agreed Black Rome - but making steals and blocking EASY hurts too many other aspects of the game, feel me? i'm not a game developer but the number one issue is the ease that we can pass into the paint...the minute they add more defenders taking away post position and pass deflections out of bounds (because too many steals makes the game sloppy) 2K gets TONS better in my opinion. second, the "contact shots" animations are good as well..they've done alot to show the physicality in the painted area.
what i think makes it comes full circle? expanding the "hands up" defense animation to one that basically just makes the defender try to challenge the shot from any angle. this way we'll have an option for non shot blockers to try and bother offensive players without getting a high amount of foul calls.
this would finally allow us to play post defense alot better and would dissaude the "just get close to the basket and press shoot" mentality...because YOU GUESSED IT! an open 15 foot jump shot would have a higher chance of going in than dwight howard in the post with kendrick perkins draped all over him.
while sometimes (though not much) we could get hit with fouls, i'd love to see a TON of challenge shot animations that lower the chances of an offensive player converting. the closer the defender? THE BETTER and MORE EFFECTIVE THE ANIMATION.
here's an example of Jermaine O'Neal challenging Mareese Speights without fouling him. Even though there is light contact no foul is called. speights still converted but a shot like this should go in maybe 40% of the time...although speights is a one-dimensional good offensive player, the defender and his skill level and timing were good enough to make this low-percentage.
http://community.2ksports.com/commun...ediaid=1292497
the block button get abused waaay too much with players like ray allen, kobe bryant, jason kidd, rip hamilton and hell even ron artest who are solid defenders--but AREN'T shot blockers. they should get whistled regularly when they try to block shots. expanding our ability to challenge shots finally gives these guys their proper weapons/tools on defense. bruce bowen was the best perimeter defender in the NBA for a good five years and he was NOT a shot blocker...he moved his feet, crowded and bothered the hell out of scorers tho...and we need to see that in a SIM as good as NBA 2K.
@ TUSS11 - you couldn't be more CORRECT, we need players around a player being double-teamed and especially versus full court presses to be LOTS more aggressive coming back to the ball.