Every hooper is familiar with the name, Ronnie 2K, but are you familiar with how he’s built up the NBA2K franchise?

“There's now guys that come into the league that have literally played the game their entire lives.”

On a recent episode of In Shambles, Ronnie “Ronnie2K” Singh told Playmaker's very own, Garf, the inside scoop as an innovator of the game.

NBA 2k is coming up on its 25th anniversary– they’ve come a long way, but have more in store in large part due to the man himself, Ronnie 2K, who has spent 15 years with the franchise. Who knew a young man on his way to law school would end up switching gears and end up working behind one of the most popular video games?

“I was the super fan that started using super fan strategies with this new emerging form of marketing to like make a career at 2k and bring value,” Ronnie said. “And you know, show people that this was more than just a video game. That this was kind of a lifestyle brand. And you know it's been quite a journey, and obviously like we grew in terms of relevance.”

There’s no doubt Ronnie and the team built an online community. I’m sure you can relate to jumping on the game with friends online or talking trash and battling it out with siblings in the crib.

“It means so much to so many people. There's now guys that come into league now that have literally played the game their entire lives. It's legit, and they learned about basketball even more through our game than basketball itself, which is just amazing. For us to be a platform to be a fan of the NBA and sports and video games is just so cool.”

2k is doing it all. As a product that builds community, they gotta stay ahead of the game. There’s a reason why 2k doesn't have big competitors as far as basketball games. So, what’s the latest news and updates? Well, for one, it looks like the NBA game is having some visitors from a league across the way, the NFL.

Ronnie shared the reason why they’ve been adding NFL players into the game.

“I've been talking to NFL players for a long time. If you're an NFL guy, you reach out to me, I verify you in the game— which means in the game you have a football over your head and people will try to get games with you knowing that you're a football player.”

But Ronnie didn’t stop there…

“We took it a whole another level,” Ronnie said. “People want to see diversity and fun stuff in My Team. So we put in Deebo Samuel, Dak Prescott, Jalen Ramsey, in the My Team and they have such basketball interest. They play 2K all the time.”

All the time isn’t that much of an overstatement — Deebo has apparently played around 5,700 hours!

“[Deebo] told me, he's like, “I don't go out. I don't do anything, I play 2K and I practice. That's all I do,” Ronnie said.

Imagine how Patrick Mahomes would look running the court with Steph Curry in the game. Don’t sleep on these football guys when it comes to 2K! They really put in the work on the sticks when they aren’t out on that field.

The NFL players have ratings of their own within the game, but we all know the ratings we most care about are the NBA players.

We as fans and gamers interested, but the players themselves appear to be quite invested too. The question we all wanna know: Who even comes up with these ratings?!

“It’s not me first of all,” Ronnie said. “We do have a great team of people that watch hours of hours of basketball, but we also do have some formulaic stuff, but there are ways to adjust that with the team… There’s 30+ many attributes— everything from tangibles and intangibles— off court stuff, like IQ. They all kind of mix together and pop out this one number, and this number is super controversial all the time.”

Ratings are always a hot topic, but there seems to be a method the team has going on since they go by the course of history. There are no 99 ratings, besides ‘95-’96 Michael Jordan. MJ is pretty much the standard that keeps the rating down, makes sense… just not to some players. We’ve seen guys upset about their ratings, so much so that some have tried bribing Ronnie. But let’s be forreal, not everyone can be a 99.

“For a lot of these guys, getting drafted was 1A and being in 2K is 1B,” Ronnie said. “And when it's that important, of course, your gonna be upset about your rating.”

When it all comes down to it, the ball is in these player’s courts — literally— if they want a shot at improving their rating.

Whether you’re a hooper or gamer, we all know it’s best to back up your talk with your skills. Time to get in the lab.. or should I say, the 2k Blacktop!

As for Ronnie, he’ll be innovating the game as the game of basketball continues to evolve too.

“There's so much more opportunity to do more and bring more cultural elements, bring more basketball elements, and get the game even closer to real life,” Ronnie said. “We're also just scratching the surface. There's just so much more that we believe we can do, and the technology is only getting better…We’re really looking forward to what's next.”

• I just know this one left a big mark 🥴

• This guy is just built different 🐍

• Is this some kind of new extreme sport 😳

• I had to give this one a double take 😮

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