As a longtime fan of both the NBA and Spike Lee, I couldn't have been more excited to find out he would craft the story for NBA 2K16's career mode. I'm a former theater kid, so of course I did improv at one point in my career. They always encouraged us to make bold creative choices. If you're going to suck, suck big, they would advise. I wonder if Spike and I had the same improv teacher.
At the beginning, it's shocking how little of this career mode's story is about you, the player. By the way, your name is "Freq," which is short for Frequency Vibrations. This is a nickname your mom gave you because of how much you kicked in the womb. It only gets weirder from here, folks. Your twin sister, who got the normal name of Cece somehow, hates your girlfriend Yvette. Both of them are unsure about your agent Dom.
But the one person in your life pretty much everybody hates, and the true focus of "Livin Da' Dream" is your best friend, Victor Van Lier. He's such a bad influence the team's owner bans him from coming to games. Other than sponging off your fame, his only attempt at working is his plan to become a rapper known as Boss-Key-Yacht. I swear, I am still not making any of this up.
As Vic becomes more and more embarrassing, it makes zero sense why Freq doesn't just cut him loose. Of course there's a big reveal that explains all this, kind of. It seems that Freq killed (or almost killed) somebody in a fight and Vic covered it up. Yeah, this story is completely insane even by movie standards. In comparison to most sports game career mode stories, in which the biggest twist is usually where you go in the draft, it is even more ridiculous.
Vic basically wants to blackmail you into financing his fledgling rap career, and you agree at least to let him you use your car. He then leads the police on a high-speed chase and ends up getting himself killed. He leaves a letter explaining his actions, as best as anyone could:
I've been one of the biggest advocates for career modes in sports games doing something other than "Score 30 points in this game to crack the starting lineup." But yeah, this was aggressively not it.
With all that said, Spike certainly went for it. I will admit that I don't remember what happened in the story modes of most sports games. But one thing's for sure. Me and millions of other players will never forget NBA 2K16, one way or another.