I'm gonna level with you. This game is pretty dead already. Your odds of finding people online, let alone people that will play with you are slim to none. It's down to luck at this point.

I'm afraid the odds of getting to play with Barney again are exceedingly low :(



Anyone who's just come into this series for the first time, thinking it'd be a good time to grab it while the price is down, not really knowing what you're in for. I bought it about 2-3 months ago and barely got to try any of the online stuff they took away from 2k20 to push 2k21. Honestly i don't reccomend buying the game at this point, but this is how you basically get the most out of the time you have left with it, before they completely remove everything that's online.

Anyway, let's get into it.

Creating your player
The most important decision you make in this game, bar none, is the team you play for in MyCareer, and your character build for the same mode. There are a lot of guides that go into character creation in-depth, and I recommend you go through one or two of those if you don't know what you're doing, and pair your team to the best of your abilities, otherwise you're gonna grow very frustrated very quickly.

This game doesn't really scale well to beginner and advanced players, so what's going to end up happening is you're going to get the floor wiped with yourself if you don't pick too wisely. Take for instance The Chicago Bulls. Not the best and not the worst team in the league, but a massive mistake for you if your player is a Power Forward, as they already have a pretty decent one in Lauri Markannen. You'll end up on the bench more than not, and your team will lose game after game, despite your efforts, even if you reach something like overall 90.

starting stats are a joke, but the devs are the only ones laughing.

It's not programmed to just give you the wins in the first year to make you feel better, like some certain other games might be, so what you need to do is pick carefully, at least in the beginning.
There's a lot of great teams out there, but my personal recs for some of the positions are

Nets for Power Forwards. Kyrie and Durant will carry you through the early stages when you can barely shoot to save your life.

Bucks for shooting guards. Wesley Matthews (the guy you'll be replacing) is a 76 OVR and Giannis is a demigod. This spot is ideal for a rebounding glasscleaner who can help with rebounds.

Clippers for Centers. Ideally for defensive centers. The guy whose spot you're taking is a 77 and you'll have Kawhi on your team, who's one of the highest rated players in the league.

Lakers for Point Guards. You'll be taking Green (77) out and helping Anthony Davis (94) and Lebron James (97).

Warriors (if you want to play with Stephen Curry (95), for Power Forwards, or Centers.
And Trailblazers for Small Forwards. Every other spot is over 83, and Damian Lillard is a 94

Be warned though. With great wingspan comes great BO


Here's a couple helpful guides if you want a better, more in-depth look at all the teams in the league
Hoopshype[hoopshype.com] for ratings on all teams and players
this reddit guide on picking your team features recs on every team, but has some outdated information and most of it is guesses. Your best bet is to crosscheck with the other link, just in case their info is off. It most often isn't but better to be safe than sorry.

As for your build, there's a LOT of guides and 'top builds' and so on and so forth. Pick with your team in mind and you probably wont have much trouble with it. This is why I rec you pick a team first. That way you can pick your build to suit your team and be more effective. No point in trying to make a Giannis type build if you play for the Bucks, or a Kyrie if you're in the Nets.

Some of the more reputable sources for builds I can rec are
2kLab[www.nba2klab.com] pretty handholdy, good for beginners, covers a lot.
Best archetypes for each position[realsport101.com] for a bigger range of more position based selections. Also if you scroll down there's some more general badge tips.

When in doubt though, you can always just youtube how to build X player. You could make your own Giannis, or a more attractive Yao Ming.

You'll be far from amazed by your player's capabilities when you first start out. Your overall is so low you can barely land a shot and if you're new to this game, there's just no way to compensate for your lack of character's actual skill. So what you need to do is grind some VC so you can pump some points into your attributes, unless you intend for your first player to essentially be a throw-away.

There's a couple of ways to get VC, but these are the most effective:

GM modes:

This is that mode that lets you humiliate elite players with horrible outfit choices. Aka the closest thing to playing god in this game.

1. Long AFK method
Create a league in GM mode. Doesn't matter how many teams or what you pick, as long as you control all the teams, and set the quarter lengths to max, and the difficulty to the highest. Pick a team, hit "Play Game", plug in a controller, and make sure the cpu controls both teams. The game will play as normal, only you wont control either team, but when the game has finished, you will receive about 1,100VC when you quit out of the game and back into GM mode. The downside of this method is it takes about an hour.
2. Quick burst method
With the same settings as before, you create a league and play games, only instead of playing the games, you pick 'simulate with simcast live'. Pick a team, then simulate the game at x6 speed. A quarter at 1/6 of the time takes 2 minutes, so a game would be roughly 8 minutes, give or take depending on time-outs called. You may not get as much VC with this method, but if you're not going away for like an hour, this is the method you want, to grind cash. This provides you with 300 every 8 minutes, so roughly 2,100 an hour.

MyCareer mode:

Your single player mode. Leans towards online multiplayer a lot, and I'm not sure you'll even be able to play it offline. You definitely wont be able to go to the neighborhood, and you'll be missing certain boosts at the very least when 2k shuts down their servers in under 2 years, that's for sure, so you'll need to try to get whatever trophies correspond to mycareer asap.

1. Every day you can pick up 500 VC from your agent's office in the neighborhood. It doesn't seem like much on paper but if you pick this up every day for a month, that adds up to about 15,000. It's free VC. The only downside is you have to see your manager everyday, in an unskipable cutscene that takes like 15 seconds.
At least you don't have to talk to this guy everyday. You only have to speak to the guy managing you.

2. Daily Spin. Sometimes you get cash, (range is from 500 to 2000 VC) but either way, it's worth it to take your spins everyday, because even if you don't get VC, you might get something else that's valuable. You'll be fine, just as long as it's not like a 2xRep boost. Those are almost completely useless when you're starting out because people will avoid you like you have the 'rona.
so pray you get anything but that.

3. Throwaways. You can make a couple throwaway players, and take on the single player games. Each game is good for at least 500 VC, and considering where you start out, you'll be subbed out for most of the game itself so you wont have to play through or sit through a whole game. Not as time efficient as the quick burst GM mode method, but you can always grind some contracts and make a bit of extra cash From your sponsorships. I advise saving up your VC for your main player, and not wasting any on building up your throwaways.

Miscellaneous

1. Practice in your loft or in the team practice court, and you can earn some bonus VC. There's different bonuses based on different actions, but you only get a tiny bit of VC from this. What I recommend doing though is inviting your team's players to your loft, because that can improve your team chemistry. It's only 1% though.
2. Play 3vs3 or 2 on 2 in the neighborhood. The downside is you will get creamed, and you don't get that much VC. Whatever VC you get depends on your performance, and when you start out, your performance will be bad, considering you don't have stats or really strategy or anything else on your side, so you will get absolutely smashed there. The only upside is you will get a teeny tiny bit of rep, which unlocks a bunch of stuff in game.
but odds are, you'll get cocboked. If anyone even plays with you to begin with. Odds of even finding an online game are so low and time-wise it's so inefficient that the practice VC is a surer thing.
3. There's Daily trivia but it's only one hour a day, and honestly I don't think it even works. I haven't ever really chanced on it.
4. There's also that 2k tv trivia stuff. You can google the answers if you're that hard up for cash. Not sure if this is still valid either though.
5. You wont be able to net these at first but once you've bulked up your build, go for the daily bonuses. They can net you a hefty amount if you can pull them off, from 1-2K usually, and don't require much extra effort if you're far enough into the game. I don't rec trying them at first though, cause you're not going to be able to pull them off unless they're cumulative, like racking up 50 points in total as opposed to something like getting five steals in one game.

First thing you want to do when you boot up this mode is go ahead and use as many locker codes as you still can. Your first hour in MyTeam should look like this, but it's worth it.

Open your packs, put your evolution cards in your lineup and start 3 on 3 single player games. The rewards wont be great but the upside of this mode is you only use up 3 contracts worth of players per game. This mode you want to sleep on, and only log into like once a day for a while. Focus on grinding VC but log into this mode and get your daily bonus once a day.

Once you've built up your collection a bit, and amassed a few extra contracts you can start taking on the challenges. Do the first level of each spotlight challenge, which grants you one evolution card per game, and use these to build up your deck even more. Ideally, aim to improve your evolution cards with every game. If you have to, go into the settings and select to manually edit your lineup/subs and time outs in game so coach doesn't pull out your players when they're a basket away from evolving.

When you've got a decent team going, start filling in extra spots with crappy players you wont actually use, because this mode is a huge drain on your contract resources. Save your shoes and other perks for later on in the game, and focus on evolving your spotlight rookie win cards for now.

3 VS 3

excuse my cringe nostalgic kids hockey movie logo

One good thing about 3 vs 3 is that it scales your opponents roughly to your player levels so if one member in your team is a 80 and one a 90 and the last one is 78, you might get to verse someone with 92, 75 and 81 or something along those lines, so it's not the worst idea to use up some of your worse cards, in combination with some of your better ones in this mode too. I've got infinite contracts on Kobe so I use him on everything, but I can manage a win with like, Kobe, Kevin Garnett and Wilt Chamberlain if only to help Kevin G with his evolution.

The bad thing is they get increasingly tougher as you get more wins and even if you try to quit out of a loss, you still use up 1 game in your players' contracts. So lose too many times and you could end up having to apply more contracts or switching players a bunch.

Not the most efficient way to evolve your players because games are much shorter, and very hard to defend with only three players on your team, BUT there's a way to sort of cheese this mode by using evolved players because the game matches cards to their original card version, rather than their evolved form, so if you're struggling, pick a few slightly evolved cards to be able to get a bit of a leg up on the competition.

Also aim to put at least 2 good defenders on your team. 2 defenders and one person that can shoot would be ideal. Maybe 2 centers and a power forward or small forward or something like that. Someone fast would be good, cause with only 3 opponents it's easier to find lanes to the hoop. You have a wider berth to work with in triple threat. And some good D is necessary to get rebounds and blocks in order to get the ball to your main attacker.

There's no 3 second rule in triple threat, so you don't need to worry about sticking too close to the paint so one strat is to just stand around there with your big man.

Another is to mainly use evolution cards and like a 60-70 Overall in order to get the AI to match you with much weaker players.

And go for layups and dunks rather than trying to shoot your way out of a deficit. This mode is lowkey rigged against you, and the AI tends to shoot perfectly even when they're only saphire or emerald, so use any cheese you can to get you a win. The game switches to Hall of Fame (the highest) difficulty surprisingly early and stays that way, so you need any way you can to get those wins if you want to make this mode worth your while.

Don't get me wrong, it's worth it, you're using 3 contracts per game, and each game is not that long that grinding them feels like it takes forever, and the rewards offset the cost of playing, ranging from cards to MT but the games themselves suck to play and are anything but a guaranteed win. At least with other modes you are almost guaranteed a few hundred MT per game, and a lot more chances to rack up stats for your evolutions, even if you ultimately end up losing the game.

Spotlight challenges

These tend to give you either cards or money, but you need to use up a whole team for each one of them, so if you're not careful you could run out of contracts if you try to take these on too quick. The best part about them is they tend to give you evolution cards, which are the only kind that can be upgraded to have better stats through certain achievements.


What you want is to evolve these cards as soon as possible, so that even if you are straight out of luck when it comes to unpacking good cards, you at least have something to fall back on, in these evolution cards. The more you evolve them the better they get, and they're the only cards that do that, so you're better off using the crud out of them while you're still playing the spotlight challenges on rookie.

Currency

This mode features 3 different types of currency. VC that you're better off spending in other modes, at least at first, MT which are these MyTeam points most useful for buying cards to fill out your sets, and contracts if need be, and finally these tokens you're sparsely given, that are also used for purchasing cards, and like the MTs have no other purpose outside of this mode. 3 vs 3 is best for tokens, as it's shorter games and uses fewer players, but spotlights and other challenges are where you're most likely to get most MTs.

Your best bet is to save these currencies up. Bit by bit you'll earn cards through daily logins and challenges, so save your money until you've hit a wall. I used up a chunk of change to get a heat card to get my geologist badge, but found out later on that in 3 vs 3 you can unlock one with a certain number of wins. It was an absurd amount of wins, but it was the only card I needed for that trophy, and since you need nearly three thousand cards for the goat achievement, it wasn't really worth the money I spent.

If you think you can do the daily/monthly/weekly challenges go for it, otherwise just claim your daily login bonus and hoard up cards for the first couple of weeks. The only other way to get stuff is the vault, but that's a rare treat, more than a stable source of income. You wont see these doors open very often. And when you do, the reward isn't exactly huge, so it's barely worth mentioning.It's in the 3vs3 mode, and it has a small chance of unlocking every time you win a game. It's really underwhelming though.

There's a random dropper in online triple threat, that's supposedly worth it but I never gave it a shot so I can't vouch for it. Odds are you'll be up against someone who's not new, since these things are never skill/rank matched, and you'll just end up with virtually nothing. At least for the first few games. They do relent and give you a drop, even if you lose, from your fourth game onwards. You're better off aiming for the 1,000 win reward in offline mode, that gets you a Galaxy Opal Dominique Wilkins and over a hundred thousand MTs (and a bunch of other rewards) along the way.

We've covered getting started, but here's some tips on how to actually play the game itself.

Assuming you're fresh out of the character creation menu, your have a certain amount of ability points you can invest in your character, which will cost you a varying amount of VC. What you're gonna want to do in order to give your main character their best chance at the game, is grind a bunch of VC so you can get your OVR up to a decent number before you start your career.

First few games there might not be that much of a difference between you and the people you play against, but the moment you start playing in the NBA reality is going to hit you hard.


When you start your career you'll need to concentrate on one thing alone: Defence.

Hear me out. You're thinking "But I'm an offensive player! That's now what I want to do!" and you're right, and I agree with you, but here's the thing. Your character will get graded every game and that score will depend on your offence just as much as your defence, and if your defence is tanking, then it can really mess you up.

For Defence the most important thing to do is stick close to the player you're guarding. There's an arrow that points to whoever you have to guard, and R2 and L2 are your best friends in this mode. Put yourself between the player you're guarding and the basket, and if they get the ball, try to time your jump (triangle) just right to get a block.

If someone's taken a shot, and you're near the basket, try jumping anyway, even if you don't block, you get a chance of catching the rebound, and that's very important as well.

As for attacking, what you want to do is get as close to the net as possible before you shoot, and if free, let it loose. When you build up your stats a bit, you'll be able to make further shots, but at first, you're gonna want to get as close to the rim as possible, without being completely covered by your opponents. You wont really be able to take them on without losing the ball unless you've got a few appropriate badges under your belt, so focus on creating that distance before you try to shoot.

this for example, is a no-no, at least when you start out.

This, however, is a good amount of space. There's one guy in front, but take a step back and you're golden.


Another thing to note is the buttons you press. Starting out you want to stick to square for shooting, and triangle or x for passes, and refrain from trying to shoot by holding the right stick down. Those shots are riskier and way harder to make, and even if you're wide open, unless you dunk (which has a 100% chance of landing a basket) you'll have a harder chance at landing your shots.


Two other things you must consider are fame and chemistry. Risky shots increase your fame, but playing the safe route, shooting only when clear, sharing the ball around and stuff will improve your chemistry with the other players on your team, which you'll need if you want them to pass you the ball when you call for it. Fame only really helps you net more VC so if at all possible, focus on chemistry first and foremost. If it's already 100% though, feel free to give cockier answers and take more credit during interviews, to boost your fans instead since you can't raise chemistry more than 100% anyway.

When it comes to building up your attributes, Invest VC depending on your build. I recommend focusing on one thing first, such as 3s or mid-range shots, or driving or whatever. Get that high enough, and then focus on the rest. You're better off being really good at something, and bad or midling at everything else, than just meh at everything, because the game is structured in a way that forces you to get really picky about where you spend your points later on, blocking off ability points behind these experience levels that you wont notice until later in the game.

When you first start the game, the AI wont really have you pegged, but by the time you're nearing the middle of the first season, and you have a decent amount of time in the game, they'll start to clock onto you, and they'll begin to gang up on you, and make it harder for you to score. If that happens to you, don't panic, just switch to assisting instead. Hold down the triangle and have one of your teammates run up to score an easy bucket, and get yourself an assist, or just press triangle and hope for the best. If the guy running to the basket is way too covered though, hit circle to cancel out of that, and maybe pass it onto someone else to avoid the other guys stealing the ball.

Lastly, the thing that really kicks your character up a notch, apart from boosts (both from training at the gym, and the ones you buy/win at trivia) are badges. The game is pretty heavily depended on them actually. There's a chance that you got some suggestions when you made your build, if you used a guide, but in case you didn't, here's a link to a good bit of information[www.nba2klab.com] on them, and which ones are the best to use. You can always try youtube and stuff, but most youtubers seem to get their facts from the research done on 2kLab anyway, so you might as well just go straight to the source, or wherever you got your build from.

Misc

At some point you'll unlock a bunch of free shoes from the brand you're sponsored by, so it's not worth it to sink a bunch of cash in shoes.

they look purdy but they're not worth it, mate.

3 point and dunk competitions don't give you anything, so if you're like me, don't stress them. Same goes for rising star game, iirc. I wont the 3pt comp my first year and didn't get anything, not even VC.

At some point your game will probably glitch after a game, during a contract negotiation. The only way to get around that glitch and keep playing the game is to purposely fail the negotiation by asking too much, and have the company walk away. They never patched this, and there's literally no other way around it.

Here's the gist of what you should do when starting this game from scratch.

Start MyCareer. Either speed through story mode or skip it.What you need immediately is a throwaway with access to neighborhood that you can use to get your daily login bonuses and playing through the prologue will only slow you down, and maybe make you miss a day or two of freebies so make a throwaway player, and use them for that.

Daily Targets
Hop onto the neighbourhood in MyCareer
Pick up the 500 VC from your manager
Get your daily spin in
Hit your daily goal if you can. Be realistic about your expectations though. You wont get this everyday and that's okay. When you've advanced to the point where you have a wide range of builds you can use for these challenges, your odds are greater, but don't try to force yourself early on.
Switch to MyTeam (but don't do it through the building in the neighborhood because that makes a card out of your player as they are now, which you can't update when they've gotten better or anything like that. Don't make the same mistake I did, and walk in with bad hair and stats X_X)
Get your MyTeam login bonus
Do any daily tasks you can

And if you're willing and able to, have a bit of a VC grind.

The hardest and longest achievement by far is the GOAT one. You need 3000 cards in MyTeam to get this one, and while at first they drop like boxers in a frat house, they do eventually get stingier with these a little later on. Here's some tips for stretching those last few VCs and MTs.

First thing you want to do is go through as many challenges as you can.

Go straight to Spotlight Challenges and do the first one or two levels in each one, from Dwyane Wade to Jeremy Lin. That's 10 evo cards you get for some pretty easy games. Skip the team ones for now until you have enough players to start working on them, and don't worry about the medium to late levels of the Spotlight Challenges, as getting the required players is a huge gamble.

Focus on the Weekly challenges instead. Not as lucrative as the team or player spotlight challenges admittedly but there's no prerequisites for these so you can go through them as quick as you like. These start with 3 minute quarters but as the difficulty increases they tend to get longer which makes them ideal for grinding your evo cards. And while they don't give cards really, they do at least reward you with a few tokens if you stick it out through each week.

At the week 41 mark there's a difficulty spike to Superstar. I would switch to Domination before attempting that if I don't feel confident enough in trying it because they do have some extra requirements for winning, such as getting a certain number of points or dunks, and the Domination challenges are easier. The upside is they give out a lot of MT AND more than double the tokens you get from completing most other weeks.

Other notable Challenges:

Kobe Bryant's first level spotlight for a diamond contract.
All Time Spotlight Sim

Then you want to work on domination.

First level domination is easy enough and a guaranteed win with little to no effort. Eventually you can work your way up to the second star and so on, but start off with level 1 and go through all the '20 domination and you'll get yourself 30 cards, and 20 Tokens when you complete that collection.


When you get to the third level of domination challenges you'll start to get evo cards which is a big up. These challenges are harder, but by this point you should have enough practice to be able to pull through. I rec finishing these up before going for the Superstar Weekly challenges.

How to get (more) cards

There's three more ways you can get cards, the auction house, the pack market, and through tokens.

This is the pack I rec you go for.

The pack market is where you'll get the bulk of your cards and MT really. Grind VC in the other modes and save up for the 50K League Series 2 10 pack boxes. Probably the best value as these deluxe packs have a chance of giving 2 player cards instead of just one. You don't want to go for the 100k 20 pack box for two reasons. There's no real advantage money-wise to getting 20 packs at a time, whereas there's a slight discount to buying 10 instead of one at a time. And for seconds, when you do unbox these packs you have a chance of pulling a card with a dynamic goal.

Dynamic goals are card specific 1 day goals that grant you a little extra MT if you succeed, and you have a chance of getting one every time you unbox a player basically. This means the more boxes you go through in one day, the more goals you risk unlocking and if you get tasked too many it can be overwhelming and you might not have enough time to do them all, which is a pity as it's a pretty good amount of money you can make off these.

Anyway, get your packs, unbox them, take your doubles and auction them off, and sell any shoes you don't want for some extra dosh. They're pretty useless to be honest, but people will still buy them. Shoes, contracts and other consumables (health cards I think) don't count towards the goat achievement so just sell the excess for some extra MT. And if you have double players and stuff always auction them off. You can make a bit more money by doing that rather than just quick-selling them. I personally keep one pair of each shoe and put diamond shoes on my most used players but you don't have to do that and in most guides, people just toss them.

You could really make a pretty penny off of auctions, if you luck out.

Next is the token market. Use tokens on reward cards rather than the rewards market. For starters, you can find the cards on the rewards market in auctions sometimes, and for seconds, there are completion rewards for getting x amount of emerald or saphire reward cards and so on. Purchase 30 Emerald cards and you get the Emerald ball and so on (check these in the Lifetime Goals section of your agenda, which is found on the MyTeam Home Page by clicking the 'Agenda' square on the bottom right of the screen) and not only do these balls count towards the GOAT challenge, but they also count towards other collection rewards such as the disco ball, which in turn counts towards the 'collection complete balls' collection and nets you the fire ball. Also you wont have to worry about wasting your tokens on doubles. You can only really get each card once, and you get to pick which card you want to boot, so it's a way better way to spend your tokens.

First few levels are meh, but later levels guarantee diamond cards and so on which is great.

Then there's auctioning. What you need to do is look for cheap cards (jerseys and coaches and balls also count, so if you're down to your last thousand MT that's a good way to stretch it) that count towards your GOAT achievement. Basically anything but shoes, health cards and contracts (unless you need contracts asap, but I rec just getting those through login bonuses or card packs).



The cheapest league pack is almost 4K MT and it contains one player. For a pack that contains maybe 2 players you'd pay 6K so a good price range for auction cards is about 3 thousand MT. I go even lower and try to steer under 2 thousand but it's rare to find cards you can buy for that much, and even rarer to find good ones at that price point.

You can still 'snipe' cheap cards for 1,500 to 1,800 MT but it's going to be very rare and a once in a while thing. I rec scrolling all the way down and excluding user-owned cards so you don't accidentally buy any card you already have, and setting the max buyout to 3,000. You're better off snagging a card that cheap as soon as you see it rather than trying to save a few MTs by starting a bidding war. Galaxy opals may start at 500 but the second you put down your bid you're already outbid by someone and they're not worth really trying for.

I rec aiming for evolution cards cause they get stronger the more you play with them. Gold and silver cards are surprisingly hard to find cheap. You're more likely to find cheaper sapphire and ruby cards for some weird reason. And check your collections and try to complete ones with lucrative rewards such as Tokens or cards. Current NBA series gives 20 Tokens for each team, with roughly 15 players per team. Heat check = 25 tokens per team. Moments though offer 0 rewards. If a card can help you get more cards, I consider it more valuable than a card that might have better stats.

It's not much but it's honest work.

TLDR:

When it comes to this achievement, quantity wins out over quality. Buy your cards in bulk, and check the auction house often for cheap cards you can pick up. Do NOT spend your tokens on spotlight packs and stuff like that, save them for rewards cards. Also I recommend using VC on card packs rather than MT and saving your MT for the auction house.