(Sub)Culture

‘NBA 2K16’: How Spike Lee Didn’t Do the Right Thing

With 'Livin' Da Dream,' famed director fumbled to craft a good game story for classic hoops franchise

June 9, 2016

Publisher 2K invited Spike Lee to create the story for 'NBA 2K16' to disappointing results. Image: Glixel

The story inelegantly makes you a free-agent after your rookie season (it just happens, without real explanation!). If it’s because your contract expired, that makes no sense since the NBA’s collective-bargaining agreement has all rookies sign two-year deals. Otherwise it’s because you, as a top-10 pick, were cut. Which is nonsense. Imagine the Knicks cutting Kristaps Porzingis because the owner thinks his best friend is a drag. Never. Bending the truth to accommodate story is forgivable, but this is egregious – in part because there’s no reason given. Uh, Spike, you’re a lifelong Knicks fan. You know this stuff. Or someone at 2K does. Why ignore it?

There’s a scene that features Freq and his annoying best friend driving around in a car and talking. For 14 minutes. As an analog, one of my favorite long takes ever featuring two people only talking tops out at three-and-a-half minutes. And that’s an eon. No way Spike Lee would let it happen in one of his movies. So why do it here?

The closing scene is (spoiler alert) your dead best friend sitting on a park bench and reading a tortured, exposition-riddled letter for eight minutes. What movie –er, story mode – ends with someone reading a letter for eight minutes? The ones that never get made.

This whole thing feels like a filmmaker who imposed his will on a game and found out along the way that game-making is hard. There’s a reason big-name Hollywood types and video games don’t mesh all that frequently. It’s not just money that keeps the Coen Brothers and Diablo Cody and Shonda Rhimes from dashing off video game scripts. It’s the restrictions.

I’m glad NBA 2K16‘s story mode exists. But it’s not the spiritual sequel to He Got Game I was hoping for – instead it’s a cautionary tale for all sports game stories going forward. Because somewhere along the way, Spike Lee was told “write a video game” and heard “abandon all you’ve learned!” If sports video game narratives are going to triumph, the aim should be the next Hoosiers, the next Rudy or the next Youngblood. Because abandoning over 100 years of screen lessons is plain dumb.

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