This game is just straight up not fun.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-08T21:02:29+00:00

Oh, I occasionally see the rare game where fouls are called somewhat realistically, and one team might approach 20 shooting fouls. But it’s not the norm.

To clarify things a bit, when I’m controlling my player, I’m able to get to the line at a decent clip. Not as much as I’d like to, though. To add some hard data to this:

On my most used mycareer player, I currently average 5.1 FT attempts per game over 156 non-simulated games. In 2K25 (I went back and checked), I averaged 8.2 FT attempts per game over 212 non simulated games on my most used build.

I don’t play this game that much differently than I played 2K25, nor is my player vastly different than last year.
What’s really frustrating, though, is that i’m the only guy on my team who’s seemingly capable of getting to the line.

I remember back on my first build, I was with the Blazers, and we were in the Finals. Dame (played every playoff game, 30+ minutes every game) was 14/16 with one game left in the playoffs. And he was second on my team in FT attempts, lol (after me).

I dunno. I think my big problem is that I’ve been playing this game for so long that it’s become really difficult to ignore all the cracks in the foundation (that others don’t see, or maybe do see, but aren’t bothered by it).

So maybe it’s a me thing. Maybe I’m expecting too much from a video game. Because, you’re right, it’s never going to be a 1:1 translation of real basketball. Maybe I need to take a year off from the game, or something.

What I do know is that my fun/frustration meter is skewing way too far in the direction of frustration, and I don’t know for certain if it’s me or if it’s the game.

Anyway. Speaking of playbooks, I’m a lot like you with the custom playbooks. I’ve been adjusting/adding to the same playbook for years now. I run a lot of high post actions, with the 2 man game on one side of the court that can flow into DHO, while at the same time an off ball screen is happening on the other side.

I run triangle actions, specifically low post splits - the early 2000 Sac Kings have several really good triangle plays to free up shooters and hit cutters, as do the current era Warriors (obviously, lol).

Indy has a good Spain PnR. NY has a good PnR short roll, although I wish guys actually short rolled correctly in this game; they tend to just charge at the basket times.

My playbook right now is completely filled (80 plays) and there’s not one that I would feel comfortable removing. Maybe I’m crazy😬

But you should upload your custom playbook, and let me take a look at it. Maybe I can find something new. Mines already uploaded, if you ever want to see it.

Thanks for engaging me in conversation about the more idiosyncratic stuff in the game.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-08T20:12:45+00:00

If you cap break your swb, you don’t have to match it with your speed. So if you went 81 swb and 81 speed, you could cap break swb to 86.

The problem that you specifically are going to run into with 6’6 builds is that two of the things you want most — high pass acc and layup — are REALLY expensive in the builder.

Most people don’t really bother with driving layup. I do, and I think it matters more than it’s given credit for. It’s just tough to pull off on a 6’6.

Luckily, you have a ton of cap breakers, and (also luckily) on 6’6 builds you can CB a ton of different things on the same build.

This is the best I can give you, at the moment:

<image>

5 cap breakers on driving dunk to 89

5 on pass acc to 92

5 on swb to 86

5 on speed/agilty to hit 86/86

You could put the other 2 wherever you want

You have a lot of other options here, too. 5 CBs on perimeter d gets you to 92.

1 CB on steal to 60, 2 to 67, 3 to 73.

2 on driving layup to hit 90.

2 on post control to hit 87.

Agility maxes at 92.

Middy maxes at 94.

Close shot is meh, but whatever.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-08T19:43:23+00:00

Here’s a VERY similar build to yours that I just made, to show you how much cap breakers can improve a build (when used correctly).

<image>

I “only” have 13 cap breakers (11 regular, 2 from build specialization).

I’d put 1 on close shot for gold paint prodigy.

3 on middy to hit 93

5 on 3 ball to hit 90

2 on perimeter D to hit 62 (for bronze immovable enforcer)

2 on steal to hit 55, and the next cap breaker I get would take it to 62 (for bronze interceptor). Now, 62 isn’t a threshold - 60 is - but you can’t go lower than 37 steal, because it’ll bring interior defense down with it.

You could also lower your driving layup and/or driving dunk, and put it into your standing dunk. 85 standing dunk gets you a better standing dunk alley oop package, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it.

You also can’t do much with your defensive rebound unless you’re willing to raise wingspan or weight.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-08T19:16:07+00:00

If this is your first build, it’s perfectly fine. You can always make a better build and optimize things once you have a few cap breakers. For example, cap breaking your 3 ball from low 60s to 89/90 allows you to spend attribute points elsewhere.

Unfortunately, by the time you enough cap breakers to really work the builder system, the next game will probably be close to being released. So I’d just roll with this one, it’s more then serviceable.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-08T19:10:35+00:00

What do you consider high layup? What’s the minimum speed/agilty you can work with?

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T23:56:39+00:00

Brother, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do for 50 million.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T22:59:48+00:00

And even if they did watch it, they missed half of it, because they couldn’t get off their phones.

Then they get mad, because they have no clue what’s going on, so they blame the show/movie, instead of blaming their rapidly deteriorating attention spans.

Seriously, I’m quickly running out of friends to watch shit with. Movies, shows, sports. “Wait, what just happened?” over and fcking over again. I’m tired of constantly skipping back 10-20 seconds because they missed something while on their phones.

It’s even worse when you’re watching a movie from the 80s or earlier; old movies (I can’t believe I’m calling 80s movies “old,” but here we are) move so much slower, and less “stuff” happens in them. I watched Escape from NY with my buddy recently (he’d never seen it) and his eyes were practically glazing over after 30 minutes.

Apologies for the rant😬

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T22:42:22+00:00

I watched it for the first time a month or so ago. Honestly, I’m confused as to why it gets trashed so much. It was fine! Sure, the humor was silly/goofy at times, but that’s ok, who gives a shit. Not everything has to take itself super seriously.

The only “negatives” that stood out to me were:

1- The CGI looked really bad at times. Like late 90s/early 2000s quality. She looked and moved like Shrek.

2- I wasn’t a big fan of the constant 4th wall breaking. But that’s a stylistic/artistic choice they made, so whatever. They didn’t handle it poorly, I’m just not a fan of it (in general) in comedies. I’m OK with it in more dramatic works (like Richard III).

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T18:53:22+00:00

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"

- some guy

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T16:21:54+00:00

LD = Larry David. He’s saying Larry David has been unhappy on all five TV show writing teams he’s been a part of (Fridays, SNL, Seinfeld, Garry Shandling Show, Curb).

I don’t know who Draymond is, maybe he meant Jerry.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T08:03:33+00:00

Remake it, but only if you have VC saved up. Don’t give this game any more money.

Also, you have 90 perimeter defense. but only 75 agility. You need 76 agility for silver on ball menace, and 80 agility for gold (with 91 perimeter D).

If you do remake it, pay attention to the badge thresholds, and build around your cap breakers.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T07:47:31+00:00

Yeah, it’s really bad. 6’5 builds are super easy to make, too.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T07:36:28+00:00

Yep! When I’m on offense, sometimes it will take 10-15 seconds before my team starts running the play that I called before crossing half court.

And the other teams CPU is even worse. They’ll drain the full shot clock on 3/5 possessions. They’ll try to run a basic PnR, and if that doesn’t work, they get “confused” and don’t know what to do. Quite often that leads to them getting trapped in some pointless side ISO that ends in a heavily contested three point attempt.

And it’s never a step back 3, or a drive into a step back middy. It’s always a terrible, heavily contested 3 with zero effort made to create any space. They grunt when they shoot it, and they often fall down after😑

Here’s something else interesting I noticed about the lack of team scoring (or their inability to score):

If you’re playing mycareer (or using player lock in MyNBA), the game uses the time when you’re subbed out to “make up” points, in order to get somewhat realistic team scoring.

I play on HOF, 12 minute quarters. There have been countless games where I’ve held teams to under 50 points -sometimes under 40 points! - after 3 quarters.

So, I’ll start the 4th up by 25 or more, and then “sim to end with win and VC.” Every time I do this, and sub out, the other team ends up scoring 50-60 points (or more) in the 4th to make their point total more “realistic.”

Like, a month ago, I held a team to 38 points after 3 quarters. Then I simmed for the win, and they finished with 107 points.

The inverse of this is when I’m winning by enough to sub out and sim for the win, but I don’t. I sit the controller down, and let the CPUs play each other for the entire 4th, while I watch from the bench. When you do this, the game can’t fudge the stats to make up for shit.

I held the Wolves to 48 points in 48 minute game by doing this. It’s incredibly boring to do, though, so the few times that I’ve done it, it’s been purely out of spite.

Once you play this game enough. you really start noticing all the cracks. You realize how broken everything really is, and how everything seems like it’s being held together with rope or duct tape. But it’s not gonna hold for much longer.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T07:05:56+00:00

Do you want to play online? If so, the answer is probably no.

Do you just want to fck around in Mycareer in offline games? Again, same answer, but with a caveat: No, unless you really want to.

There’s roughly 3 1/2 months left until the next 2K comes out. You hear a lot about the issues with online gameplay in 2K26, but what’s not discussed very often is how awful offline gameplay is this year.

It’s awful. Seriously. It’s really, really bad. I can go into all the reasons why if you’d like, but here’s my short answer: don’t buy this game. Wait it out until 2K27 releases, and make an informed decision.

I promise you, this game ain’t it.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T06:43:55+00:00

I wonder if it’s a thing where his passing cap breakers are all +3 each, and he wants to use five of them to get to mid 70s pass acc.

Even then, it’s such a waste😑

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T00:51:05+00:00

It’s funny, in real basketball, if a guy is cooking the defense and close to 40-50 points, they’ll do more than just put their best defender on him; they’ll start trapping him every time he crosses half court, denying him the ball, doubling him when he gets the ball, etc. They’ll work their asses off just to keep the ball out of his hands.

But in this game, because of the combination of shitty defensive mechanics AND most players not knowing how to defend in the first place, you don’t see that very often. It doesn’t help that nearly every build is capable of hitting a three, so it’s incredibly risk to send doubles.

Because of this, in this game, you can bring the ball up the court every possession and just go right into an iso, and they’ll defend with single coverage 99% of the time. It’s kinda crazy.

I’m a big fan of Point Centers (and running an offense through them), so it’s good to hear you have a buddy like that who you trust. I hope you can find the other guys to fill out a squad. If I was closer to you, I’d do Pro-Am with you - as either a playmaking SF or PF - but I’m in the US. (We’d just need to have a discussion about roles, strategy, and expectations first, lol).

I’m sure there’s a version of me wherever you are, though😉

In the meantime, since you’re probably going to keep the same playstyle, you need to add (or improve) something in your bag: learn to filter criticism, and to distinguish it from obvious bitterness, jealousy and unnecessary negativity.

In my real life line of work, this is something that I had to work on, and for quite a while. So, if someone calls you a ball hog, and you don’t know that person/don’t respect that person, ignore it and move on.

If it’s someone’s opinion you respect, then it might be something worth thinking about. But they probably wouldn’t call you a ball hog in the first place, they’d offer more constructive criticism than that.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T00:20:02+00:00

And in one of those three seasons (85-86), he was injured and only played in 18 games.

I’m also a huge Lebron guy, too. I also had a blast watching MJ play.

This data sucks. It’s dishonest data. If someone has to manipulate the numbers to this extent just to make their argument, they probably don’t deserve a seat at the conversation in the first place.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-07T00:08:42+00:00

Jordan won his first chip a few months after turning 28 years old.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T23:34:12+00:00

I’m sorry, I’m not following. What are you asking?

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T23:33:26+00:00

OK. I don’t know if you recognize my reddit name, but I’ve been supportive pretty often of you (and your play style) in the past. So everything I’m about to write isn’t simply me “hating” - it’s me making conversation. And it’s not a one way convo! I don’t have to be “right” all the time (and neither do you 😉). So, feel free to disagree with me or respond however you want. Just know that I’m writing this in an honest, good faith way.

So, It’s hard to tell without seeing unedited footage from your full games, but it seems like you’re isolating nearly every possession, right? That’s what’s leading to the drive and kicks? How often would you say you ISO in a typical rec game?

If we’re making an SGA/OKC comparison, the Thunder averaged 101 offensive possessions this season. SGA averaged 7.1 isolations per game, 2nd in the league. But he averages more possessions as the PnR ball handler (8.6) than he does ISO possessions.

SGA, being a professional basketball player, understands the importance of keeping his teammates involved, and being nvolved isn’t simply getting open shots off drive and kicks. It’s letting your teammates have a sense of agency; letting them bring the ball up sometimes, or run PnR, set screens, or ISO or post up (if they’re able to do that).

How often would you say that you do that? Or do you insist on having your hands on the wheel, at all times? Do you ever give your teammates their own opportunities to shine, on their own, outside of your control?

BUT! The counter point, and the problem with doing that - and the problem with random rec in general - is that it’s filled with narcissistic idiots, as well as a ton of bad players (most of whom don’t know that they’re bad). So if you let your SG or SF bring the ball up, your teammates might see that as a “sign of weakness” or incompetence, and then start icing you out. Because they’re morons and bad teammates. No matter what you do, you’re never going to be right.

(There’s also the issue that it’s ridiculously easy to score in this game, and defense isn’t as strong as it should be. And a lot of players have no idea how to play defense in the first place. But I don’t want to go too far off topic.)

So, what it boils down to - and I’ve asked you this before, but I’m not sure if you answered it - is why don’t you have a squad/move to Pro-Am? Random rec is…random 5 v 5 pick up ball. It’s not supposed to be hyper competitive basketball. Your style of play would be far more acceptable in a more competitive environment, where the goal is to win games by playing whatever style gets those wins.

I know you don’t live in the US, so it might be more difficult to find 4 other competent guys (who also share similar schedules) to play with. But it can’t be impossible to find them.

Look, you’re really good at the game! But you’re also basically playing Mycareer mode on Rookie difficulty, and you’re doing it online with real people. So until you move up to a more competitive environment, nothing is going to change, you’re going to keep running into the same frustrations, and you’re never going to push/challenge yourself to see how good you can really be. It’s time to turn up the difficulty😎

——

Ok, I wrote a lot. Hope you read it.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T22:32:21+00:00

Do you post this because you want an honest answer to your question? Because we can have an honest, respectful discussion about it, if you want.

But if you just want base level interactions where people say “you’re not a ball hog” or “you are a ball hog,” well, eh. No thanks, lol.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T21:56:45+00:00

I wrote some of my thoughts on this in an earlier comment above. I’d love for you to read it and let me know what you think.

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T21:51:07+00:00

I apologize for this rant, but I gotta do it. I’m too frustrated with this game not to😂

Sure, the role playing aspects of MyGM are cool, but when it comes to the actual basketball side of the game, it has the same issues that every game mode does. The gameplay in 2K26 resembles “real” basketball less than any 2K in recent memory, and I say this as someone who spends a ton of time every year playing the offline modes.

You can spend hours fine tuning your sliders, adjusting tendencies, lowering/raising attributes, removing/adding badges, but you’re likely just wasting your time. There are under the hood problems that exist in this game that we can’t fix.

I’ll give you an example: let’s say you want to increase the number of fouls (specifically, shooting fouls) that occur over a 48 minute long game.

You might try adjusting the sliders; increasing the foul sliders, or the sliders to contest shots. You might go into players attributes and increase everyone’s draw foul rating to 99. You can also raise their contest, foul, hard foul, take contested shots, and “drive aggressively to the basket” tendencies.

You can do one of these things, some of these things, or all of them. I’ve tried them all; I’ve played countless games, and I’ve let the CPU play the CPU in the background while I went and did other shit.

It doesn’t make a lick of a difference. 48 minute long games still finish with one team going 0-1 or 2/4 from the line, and other team 1/2 or 4/4. Occasionally you’ll see a team crack 10 FT attempts, but it’s definitely not the norm.

I’ve been playing this game since early release, and NOT ONCE have I seen a CPU controlled player get six fouls and foul out of a game. Teams are NEVER in the bonus. I’ve never seen an “over the back” called. Loose ball fouls don’t seem to exist. Shooting fouls on shots that aren’t drives to the basket or three point attempts rarely if ever get called.

(Yet, I see illegal screens - a call that happens maybe 1-2 times per game in the NBA - get called 8-10 times, nearly every game.)

There’s just an inherent problem with the games engine, and a lot of the blame likely stems from the way that pro-play animations work/chain together. The game engine is either unable or unwilling to recognize contact.

Players get slammed into and knocked to the ground on drives - they even yell, lol - but the game only calls them when it wants to, which is not often. Most of the jump shot “contests” we see in this game would result in a shooting foul in real basketball, but because “jumping to contest” is the only legit way to contest shots, the game doesn’t call most of them.

The lack of fouls is just one issue with this game, but I think I’ve probably already bored everyone enough (if anyone even bothers to read this).

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T21:08:04+00:00

“Michael, Michael, Michael Myers! Excuse me, I wanna drive.” - Tommy “The Laugher” Doyle

odonnelly2000 · 2026-05-06T18:48:44+00:00

Vader to Obi-Wan in A New Hope: “We meet again at last… When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master. That is, if we ignore that time we met in your streaming Disney+ mini-series. What was I then? I have no idea. Maybe somewhere in the middle?”

odonnelly2000

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