‘NBA 2K’ Developers Can’t Keep Up WIth Steph Curry’s Unique Skills

Of course, no one else can either.

If Steph Curry has a signature shot, it’s the rhythm three from 28 feet, shot as his defender sags off of him, momentarily forgetting that he’s guarding the best shooter who ever lived. It’s the kind of heave you’d call a bad shot if anyone else took it. But Curry’s different, and that presents a problem for more than just opposing teams.

Mike Wang is the gameplay director of NBA 2K, the preeminent basketball video game that’s prized for, among other things, its intense realism. That means, generally speaking, good shots are rewarded and bad shots are not. Open, spot up threes go in. Contested, off-balance threes don’t. That’s as true in the game as it is in real life. Except, of course, for Curry.

“To be completely honest, we are still looking for ways to better translate his game into NBA 2K,” Wang told recently told Forbes. “He’s a ‘rule breaker’ when it comes to jump shooting … he becomes a problem in the video game world where we’ve been trying to train our gamers [to know] that certain types of shots should be rewarded versus others.”

It’s hard to be too mad at Wang. There’s a reason NBA 2K‘s gameplay doesn’t allow for players to do things like Curry does. Before he came along, no one had ever done things like Curry does. 

” tml-embed-width=”560″ tml-embed-height=”315″ tml-render-layout=”inline

The good news is that Wang promises the next version of NBA 2K will present a more realistic interpretation of Curry’s game. Until then, if you want to see Curry making unrealistic shots, you’ll have to watch the real thing.