15 NBA Players Who Are Better in NBA 2K Than in Real Life

Year: 2013
Rating: 83
Crucial Stat: 18.1 PER
The Difference: Stephen Curry is the only guy on this list who is eventually going to earn his high ratings. Dead-eye shooter, he's become a better point guard in every season he's been a pro and right now, the Warriors look pretty good as a result (among some other things). His rating has gone up every year he's been in the game since 2K10. He started at 69, went to 80, stayed there for a year, and is now an 83. For a promising player who is improving, these seem like fair numbers. And even this season, the defense that everyone has pointed to has shown significant improvement. Steph Curry has a bright future, probably as the second-best guy on a playoff contender. But if you only had the 2K games to go by, you might think Steph Curry is an MVP candidate. For the most part he doesn't miss, whether shooting 26-footers or slicing to the lane. He is a pest on defense and fast so he gets a lot of fast-break layups. Do yourself a favor and just play as the Warriors (they're so much fun) and just avoid all the aggravation.

Year: 2011
Rating: 70
Crucial Stat: 16.4 PER
The Difference: Charlie Villanueva was constantly a beast in the NBA games because he has an outside shot and he is tall. Tall and outside shot, doesn't matter who, they're a beast in the game. So while CV was getting cut by the Dominican Republic basketball team or spending disappointing career coming off the bench for some awful, awful teams (and getting signed to laughable contracts), he's been hitting threes and not being a financial albatross for the Pistons in the 2K series. Even in 2K11 when his 70 rating was generous, a few quick subs, and some drive-and-kick by Rodney Stuckey aided by a slow-to-react AI would have Charlie doing a Larry Bird impression in no time. Despicable.

Year: 2008
Rating: 78
Crucial Stat: 14.4 PER
The Difference: Cuttino Mobley and Video Game Cuttino Mobley had one thing in common: they thought they were Manu Ginobili. But only Video Game Cuttino Mobley actually did anything like Any Version Manu. Don't get me wrong, when he played in the same backcourt as Steve Francis, Mobley was a ton of fun, but later in his career, as injuries him down, he remained a lefty force and rainer of all things three in the game. Coming into NBA 2K8, Mobley was two years removed from his last league-average season (a straight 15 in 2004-05 split between the Magic and the Kings) and in his age 31 season. No longer as quick as he used to be, he should have been rated accordingly. Instead, he was a 78, the go-to rating for dudes on the decline that will inevitably make them a real bitch to play against. While he was quite capable of tickling the twine on a real court, His three-point shooting was routinely among the highest in the (video) game, a far cry from what he was really producing.

Year: 2008
Rating: 84
Crucial Stat: 16.5 PER
The Difference: Again, another solid guy who managed to win some dunk contests and was given a free pass for life from a video game. An 84 back in 2K8, he is blessedly a 69 in the latest. Richardson benefitted from being fairly good for some bad Warriors teams (and quite well during their playoff run), and OK for some OK teams (and a Suns team that lost the conference finals in 2010. He's a solid rotation guy, and always has been, but since he almost starred on some basement-dwellers, we get this. The guy was a sorcerer on the baseline when everything was reduced to polygons. This guy was Dr. J. in some of these games, but to be rated an 84 after coming off a down season (though one in which you showed up in the playoffs) was too kind.

Year: 2008
Rating: 84
Crucial Stat: 15.5 PER
The Difference: For the most part, sports video games are about offense. In an NHL game, it's great to have Henrik Lundqvist making sure nothing goes in, but you really just want the puck back so Brad Richards and Marian Gaborik can work their magic and you can deke your friend out of their chair. The same goes for NBA games. For a while there, Ben Wallace was the best defensive player in basketball. Undersized as he was, he had a ferocious motor and genius-level handle on how to rebound and just play D. Then he went to the Bulls and quickly became overpriced and overmatched. The Bulls weren't the reason this happened mind you, what happened was an underrated player became overrated because he was getting paid more and not producing nearly as well as he used to (the current Bulls have this same problem with Carlos Boozer). Since 2006, Wallace's PER has been above-average once (barely, in 2009, for a terrible Pistons team). That didn't stop NBA2K8 from rating him an 84, ahead of other centers Tyson Chandler (already one of the better defensive presences in the game, and traded by the Bulls to make room to sign Wallace a year prior) and LaMarcus Aldridge (not technically a center, but coming off a really good rookie season and only getting better). The game never tried to make Wallace anything he wasn't on offense (just don't bother shooting, you'll miss), but at the other end of the court he was a demon. Though there was no way to predict he's decline would be so rapid, the writing had begun to appear on the wall by 2K8.

Year: 2005
Rating: 79
Crucial Stat: 12.7 PER
The Difference: During the 2003-04 season, Ray Allen got hurt and the SuperSonics looked to be in trouble. Enter Ronald "Flip" Murray, a former Division II player of the year who had come over to Seattle the year prior with other parts in the Gary Payton-Ray Allen blockbuster. In 12 starts to begin that season, he looked like the next Gilbert Arenas. But it is the brightest stars that burn out the fastest and Flip lost whatever magic was making him a god on the hardwood (those first 12 games were so nuts, he ended the season with a 15.4 PER!). He bounced around after that and last played on a bizarrely constructed Bulls team during the 2009-10 season, and it's weird that he hasn't caught on somewhere since (he can score it a little). In video games, Flip Murray is not waiting for his phone to ring. In 2K5, he was rated a 79(!) based solely on the magic he conjured briefly the year prior. Visual Concepts never added him to 2K4 and must've felt bad so they bumped him up about ten points too high. Flip Murray never really played defense, and that wasn't such a problem until he started slowing down on the offensive end. But in a video game, it's the kind of thing that leads to a player look like he's playing pop-a-shot in a video game.

Year: 2008
Rating: 85
Crucial Stat: 13.7 PER
The Difference: There is so much to like about Kirk Hinrich, NBA basketball player. He plays hard and is selfless, everything we as a people have come to expect from a coach's son. He bravely quarterbacked some entertaining Bulls teams in the wake of the team losing Jay Williams to a motorcycle accident and not getting Dwyane Wade in the draft. But he was an 85 in 2K8! Admittedly, the PG class that year was weak with only Andre Miller and Mo Williams as guys you would probably rate above Captain Kirk, who was coming off a 17.0 PER season. But with in-game defenders focusing on Ben Gordon, Kirk was free to get open threes and swish them with abandon, a thing that didn't really happen in the actual NBA because Kirk, for all his heart, doesn't shoot all that well, which is why defenses focused so much on Ben Gordon, and then Derrick Rose, then John Wall, then Joe Johnson, and will soon again focus on Derrick Rose when he returns from injury. Hinrich is tough and wants to hit that open three, but we don't all get what we want, do we?

Year: 2013
Rating: 87
Crucial Stat: 16.2 PER
The Difference: When UConn lost to George Mason in the 2006 NBA tournament, I was happy. An underdog shocked a perennial contender and Rudy Gay lost. Rudy Gay was supposed to tear college basketball up that year and he didn't. When he was drafted by the Rockets and traded to the Grizzlies, I was happy. The Grizzlies were bottom-feeders of the first order. When the Grizzlies made a surprise playoff run in 2011, it was because Zach Randolph was awesome and Rudy Gay was out hurt. For years I had been reading about how Rudy Gay was incredible and going to do so and so and he never did. That's a lie though. Rudy Gay is very good at basketball, but he is not as good at basketball as his teammates Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph who check in with dual 83s to Gay's 87 in this year's version. Randolph and Gasol make up arguably the best frontcourt in the NBA on what is arguably the best team in the Western Conference this season. But in video games it's Gay who is the beast. He slashes to the hoop like a young Kobe and can hit Js in transition like few others. Maybe he really is an 87, but there's no way the beasts roaming the paint and getting him open looks (have you seen those two pass? Swoon.) shouldn't be rated higher.

Year: 2013
Rating: 78
Crucial Stat: 15.4 PER
The Difference: If Nate Robinson was 6-6, he'd be Jamal Crawford. Completely one-dimensional scorer who thinks he's a #1 but really needs to come off the bench? You better believe it. Weighing it at a 78 in the 2K13, Crawford seems like he might be able to earn that rating playing along side the few supremely talented members of the Clippers (Chris Paul could have made Michael Doleac look good). But again, he's the type of player who has either been the number one guy on a terrible team (early 2000s Bulls and Knicks, what's up?) or the third or fourth option on a team that gets knocked out in the first round. 78s should be reserved for promising rookies drafted around #8, Chandler Parsons, or Grant Hill-types enjoying Grant Hill-type solid late-career runs (Grant Hill is a 77 this year).

Year: 2013
Rating: 77
Crucial Stat: 15.6 PER
The Difference: Speaking of chuckers who are a delight to play with in video games but who will make you tear out your hair if he's really on the team you like, Nate Robinson! Deadspin's Barry Petchesky perhaps said it best recently, describing his shooting-addiction thusly: "Each ill-advised chuck would be more glorious than the last. You'd see it happening. His teammates would disappear, his eyes would narrow, tunnel vision setting in. If he was off the ball, he'd eye it like it was the last ball on earth, ignoring his man and his mark and the shot clock all. You'd see him turning to shoot before the pass was on his fingertips. Nate, no!" No greater a publication than this very same one last year called out his 2K12 rating of 74 (the same as James Harden because everyone at Visual Concepts was drunk that day, right?) and said a 67 was in order. Still too high, I say now, a year of hindsight to my advantage. This year he's an outrageous 77, the same as Lin, Darren Collison, Taj Gibson, and Tyson Chandler. Preposterous. Nate has an above average PER for his career (15.6), but only because he has played on some truly bad teams that needed his good-intention style of play to give the team a semblance of staying in the game. Nate Robinson is a shorter Ricky Davis; his reaches for the stars are only noteworthy because he's the size of most of the guys in your rec league. Hopefully 2K14 will correct this grave error.

Year: 2012
Rating: 76
Crucial Stat: 15.2 PER
The Difference: JR Smith is a troll favorite in just about any iteration of the game he's featured in. He dunks, he rains threes. He's great. If you played with the Knicks at all in 2K12, you undoubtedly "fixed" the roster so that he started instead of Landry Fields. The joy he can bring to you as a pixelated chucker and skyflyer is only matched by the joy he brings to the world everyday as a user of Twitter. After playing for a bit in China during the lockout prior to last season, he joined the Knicks in February 2012 and was rated a 76 overall. His PER the prior season was 16.4 and last season he clocked in at 15.2, but that 76 doesn't take into account this tweet from 2012 Knicks media day from HoopsWorld's Tommy Beer: JR Smith, when asked if there is any shot he doesn't like: "Well... not too many of them," said Swish smiling. That is JR Smith in a nutshell. There are bigger chuckers in the league, and on this list, but he is one of the most infuriating ones because a thirty-foot heat-check three is just the same to him as a driving layup (something he could probably do most of the time if he wanted to). It's also what makes Swish a joy to watch if you're not a Knicks fan and a pleasure to control with a PS3 controller regardless.

Year: 2013
Rating: 82
Crucial Stat: 19.0 PER
The Difference: Chauncey Billups is an 82 in the most recent edition of the title. 82! That's one point below Luol Deng and Joakim Noah and above (above!) guys like Tyreke Evans, Serge Ibaka, Gerald Wallace (81s, those three), Anthony Davis, Brook Lopez, Jason Kidd, and Ray Allen. Kidd and Allen being rated lower is the most egregious, though there's definitely an argument to be made for Ibaka, mostly because Billups has never been a better PG than Jason Kidd and Ray Allen is going to be effective through his 40s, most likely. Billups is so far removed from the guy who took over the 2004 playoffs. He's played two games so far this season (not all that well, mind you) and really hasn't been the Chauncey Billups who deserves to be rated in the 80s in a sports video game since his second second season with the Nuggets. This is a man who was amnesty claused by the Knicks last season (yes, so they could fit Tyson Chandler in under the cap). The Knicks started Toney Douglas at point guard opening day last season and later let Mike Bibby and Baron Davis take a hack at things when Jeremy Lin (who was not on the opening day roster) wasn't setting the world on fire. Chauncey Billups is an 82 like I'm Detlef Schrempf.

Year: 2006
Rating: 71
Crucial Stat: 10.9 PER
The Difference: Jonathan Bender is one of the biggest flops in NBA history, but since he played for a series of fairly good Pacers teams, he is lost in the list of great NBA flops. He was taken with the 5th pick in the 1999 draft by the Raptors and spun off for Antonio Davis. The Pacers thought they were getting the next Kevin Garnett. They did not. Davis managed to bruise his way to nine more mostly effective seasons after the trade and Bender never really cracked the starting five for the Pacers and battled injuries. Both retired after the '06 season (with Bender making a disastrous comeback attempt with the Knicks in 2009), but the problem is that Bender is still only 31 and Davis is now 44. In NBA 2K6, he was a 71 (athletic, with a lot of dunks), and this was two years and multiple injuries after his breakout-that-turned-out-not-be-one breakout in the 2004 playoffs. In 2019, during his comeback attempt, someone was nice enough to make a CAP or him that put him at 55. That was still too high. (Note: Bender is a decent human being, he founded a nonprofit in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina among other things.) At 10.9 for his career in PER, he was a little more effective than the uneffective Michael Doleac.

Year: 2001
Rating: 99
Crucial Stat: 20.4 PER
The Difference: Vince Carter is not like Michael Doleac. He was at one point easily among the top 15 players in the game, but he is also one of the serious wasted potential guys in NBA history. With a career PER of 20.4, Carter remains an above-average rotation guy, coming off the bench for the aforementioned Dallas Mavericks, who could still be a starter for some of the league's lottery-bound squads (not a compliment, though). But do you remember Vinsanity? Do you remember when Carter made mincemeat out of all challengers at the 2000 dunk contest? Do you have any idea what the NBA would have looked like if he and Tracy McGrady remained teammates? Vince Carter was very good for a time there, but the makers of the NBA 2K games went a little overboard. In NBA 2K1 He was a 99 offensive rating in the game, ranking one notch below Kobe Bryant, who at that point had only begun his campaign of world domination. VC was unstoppable in the game. I once scored 40 with him against an admittedly crappy Hawks team on nothing but dunks, layups, and and-ones without missing. 2000-01 ended up being his best season as a pro, and it was the Hawks, sure. But c'mon. That season showed us that all you needed to stop VC was a same-day flight as a Game 7 after getting his degree (or just Allen Iverson and the 76ers being better).

Year: 2008
Rating: 73
Crucial Stat: 10.8 PER
The Difference: Michael Doleac had a perfectly fine NBA career as a perfectly fine backup center for a number of teams. Coming out of Utah, and fresh off a surprise run to the NCAA title game, he was a lottery pick, but ended up with a career mirroring that of Brad Lohaus. Again, nothing to sneeze at, especially since he won a ring with the 2006 Miami Heat as the guy tasked with spelling Shaq for a few minutes at a time. However, for some reason, going into what would be his final year in the pros, NBA 2K8 decided to rate Doleac an astonishing 73, fairly high for a man with a career PER of 10.8 (well below average, remember), and only five points behind Chris Kaman who went on to have his best season as a pro in 2007-08. Now Kaman is starting for a Mavericks team that has playoff-sleeper potential once Dirk Nowitzki returns and Doleac has been out of the League since spring '08 and is in med school, his unnecessarily high NBA 2K8 rating chief among the reasons for his early retirement.