NBA 2K21 will be available next Friday, September 4, and we already have gotten word of the gameplay updates promised for the current-gen version, but on Friday, they dropped their latest trailer, this one showing what the MyCareer mode story will look like.
Your character, “Junior,” is the son of a hoops legend and goes from high school ball to one of 10 colleges that you can pick from –Michigan State, UConn, Florida, Gonzaga, Syracuse, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, UCLA, Villanova, and West Virginia. As has become expected in 2K’s career mode, a number of actors make appearances in the story, including Jesse Williams, Dijmon Hounsou, Mirelle Enos, and Michael K. Williams, along with interactions with cover athletes Damian Lillard and Zion Williamson.
On top of the reveal of the career journey you take prior to the NBA, the trailer also reveals the new neighborhood: 2K Beach. It features all of the customary spots in the 2K Neighborhood, but with a SoCal beach vibe.
It’s nice to see 2K continuing to go with a more traditional storyline after years of preposterous, “you’re a DJ who now gets an NBA tryout after playing a game in a park tournament” type things, and they’re clearly leaning hard into the concept of balancing building your own legacy with that of your father. It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out and, hopefully, they keep up what they did in last year’s game which is a more brief opening story mode before you begin your NBA career, allowing you to get to it in the Association.