We’re only a few weeks into the virtual season, but already, NBA 2K9’s online meltdown has earned itself a spot in the NBDL.

There's a chance the online issues will cause some gamers to give up the game completely, but signs of server stability are at least a sign that the real NBA 2K9 is trying to shine through. Either way, surely nobody could have anticipated that this first-round pick, so full of potential, would fall so far so quickly during the launch period.

It’s true what they say: The biggest disappointments are the ones you least expect. And for all the owners who paid first-round money for a D-League player, know that I, too, feel your pain.

To the few owners who didn’t buy into the pre-draft hype, those owners who still see some untapped potential and are thinking about bringing NBA 2K9 in for a workout or maybe even offering it a seven-day contract, I urge you to heed my warning:

Myself and my online brethren all hedged our bets on a game we thought would be a franchise player, a game whom we could ride all the way to the championship title, and all we got from it in the first two weeks was a guy whose behavior was so erratic that it couldn’t even show up to the gym with the right uniform.

And when –- after hours of begging and screaming -- we finally got it on the court, it couldn’t even get through its first game without throwing up its hands, tossing his jersey into the stands, and quitting on us, all because it didn’t like the player we had matched it up against. Without a doubt, NBA 2K9 has had some serious stability issues.

But I do see where gamers are coming from when they tell me that they're still interested in 2K9, because the game is definitely too talented to fade away into D-League obscurity -- it does so many things right, if it would just start listening to what its coaches are telling it to do and improve its temperament when it's out there on the court, it could be a superstar, for sure.

So as bad as the situation might seem right now, NBA 2K9 definitely has a chance to save face, if its D-League coach can smooth out some of its rough spots, calm its temper, and patch up the ugliness that NBA 2K9’s created between itself and ownership.

Therefore, I've created this report for those who are still interested in seeing how the NBA 2K9 situation turns out.

Ownership actually sent NBA 2K9 to a sports psychiatrist over the weekend, and this is what the shrink had to say about the kid:

Goodbye Lobbies, Hello Lag

Removing ranked lobbies from the game has altered NBA 2K’s online experience dramatically, and while 2K’s reasoning for removing lobbies was sound (keeping lowlifes from boosting wins off of friends), the execution thus far has been horrible, leaving the online portion of the game in shambles.

Problem is, without lobbies, there is no way for people to sort through opponents based on the strength of their connections or by their feedback percentage (in fact, the feedback system has been completely removed from ranked games), both of which have contributed to a more laggy and cheese-filled online experience.

As far as the lag goes, I feel I can speak for the entire 2K fan base when I say that it is long-past time for 2K to bring its online games up to par with the rest of the video game industry. (Things have been better recently, but five-on-five play is still touch and go in the lag department).

For example, in Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4, when an enemy’s unprotected head moves into a player’s reticule, the bullet penetrates that poor soul's skull at the exact moment the player pulls the trigger, not a half-second later. To give an example in the same genre, in EA’s NHL 09, when players call for a one-timer and wind up for a shot, they don’t have to perform the shot a half-second early to compensate for lag.

Why, then, after eight years of playing 2K's online games, do players still have to compensate for a half-second (or more) of lag during certain situations?

Laziness, due to not using better net-code, or stinginess, due to not buying more/better servers, are the only reasons I can think of, and neither are acceptable excuses.

And Now, It's Blind Date , With Your host, Pressssston Lane-cloggggerrrrr!

*One note, the next few sections aren't a problem for those who only want to play Player Matches against friends and other OSers who you know won't abuse the game. Either way, if 2K wants to call itself the best simulation on the market, then the game should be simulation out of the box*

The worst part of the new ranked system isn’t the laggy matchups that the game seems to select for players, but rather, it’s the fact that cheesers -- for the first time in a 2K game -- are unavoidable.

While 2K meant to hurt cheesers by removing lobbies, the reverse has actually happened: Cheesers are thriving more than ever because they cannot be easily recognized based on their poor feedback, in part because they have no feedback!

No longer are cheesers branded with the same red, grumpy faces that they used to receive from their elementary school teachers, nor do they bear feedback percentages similar to the grades that they were earning before they finally flunked out of school to take up NBA 2K as their full-time job.

So 2K, I ask you, if sexual predators can be archived and branded for the benefit of our real-life communities, why can’t we do the same to cheesers who ruin the well-being of NBA 2K9’s online community by exploiting the game in a similarly perverse manner?

Methinks the 2K staffers must be cheesers, if they continue to let these predators lurk in the shadows of the 2K servers, abusing unsuspecting opponents who made the mistake of meeting an unknown cheeser late at night, all alone on the virtual court, thinking that they had simply gotten together to play a game of basketball.

How Many Teams Are in the NBA, Again?

Thirty, according to NBA.com.

But you sure wouldn’t know it based on the number of teams people are using in the ranked lobbies...err, "interface."

In the twenty or so ranked games I’ve managed to play -– which is about a fourth as many as I’ve attempted -- here are the opponents I’ve had to face:

• Lakers – 40%
• Rockets – 40%
• Cavs – 9%
• Nuggets – 9%
• Everyone else – 2%

Mind you, I play exclusively as my home-state Grizzlies, so it’s not like these people need to pick a "powerhouse" team to compete with me.

And yet, they do, and this is the same issue I pointed out in old 2K games -- not that this is really 2K's fault.

Either way, what typically follows on the court is a brand of basketball so sickening, so disgustingly crooked, that even Tim Donaghy would be ashamed to officiate it.

Five-on-Five = 14 Times the Failure of One-on-One

Judging by the amount of teams available in this mode, maybe there is some kind of conspiracy going on against the "lesser" NBA teams.

To date, the only matchups that are available include:

• Rockets vs Jazz
• Celtics vs Lakers
• Thunder vs Suns
• Cavs vs Bulls
• Blazers vs Nuggets
• Magic vs Pistons
• Mavs vs Hornets

Sure, a few more matchups have been promised, but why the heck weren’t they ready to go at launch?

And again, since 2K is so busy touting the "random," "even" playing field of this year’s ranking ladder, why not select two teams randomly instead of choosing from a list of pre-determined matchups that is as limited as Greg Ostertag’s vertical?

Need I Say More?

I mean, five-on-five was supposed to be the "groundbreaking" feature in this year’s game, so you’d think 2K would have this thing spit-shined and fine-tuned for release day.

Instead, we get a total of fourteen teams to play as, in games that are only half-full of human players, with lag so bad that it reminds me of when I used to play NBA Live 2000 on my PC with a dial-up connection. As I said previously, it's getting better but still not good enough.

But the connection issue isn't the only area where NBA 2K9’s five-on-five play bears a scary resemblance to a brand of arcade basketball.

You see, since human-controlled players do not fatigue at all in five-on-five games, people are allowed to hold the turbo button all game long and run around like flocks of headless chickens. Meanwhile, those of us who want turbo to be a strategic element of the game are left waddling in cheesers' filth, forced to tread up and down a dirty court littered with their droppings.

Dumbing Down the Game for the Village Idiot

Moving ranked games down to All-Star difficulty was apparently a conscious decision on 2K's part to help make NBA 2K9 a kinder, gentler experience for "casual" players. But for those of us who expect our basketball games to be a fair replication of the sport itself, the move down to All-Star, like many done by 2K this season, has been a constant source of frustration.

Far from being a "basketball simulation," NBA 2K9 has chosen to replicate the type of game I used to see in smoky arcades, where it cost $1.25 to play four quarters of NBA Jam: an all-out track meet, full of nothing but dunks, layups, and three pointers.

What disgusts me, though, is not the fact that players can attempt turn an alleged "simulation" game into NBA Jam, but that they are rewarded for it!

Reason being, on All-Star difficulty:

• Contested shots go in all game long.
• Star players are flat-out unstoppable.
• Field goal percentages are ridiculous, especially around the painted area.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these stats, which compare the top 10 NBA 2K9 ranked users to the top 10 NBA teams from the 2008 regular season (stats taken from last week):

• NBA 2K9 field goal percentages
  High – 67%,
  Average – 62%
• Field goal percentages from the '08 NBA season
  High – 50% (Phoenix)
  Average – 47%

Sixty-percent? Seriously, 2K? Most NBA teams can't even hit that percentage during shoot-around.

• NBA 2K9 opponents’ field goal percentages
  Best – 48%
  Average – 52%
• Opponents’ field goal percentages from the '08 NBA season
  Best - 42% (Boston)
  Average – 44%

Unless you're playing people like me who use bad offensive teams (Grizzlies represent!) holding people below 50 percent is virtually impossible in NBA 2K9; only one guy in the top 10 was able to do it.

Yet, in the "real" NBA, only the Phoenix Suns shot above 50 percent last season (and exactly 50 percent, at that); everyone else in the top 10 was shooting 40-something percent from the field.

Typical NBA 2K9 shot chart.

Why Won’t These Glitches Die!

Free-throw lag was an issue in last year's 2K game. The issue was eventually patched -- yet here it is again in NBA 2K9.

Basically, the timing between the first free throw and the second free throw is different, such that you have to release your shot way early on the first free throw then go back to "normal" timing for the second free throw, which of course, includes the tiny bit of lag.

The impact this has in online games is huge, especially considering how hard it is to foul out with five-minute quarters turned on.

Here are some stats that further highlight the absurdity of the situation:

• NBA 2K9 free-throw percentages
  Best – 71%
  Average – 59%
• Free throw percentages from the '08 NBA season
  Best - 81% (Dallas/Toronto)
  Average - 78.3%

That’s almost a 20 percent difference when comparing the average free-throw percentage of the top 10 guys in each "league"!

Due to all of the points that get left off the board over the course of a game, I feel like I’m playing as the Memphis Tigers, not the Memphis Grizzlies.

2K must really hate itself, or at least, hate the camera that bears the company's name, because this is the second time in three seasons that the beloved 2K camera has been unavailable at the game’s launch.

This is an elbow to the balls of all the 2K hoops fans who’ve been using the 2K cam since the Dreamcast days, and it is just one of the many blows that has made online play such a painful experience thus far.

Don't even get me started on the five-on-five mode, which has a whopping three cameras to choose from, all of which obscure vital portions of the court.

Leagues Should Be Easier To Deal With

Two more questions for 2K:

• Why on earth was flex scheduling removed?
• Can you give me the address of the wise guy who thought it was a good idea to take it out?

This goof would have single-handedly destroyed online leagues, had the community not discovered a “work-around” for the time-being. Even then, it’s still a huge pain to play league games, all because a feature that has been in 2K games for years was removed for no apparent reason.

Another painful oversight is the glitch that prevents games from being recorded by the league servers if the away team initiates a challenge in the league lobby. In other words, the home team has to initiate all the challenges for league games if you want the game results to be saved; otherwise, your hour-plus of game time is all for nothing.

The additions to the leagues this year are impressive though, and in general the depth that can be found in the 2K online leagues is unmatched.

Living Rosters

Tell me 2K, for people like myself who only play online, what good is this feature if we can’t even use it in our online games?

How hard is it for you to force people to download the current rosters if they want to play an online game?

I guess if you don’t want to be like every other sports game and force people to download the latest rosters, why not give the game the ability to match players with the same rosters, instead of forcing everyone back into the default rosters every time an online game is attempted?

Worse yet, why is it that the roster changes you tell me I've saved get reset every time I log-in to your (barely functional) servers?

If I have to reset my roster one more time to keep Darko Milicic off the floor, I’m going to flip, or at least, I would, if I hadn’t already given up playing this game until the online issues are cleaned up entirely.

My condolences to the people who paid $60 expecting to play a game that would actually work online out of the box.

-- Dr. Jayson C. Young, M.D., University of Fraudology