NBA 2K25 just launched Season 8 of its popular My Team mode, featuring A'ja Wilson. I use the term featuring extremely loosely. Even though she is one of the game's cover athletes, her being "featured" this season amounts to completing some challenges based on her career accomplishments. I was hoping 2K would finally take the sensible step and add women to the mode.
Less Duplication Would Be Great for the Mode
By this time of the year 2K has unveiled every athlete it bought the rights to. In Season 7, the special player you got for purchasing the Pro Pass was a 100 overall Zion Williamson. This season that reward is Dr. J, the same player as the overall Level 40 reward. The only difference is the "special" one can play point guard.
All these card-collecting modes lose steam around the midway point and resort to "Out of Position" cards and other such nonsense. Adding WNBA players would double the amount of options to choose from. Can you imagine what a really good Caitlin Clark card would fetch in the marketplace?
The WNBA is More Popular Than Ever, and 2K Should Take Advantage
NBA 2K prides itself on bringing us every aspect of basketball, whether it's legends such as Wilt Chamberlain returning to the court in My Team or your Space Jam-inspired create-a-player taking ankles at The Park. But women are sidelined in the game's most profitable and popular mode for zero real-world reason. Ticket sales are better than ever, ratings are better than ever, and the most popular players are receiving Tim Tebow levels of coverage. 2K25 looks more and more outdated every year they don't do something about this.
Competitors Have Already Added Women to their Ultimate Team Modes
EA Sports, the originators of everything Ultimate Team, have already added women to the EA Sports FC series. It was absolutely the right move, and the game is better for it. Women's soccer is growing by leaps and bounds as well, but it's not growing as fast as the WNBA currently is.
2K's own WWE series finally realized it's a fighting game, and female fighters have gone toe-to-toe with the guys since the beginning of that genre. WWE 2K25 added intergender matches, because we're seeing women such as Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley use their physicality against men more often on WWE programming.
I understand the center position would be the hardest to balance. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O' Neal are dominant presences in the paint. But as I mentioned, they gave a Zion Williamson card the center position and he can't post Kareem up either. It's perfectly fine to start at positions such as guard and forward, then work on a solution for center. But they should get started.
I hope the next My Team season we see featuring a WNBA legend actually allows her to play in the mode.