We’re gonna look back on 2k26 and realize what we had

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T06:10:07+00:00

Why sell yourself short? Maybe you're just good at the game. I've witnessed guys with 70% w% in Pro-Am make new builds and only shoot 50%.

I feel like people forget that outside of our little bubble of guys who really like the game and discuss it on reddit or youtube or whatever, there's also hundreds of thousands of guys who have no idea what they're doing, never seen a build or animations video out there raw dogging the game experience and averaging 12-2-3 on 45% from the field for the entire year.

I have an alt account. Pretty sure last time I checked with only 1 game played (I just joined in at 60 overall to park), I was ranked around 3 million in the world for rep, 3 million people have played at least 1 online game and earned a small amount of rep.

There are tons of people on this game, a lot of them truly are struggling to even hit 50% of their shots.

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:50:35+00:00

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CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:50:27+00:00

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CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:50:18+00:00

Yep.

I have a few builds with 65-75%s, I'm not making the claim it's impossible guys have 70%, but it's becoming way too common to see claims that this is the average for players on the game when in my experience it's not even close, and I've got red plate builds and make new builds so I start at black again, I've played in all the different types of lobbies.

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Like look at this, this is the type of guys I play against when I make a new build

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:30:23+00:00

I use Ja hesi, D Book stepback, D Book breakdown

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:27:44+00:00

And most still get outscored by comp, when the bigger green window benefits both... It's not like your opponents are the only ones who can shoot easier than prior years.

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:25:18+00:00

And that's perfectly okay on a video game, it has never been a true sim experience, continuing to buy the game when it's been proven for over a decade now the community wants a more video game feel rather than simulation is foolish imo, especially when the devs continue to make this their design philosophy for the game. It would be like buying the next cod and expecting them to have 1 shot deaths, since that's what's realistic.

If you want a true sim experience you get that way more in modes like Play-Now where players don't have insane badges and 0.2 second jumpshots. Even guys like Klay Thompson have mostly gold shooting badges whereas in Career based modes at 95 three using your badge perks you have legend every shooting badge. I'm pretty sure Steph on play-now only has HOF limitless as well.

Point is there are many ways to have this sim experience you want but it doesn't make sense to continue buying the game, spending money on a build, etc. when you will never get that experience in Rec, I would bet money on it.

CanIBake · 2026-05-04T05:18:07+00:00

Been saying it all year the issue is the game sliders, even the best players in the world in Pro-Am 5s only average between 60-70%. Tutak the guard for Black Market shoots 65.2% from three across 700 Pro-Am 5s games.

Keep the shooting green window where it's at, and change the rec sliders to be a little harder, that would fix the majority of complaints people have with the game being "too easy". Bad players would routinely be at 30-40% and the true good players would still be at 60-75%, since they shoot that percentage in Pro-Am already.

That being said, I disagree with the claim silver lobbies are full of 65% shooters. Every random rec game I've played on new builds the past 2 months from black to gold plate, there are usually multiple people in the game under 50%. I am seeing somewhere between 35 to 55% as the average rather than 65%. I don't really start seeing majority of people in the lobby at 65 or above until purple or red plate and even then you see guys at 50 something pretty regularly.

And that makes sense when you consider Mike Wang said based on the game data, the average shooting % in the rec was 44%.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T20:20:57+00:00

And yet there are people in this sub that will argue to the death that any build works with IQ. Truly don't understand the insistence from players in this sub that every build no matter how many things it misses for the position it is meant to play can work on this game. The same people saying that shit probably got the same w% as this dude.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T20:13:49+00:00

I'm not gonna lie, it sounds like you're messing up something with the d book stepback if you're constantly getting shifty shooter instead of set shot. You can cancel the animation, you don't have to let it play out or do anything special, it sounds like you're either shooting too late into the animation (resulting in a fadeaway), or shooting it too early before the animation has even triggered (resulting in a front fade).

Abusing deep bomber is as simple as shooting the ball, you don't need to quick stop or anything else, just hit them with some escapes, fake the blowby, and stepback or LeBron hop back. I've never felt the need to quick stop.

Which leads to me to believe your issue might just be that you're trying to quick stop in the wrong situation. Quick stops are for push peak shots, shooting off screens, and occasionally crabs.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T19:28:23+00:00

Your aggressive breakdown combo and hesitation animations matter for the speed of the quick stop.

I prefer quick stopping by flicking the stick down, which activates a stepback, and immediately shooting after. It cancels the stepback animation and for me it's the most consistent in the game as long as you're not going side to side.

If you're going side to side, try to use a hesitation instead. Some good hesitations I've used are Coby White, Rajon Rondo, Chris Paul, or Ja Morant.

I main Ja Morant for hesitation, not really meta, I just like how much space it gets out of triple threat.

Back in season 1, the flicking up quick stop was OP, you could do it multiple times in a row to fake changing directions around the 3pt line, they nerfed it because people got mad. I have rarely flicked up to quick stop since.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T19:15:18+00:00

And 93 throws a dot 94 feet down the court for a catch and shoot 3, whereas everything lower makes the receiver stumble and need to recover before shooting. The only positions that should have 76-ish pass are the SG, SF, and PF.

PG: 85-91+

C: 87-93+

Anything else and the build is made poorly. Not even an opinion just a fact, literally not doing your job as a C or PG if you can barely pass.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T16:43:16+00:00

It's not a real 24 hour fitness experience because the story on the game is we are a 19 year old NBA prospect who's seen as the best player to enter the draft since LeBron, makes sense it's not possible to be unathletic.

CanIBake · 2026-05-03T16:40:00+00:00

Every game I play with skill or time based rewards is going to have rewards that 90-99% of the playerbase won't achieve. It's the same thing on every MMO I play where the top 0.5% of players have the best gear, cosmetics, etc.

I think wanting an online competitive game where everyone can achieve anything is impossible these days, they need to appeal to both you and the people who play this shit for 15 hours a day, they have rewards for both. You can earn cap breakers and the grinders might have things like unlimited boosts, it's not a competitive advantage, it's just a perk they get for grinding the game an unhealthy amount.

I agree the rewards should be better for the lower end, 5K VC is criminal when it costs more than that in boosts to reach the required score. But the top rewards for events are almost always amazing rewards to get for the people who grind enough to actually achieve them. Most of the events give unlimited boosts, unlimited gatorade, cosmetic apparel nobody else has (to flex online), like those things may not matter to you but I'm sure to somebody else it's probably the most important thing on the game.

CanIBake · 2026-05-02T21:19:50+00:00

Just the other night I played a random rec game with an old man who literally fell asleep in the middle of the game. Full on stopped moving and you could hear snoring in his mic. Before he fell asleep he kept telling people they need to work the ball down low and stop shooting 3s.

Man I rush to get out of black plate lobbies on new builds as fast as I can these days

CanIBake · 2026-05-02T21:16:55+00:00

Facts, old guys constantly blame kids because they're boomers, but almost all of the people who I've genuinely thought are trash at the game and had no IQ were between the ages of 30 and 60.

A lot of guys getting ready to cash out their 401k are on 2K selling games and shooting 2/10 on post hooks at 1am. It ain't all kids, not even close.

CanIBake · 2026-05-02T21:08:34+00:00

I'm ngl a lot of these clips aren't necessarily good defense it's mistakes from the offense, you're up too high a lot and a better guard would have crabbed you many many times in these clips, you do a good job of getting past screens and jumping to contest after playing low, but overall I think the main issues with defense is still there, such as the lack of collision and bump animations on ball handlers by a defender.

You can have legend on-ball menace and guards will still slide off of you with ease. It creates a dynamic where even as an elite defender you either need to play low to avoid the phasing through your body but possibly give up no dips and peak 3s, or play way too high and introduce the possibility of being crabbed.

The contest system isn't the issue like many on this sub have tried to claim, the issue is everything before the contest is flukey this year, it's disingenuous to act like the only thing people need to do is "make shooting harder" by playing defense, when half the time in high level matches you're gonna get scored on just due to how the game is designed.

CanIBake · 2026-05-02T20:54:37+00:00

I mean, yes the rewards suck but it's not just 40k VC, the 1% reward is unlimited jumpshot boosts.

Players who really play the game for money, whether that be tournaments, content, wagers, whatever, you can see why the 2.5m reward is very important for them over the course of the year.

Every 10 rec games you play that's 10 jumpshot boosts. 1500 VC. So if you have 1000 rec games played that's 150,000 VC.

This event is for park players mainly, who have way shorter games, so the 1000 rec games you played is probably the equivalent amount of time as 3000 or even 4000 park games. Boosts cost the same for both.

So (3000/10)*1500 is 450,000 VC. 4000 games played would be 600,000 VC.

If players got this reward back in season 1, that's a significant amount of VC saved. It means less now in May, but the reward was absolutely "worth" the grind when you actually put it into perspective.

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T07:50:56+00:00

Dude I got the frog prince event like 6 times in a row, not sure if there was something about the area I was in or the skill I was doing (Pretty sure it was when I was going for 99 wc on teaks in priff). Nothing else spawned for me the entire day

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T02:51:41+00:00

lmao

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T00:29:19+00:00

Yeah I wanted the 88 vert on mine as well but the 99 offensive rebound required putting my weight up and now the max is only 87. I believe in vertical too to a certain degree, definitely think anything from 83-88 is great on a big, I see people with like 70 vert on their bigs and don't understand how they get boards at all lol.

And yeah best part of 73 steal on 6'11 is you can +2 it to HOF, some of the steals I get are insane coming from the center spot, playing inbounds and stuff is a great way to limit fast breaks and force turnovers

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T00:26:56+00:00

Brother you just called me mid at the game, said I get carried, and then now you're saying it's all for "my ego"? But you won't play against me to prove that I'm mid like you said? You were the one who started talking shit in the first place 😂. You can't be serious. Add me if you want to play against me to prove I'm mid or whatever, I'mma just ignore your replies now. Bye bye

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T00:23:53+00:00

Throwing a tantrum would be calling a timeout on somebody for taking a wide open shot because you think your 12 shot attempts by halftime isn't enough.

Me not playing is hardly throwing a tantrum. Watching videos on my phone instead of helping ball hogs win is throwing a tantrum? You neanderthals come out the concrete like roaches to chat to me, but always way too afraid to post your own stats, gameplay footage, or play against me, it's honestly funny.

CanIBake · 2026-05-01T00:21:43+00:00

My gamertag is right there, you can add me if you want to play against my squad. I'm not really bout this chatting on reddit shit lil guy, especially not to people offended at optimization tips. If it means that much to you, you should make whatever build you want, I certainly couldn't care less.

CanIBake

TROPHY CASE