sliders, get a good gaming experience and have it play as realistic as possible. So give them a shot and let me know what you think and remember, its a constant work in progress as I will continue to edit and update whenever I see the need. They aren’t perfect, some players may have the wrong jersey numbers, wearing the wrong accessories and shoes, may be too good or too bad, you may feel like this player shouldn’t have a certain badge…there are going to be many things to dissect but just know I am working on them to make them as good as I possibly can, not only for myself but for the entire community.
Thank you. ✌🏾 ❤️ 1️⃣
MYrealiTV 