NBA 2K25 made me hate Mazzulla Ball

The year is 2K25.

All preconceived notions of basketball have been destroyed. Math — and the barrage of three-pointers that come with it — have become an all consuming void; creative NBA basketball has been swallowed. Layups, dunks and the entire mid-range have become obsolete. It’s the world Joe Mazzulla wants, and I’m not sure I want to be here anymore.

About a month ago, I set out to become a Celtics legend on NBA 2K25, the newest installment in Visual Concepts’ economically-acclaimed, critically-mixed and popularly-panned series of NBA video games. The MyCareer mode — a staple of the game since NBA 2K10 — has been my yearly outlet for deferred NBA dreams, able to take my 5’8”, 160-pound frame beyond its physical limitations and average 32 points per game while being guarded by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander… somehow.

So, I got about building my legend. With nothing more than a 5’9” 185-pound build (the game literally won’t allow you to be 5’8”…rude) and my pre-order bonus to upgrade my player’s stats a bit, I headed to my new team: The Boston Celtics.

Because… video game, I was just allowed to choose the team I wanted to be on, a feature of the newer games that takes a bit of the realism out of getting drafted but also just allows people to play for their favorite team, which I think is fine. Also, because… video game, the Celtics coaching staff handed me the starting spot over Jrue Holiday after five games for indeterminate reasons.

My minutes were pretty low at first, but after becoming the starter I started to notice something… off. It wasn’t the gameplay — that part was really fun. The Next Generation console improvements are clear; a game that used to be animation-dependent now feels infinitely expandable. Shots bounce, roll and clank around the rim like they do in real life, and I genuinely don’t know if it’s going to go in until it actually does. But something was just… wrong.

My Celtics were losing a lot more than they realistically should, though it wasn’t exactly rocket science to figure out why. I, the pretty-low-level 5’9” point guard, was taking a lot of shots on Hall of Fame difficulty (which is really hard) because… video game, and we’re trying to have fun out here. Jayson Tatum was only averaging 16 points per game, and Jaylen Brown was down to 12. Kristaps Porzingis — not injured in this alternate universe — was weirdly the second-leading scorer at 18 points per game, but that was because I would throw him so many lobs that the TD Garden rims should probably be torn off by now.

It wasn’t until we played the Oklahoma City Thunder that I started to figure out the problem. Matisse Thybulle, who I guess got traded there at some point, started strapping threes. And I don’t just mean he hit a few. He went 10 for 19 from three. Ten for nineteen. Thybulle, one of the most offensively-inept players in the NBA that actually gets minutes, made TEN threes, scoring 34 points on the Thunder, a team so loaded I wondered how he was even on the floor.

I realized the problem about nine shots in: computer-controlled players in NBA 2K25 will always shoot a wide-open three. Jaylen Brown, who was guarding Thybulle in that game, was coded to sag way off him in the corner since he has such a low three-point rating. But he made 52 percent of his shots… how?

After the game, I checked Thybulle’s season stats to see if he had just become 2023-Caleb-Martin-in-the-Eastern-Conference-Finals overnight and I hadn’t noticed. What I found was even more horrifying: he was shooting 47 percent from deep on the season. That would be the best three-point-shooting percentage in NBA history, and he’s Matisse Thybulle. That was the first sign that I was in The Matrix, rather than the video game version of the NBA.

I had to see what was going on in the league I had stumbled into. I scrolled over to league stats, sorted by three-point percentage, and… my god. What I found was the Mazzulla Ball World we all feared.

Roughly 15 games into the season, nine (!) players were shooting 50 percent or better from beyond the arc. Innumerable more were shooting 45 percent or better on fairly high volume considering I had the game set to eight-minute quarters. I then put on my detective hat, played a few more games, and puzzled the pieces together to finally figure out what was wrong.

We say “basketball isn’t played on a spreadsheet” to dunk on people we think care too much about data and not enough about watching games. But in NBA 2K25, basketball is literally played on a spreadsheet. The game plays like it has a set list of predetermined outcomes and stats it is trying to reproduce, from individual numbers to final scores to a normalization of stats to the real world. However, in order to achieve the data it needs to be considered a “simulation” NBA game, the game made three-pointers the unconquerable weapon of the computer I was playing against.

After venturing in wide-eyed, I finally realized that I was trapped in the endless cyberscape of statistical regression. I witnessed R.J. Barrett miss three consecutive threes due to my tight defense before hitting a completely absurd one-footed 28-foot fadeaway in Tatum’s face because the game just decided he needed to score. Paolo Banchero hit nine in one game because the game decided it was a “trash talk game,” which forced my 5’9” player to guard the 6’10” Banchero the entire time because he said something mean about me on 2K’s brand-safe version of Twitter. And with the height difference, he saw every shot as wide open, and hit a bunch.

Every computer-controlled player in the entire game follows what I call “The Curry Rule,” where if they miss a three but receive a kick-out after an offensive rebound, they aren’t going to miss again. Players who don’t shoot threes in real life will sometimes chuck them up, from Jarrett Allen — who made zero last year — to Ben Simmons, who needs no introduction. Even Luke Kornet would jack up triples with no hesitation if he was sufficiently open.

When deciding how to review the 2K25 MyCareer mode I set out to conquer, I began to realize that it was just the world Mazzulla wants to build. Everyone shoots threes without a shred of anxiety, and makes them at a competitive clip. If I played through crafty layups, pick-and-pops or lobs, we would just get boat raced by the Mazzulla Ball apocalypse. I counted at least five games where I felt truly helpless to make a fourth quarter comeback because of how many points my opponent could generate from beyond the arc. It was suffocating, inescapable, and all in service of the spreadsheet that my copy of 2K was trying to maintain.

It was an uncanny valley of basketball; the three-point death of the universe. After spending 20-odd hours thoroughly enjoying the gameplay, I started to wonder if it was worth playing the second half of the season if I was this helpless to stop the barrages. But if this was Mazzulla ball… is this how opposing teams feel playing the Celtics?

Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The 2023-2024 Celtics were one of the most oppressive three-point shooting teams in the history of basketball, with five-out lineups that had no holes and nobody to leave in the corner. At its theoretical peak, the combination of lineup and system of launching threes cannot lose, able to outscore opponents with ludicrous efficiency. NBA 2K25 showed me that theoretical peak, and I’m not sure I like it.

I spent all of last year defending Mazzulla Ball as the main advantage the Celtics needed to exploit to win the championship, and they did just that. But NBA 2K25 has made me wonder what we’re actually doing to these poor teams that have to be on the other end of it. I was, and it sucked.

Perhaps that’s why basketball isn’t played on a spreadsheet; Mazzulla Ball is only allowed because it isn’t infinitely reproducible. Shooting slumps, injuries and defensive adjustments can curb its oppressive influence, things that aren’t easily accessible in NBA 2K25.

The game was fun most of the time, and infuriating other times. But beyond all that, it made me think about the basketball theory I have so strongly supported, and if launching threes is too sinister a way to play the game. Can we really keep doing this to people? After a while, will it start to eat away at our souls? NBA 2K25 has opened my eyes to the endgame of NBA basketball once it’s taken over by robots and AI or transferred to a virtual world like Ready Player One. And I’m not interested in that spreadsheet universe. Not one little bit.