"With our development team, the reality is Michael Jordan has been a part of the discussion for years," said Jason Argent, 2K Sports' vice president of marketing. "This wasn't some discussion where we woke up and found out we had him and now we had to figure out how to put him in. There has always been this loose design out there to how this could happen, and as it came to be more realistic, our development team got more and more excited.
Jordan also remains current in the NBA by virtue of his majority ownership of the Charlotte Bobcats. This will be the first time an NBA owner has graced the cover of a video game. Will it be the only appearance of an NBA owner in a video game? Argent laughed when asked if this meant the voluble Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban would also be playable in NBA 2K11.
"Well, on that one, we'll just have to wait and see," Argent said, neither confirming nor denying, but with tongue evidently in cheek. "We have a lot of good, fun surprises coming in October."
I think/hope what he meant in that interview is that with the licencing of Michael Jordan, 2K is going to go after everyone including owners, GMs and the rest of the more visible people in the league. It'd be great if former coaches like Jeff Van Gundy, Avery Johnson and Pat Riley were available in the free agent pool of coaches. Or when you take over a team in association you can sign a guy like Jerry West as "GM" and it improves chances of trades, free agent signings, etc.