I can’t believe it has been this long, but it really has been 10 years since the first NBA 2K was released for the Dreamcast. And ever since NBA 2K’s premier release, 2K Sports has become a yearly fixture on the video gaming map; constantly releasing critically acclaimed basketball games each fall. Sure there have been some bumps in the road (see: ESPN Basketball 2K4) but there is no doubt that Visual Concepts has nearly perfected the art of great basketball gameplay (maybe with some help from sliders of course).

However, even after a decade of development experience, there are still some areas in need of improvement (just check out the OS NBA 2K board to get your fill of them).

As a franchise junkie, one niggling area of concern has been NBA 2K’s utter lack of a truly refined franchise mode. When NBA 2K9 came out I wondered if this year would be any different. So that's the question I set out to answer.

The New Improvements

The NBA 2K series has included a franchise mode since NBA 2K1, and however limited the mode may have been, at least it included some standard franchise features like free agency, a draft, and trades -- and for that era, this was adequate enough. This franchise formula did not change until NBA 2K5. Starting with 2K5, VC began to add some new wrinkles to its standard franchise mode, and named this tweaked creation "The Association." Every NBA 2K game since 2K5 has added further additions to this mode, such as team chemistry, season long stamina, and defined player roles. But even with these additions, the overall presentation of The Association still seemed to lack lively feeling.

Seeking to rectify that issue and improve upon it, Visual Concepts has attempted to spark things up in NBA 2K9 by adding a plethora of new features to its old Association mode -- like NBA.com-style presentation, 2K Insider rating adjustments, newly implemented player personalities, tweaked player ratings, more statistical-tracking categories, inclusion of BYC salary rules, and even smaller things like team specific record keeping -- and have re-branded its efforts as, "The Association 2.0."

Certainly, as the self-proclaimed "deepest and most robust Franchise mode on the market," 2K Sports has certainly talked a big game this year. And based on the amount of pre-release hype and current discussion on the OS boards about the new Association, there could be some merit to 2K's braggadocian nature.

NBA 2K9 is one of our highest rated games of the year.

Some Background and Skepticism

But is this new-fangled Association really the awesome super great franchise mode we’ve been waiting for? Well let me first explain what my expectations are when it comes to a franchise mode, because that can provide some context in relation to my analysis.

Ever since I was introduced to a franchise mode in Madden 99, I’ve been a huge franchise mode junkie. As far as I was concerned, controlling a franchise quickly became the most important part of the game and I usually played more of the franchise mode than the actual in-game action. This interest was further cultivated by text sims like Out of the Park Baseball, Front Office Football, Championship/Football Manager, and a whole host of other games like Draft Day Sports: Pro and College Basketball.

These text-sim games obviously did not have great graphics, incredible animations, or compelling commentary, but they did offer some different things like smart computer A.I. management, tough to beat trade logic, real-world contracts, accurate salaries, league-standard cap rules, and a massive amount of statistics -- things that in the end really mattered more to franchise fans. As a result, these games took my previous notions of a franchise mode to another level. Accordingly, those experiences have heightened my expectations for NBA 2K’s Association, because if some independently produced PC games can do these things, why can’t VC?

So I examined the new Association mode through that prism, and I must admit that despite all the new inclusions and supposed improvements I wasn’t wholly convinced that "The Association 2.0" represented a real change when compared to the 1.0 version. Nevertheless, I kept an open mind and remained hopeful that there would be some positive results to discuss.

The Method To My Madness

As a pure test, I knew that I could not have any direct control over the decisions and management of my chosen team in the Association. I wanted to remain an observer and leave it up to the computer to make the decisions for my franchise. In other words, the CPU would handle my lineup, the draft, free agency, trades, and even how I handled scouting rookies and training camp. I felt that taking these measures was the only way to really test whether the Association could be self-sustainable, healthy, and functional.

And in the interest of full disclosure I played through this Association on the Hall of Fame difficulty level with default sliders and 12-minute quarters. Although these settings may not ensure perfect statistical accuracy, I wasn’t really concerned with that. If there were any problems with inflated stats, it would be a problem across the league and no team would specifically suffer for it.

My ultimate goal was to sim through 15 seasons and see where the league stood at that point. So I began the journey by selecting my beloved Toronto Raptors, because I wanted to see whether 2K’s computerized version of Bryan Colangelo would take my Raps to the promised land.

So did the new Association pass the test? Well, just read on and find out.

Association 2.0 is an improvement, no doubt.

The Beauty

I quickly realized that the Association had indeed improved -- it was most noticeable in the areas of presentation and statistics.

As mentioned earlier, many of the new enhancements are centered around the main graphical hub, which has undergone an NBA.com inspired makeover. In particular, the various news headlines really do a great job of detailing what is going on around the league. I was drawn in when I read things such as "CB4 ready to take Toronto to the next level," "Greg Oden to make long-awaited debut," and "Bynum out to prove his knee is 100 percent." As the season progressed I was continuously stunned to read things like "Raptors’ Moon announces he is testing free agent market."

It is really a positive step forward, but one thing I would’ve really liked to see is instead of the headlines simply linking up to a particular player, team, or stats page, the headlines would link to a well-written rundown/article similar to the game recaps that used to be in the College Hoops series. Those recaps were simply hilarious, informative and engaging, and with a bit of effort I don’t see why you can’t extend that to the headlines.

Another nice addition is the inclusion of a rumor mill that details which players around the league are on the trading block -- and this isn’t just some window dressing. For example, I saw some rumors that the Nuggets were offering Nene to the Cavaliers in exchange for Ilgauskas. A couple of weeks later I was simply astounded when the two were in fact swapped for each other.

The Association mode has also made great strides in the area of statistics. Sure, all the usual player and team stats are included, but VC really went the extra mile by including things like player specific "metric stats" that rate players in more unconventional areas like overall efficiency or true shooting percentage. There are also new team comparisons that track teams via stats like their overall record when trailing teams going into the third quarter or how they fare against teams with a record better than .500.

Going even further, VC has added the tracking of NBA records, team records, and team history. These little additions help add so much individuality and uniqueness to everyone’s Associations. For example, during my test Association in 2014-15, J.R. Smith set a new record for 3-pointers made in a single season, sinking an incredible 393 buckets from downtown. Not surprisingly, he also holds the record for most 3-pointers made in a career (4,530). And for those interested, going into the 2022-23 season, LeBron is the league’s all-time leading scorer amassing an incredible 45,035 points. Also, the 2K9 cover athlete Kevin Garnett holds the record for most games played, suiting up for 1,736 games.

Unfortunately, all these great things only go so far -- and this may just be my experience from playing text sims -- but I just wish that 2K also applied these historical standards to other areas, in particular, awards. I mean it’s nice that the game tracks so many of them, such as players of the week, players of the month, all-star squads, MVP, sixth man, most improved, defensive player of the year, all NBA, all-defensive and all-rookie squads; however, while I know that these rewards are available on player and team pages, I wish 2K had included something like a yearly almanac to provide an easy way to view whom the past winners were.

Before I move on, I must also mention another thing I really liked, which was the great amount of information contained in the individual player cards. Every card contains vital information like a player's height, weight, age, years played, personality, and his positional/overall in comparison to the rest of the league. But 2K has gone above and beyond by including more details like a player's morale, role, contract thoughts (and whether he wants to re-sign with your team or test free agency), career stats, attributes, skills graphs, tendencies, award history, game highs, and recent game performances. Simply having access to all this information really makes learning about each player very easy and intuitive. It’s really a model that other games should "borrow."

So in summation, many of these new features have been a breath of fresh air for the previously staid and lifeless presentation of the Association. Unfortunately, that’s only one side of the story, and as I’ll explain, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

The new features insert a breath of fresh air into association mode.

…And The Beast

It’s certainly wonderful that the new enhancements have really added a lot of flavor and personality to the Association, and I totally commend VC for implementing those changes; nevertheless, those things only stretch so far and only serve to hide the ugliness that lurks beneath the surface.

So where to begin? Well, let’s start at the beginning. As I stated earlier, I chose to play with the Toronto Raptors and left every decision up to the CPU. I hoped that my general manager would be the next R.C. Buford, Kevin Pritchard, or Joe Dumars, but that dream turned out to be just that. Instead the CPU behaved like the ugly offspring of the Babcock brothers, Isiah Thomas, and Kevin McHale.

How did it get so bad? Oh let’s begin with an example of the the stellar roster management and logic. Quite simply, I was pretty shocked in 2012 when the CPU opted to start my 6-foot-7 small forward, Radoslav Sebic at center -- despite the fact that my squad had just drafted a 6-foot-11 center Greg Theus with its first overall pick. I thought Theus would be the Raptors’ new franchise center but that didn’t happen. So, much to my bemusement, Sebic started at center (and averaged 2.7 blocks per game in the process) while Theus was relegated to a few scant minutes off the bench. As a long-term result Theus’ morale dropped, his attributes slipped way down, and he became a total non-factor. He bolted in free agency as soon as he could and became some other team’s franchise center.

The problems also extend to free agency and trades. More precisely, the computer simply does not make wise decisions when targeting free agents, and when the CPU does splash some cash, it either overpays for mediocre talent -- like when computer Colangelo signed Juan Dixon for 4 years and $30 million -- or the team loads up at positions it is already strong. As an example, Jason Kidd reached free agency and decided to sign a one-year deal worth $8 million with the Atlanta Hawks. The only problem is that the Hawks still had Mike Bibby and younger point guards on the roster. Another example was when Luol Deng signed a huge deal with the Pacers, despite the presence of the capable Danny Granger.

The end result of these unbalanced rosters is that often times, great players and young players get no playing time (again that great roster management at work) and that kills their morale. As a result, they obviously want to be traded, so that forces teams to make nonsensical trades; trades that oftentimes just weaken both teams and destroy their team chemistry in the process.

But bad teams can still improve via the draft, right? Well, this is also a losing proposition, because quite frankly, the CPU’s drafting ability is up there with its free agent signing skill, which is to say, pretty bad at times. It’s not a surprise to encounter a team drafting players at the same position for a few consecutive years (insert Matt Millen joke here) and giving up on the past drafted players at that position. It makes no sense at times.

It doesn’t really matter anyway, because the game-generated players are still flawed, especially in comparison to their real-life counterparts. There are admittedly some improvements in this regard when compared to previous games, but you’ll still encounter guards with excellent blocking ability and poor shooting skills, or forwards that are slow as molasses but have better rebounding skills than centers. Also, and this is just my opinion, I really don’t feel like there are enough superstar quality players generated. As a result, the talent pool becomes rather diluted. Now, whether this is a good thing or not is up to the player’s discretion, but when I’m playing a season in 2022 and most of the players rated in the high 90s and leading the league in scoring are real-life players like Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose, O.J. Mayo, Michael Beasley, and Kevin Durant -- all those players are in their mid 30s -- there has to be a problem.

I consider this especially puzzling when you consider that the generated players in the College Hoops series were nothing short of excellent. I sincerely hope 2K can bring that model over for NBA 2K10 and offer us some draftees with logical attributes and the ability to reach a higher level of potential.

This brings me to my test Association, and the overall result is not pretty. 15 years down the road in the 2022-2023 season, my computer-run Raptors boasts only one player rated 80 or above and he’s right at 80. In fact, during those 15 simulated years, the Raptors made the playoffs a grand total of TWO times, and even that was a bit of a miracle. If this is what the CPU does to my team, I can only assume that it treats all the other teams horribly as well, and that's a real problem.

So to be totally blunt, the major problems that have plagued the Association for years, namely illogical free agent signings and trades, unbalanced rosters, nonsensical drafting, and inconsistent rookie development are all largely unimproved in the new Association. These deficiencies have created a cycle of franchise mode faults that feed off each other to strengthen the core problems. In the end, the Association is a bit disappointing because the potential is certainly there.

Just as there is for the Lakers, there is still hope for a great success with Association.

Some Hope

In spite of these problems, I still found my test Association to be an enjoyable experience. The presentational updates really helped to create an engaging environment and it was a breeze to simulate a bunch of seasons in only a matter of minutes.

By far, the best part about the Association was the history I created; because, even if the Raptors floundered, there were many other exciting things to witness. For example, to see Chris Paul and Dwight Howard end up on the Celtics in 2019 seemed like a fitting reprisal of the current Celtics: Old superstars looking for one last chance at a ring. Also, in 2015-2016 LeBron bolted Cleveland for, of all places, Chicago! His tandem with Derrick Rose was all for naught and that tandem never won a championship.

The most successful player in my Association may have been Kevin Durant. The Thunder player turned Pacer was a 13 time all-star and winner of SIX MVP awards in '13, '14, '16, '18, '20, '21. Unfortunately, he only won one championship in 2019, but his 2019-20 season will be pleasantly remembered as he managed to average a mind-boggling 40 points per game

So in the end, the real beauty of the Association mode is that you can create your own history, and thanks to many of the new improvements you can really make that history your own. Looking towards the future, I know that if Visual Concepts can iron out these core issues, and bring us more intelligent roster management, improved A.I. trading logic, smarter free-agency signings and better rookie development, the Association will indeed be the shining jewel it can be. All it will take is some polish.