It’s a special week in the NBA 2K League as the regular season is being put on pause for the first mid-season tournament of the year called “The Tipoff.”
A total prize pool of $160,000 is on the line with all 23 teams in action gunning for the $70,000 top prize.
The tournament will start with pool play with teams divided into seven groups. There are five groups of three teams and two groups of four teams. In each group, teams will play two teams each twice, meaning for the teams in the four-club groups, they won’t see one of the teams in their group.
At the end of this pool play, the eight teams with the best records will then advance to an elimination bracket where the standard best-of-three format will be used to determine who advances.
Pool play begins Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. ET and concludes Wednesday, while the knockout rounds will take place Thursday and Friday.
Here’s a little more on the upcoming tournament.
Watch the NBA 2K League’s Tipoff Tournament this Tuesday evening at 6:00 p.m. ET on Sportsnet ONE and Sportsnet NOW.
Uprising update
Last week, Raptors Uprising GC handled Blazer5 Gaming and Celtics Crossover Gaming to move to 9-0, solidifying themselves as, without question, the best team in the league heading into this week’s tournament.
This space has been used to talk about just how successful the Uprising have been all season long, but it’s worth reiterating that this is a team that’s firing on all cylinders and has been blessed enough to know that every move its made has worked out to near perfection.
“I think the thing that makes us great this year is, first of all, we have a point guard who’s playing at an elite level and we have role players around him who are playing their roles at elite levels,” said MLSE esports director Shane Talbot. “So it’s just a perfect balance that we’ve found between everybody knowing their role, everybody being on the same page, everybody trusting one another.”
Led by MVP front-runner Kenneth “Kenny Got Work” Hailey, the Uprising have been nothing short of remarkable this season, only dropping three of the 21 games they’ve played over the span of their nine matches.
A team seemingly without ego — thanks to a killer combination of outright talent, pre-existing strong chemistry between members of the club and genuine buy-in and belief in the system they’ve established — the Uprising have been unstoppable.
As such, the Uprising will be coming into this week’s tournament with a target on their backs. They have an expectation to do quite well and to at least walk away with some prize money. But given the format of pool play, the Uprising could run into some complications.
One of the strengths of the team this season has been its ability to adjust midway through a match. Dropping a game to an opponent has often allowed the Uprising to compose themselves, make a few tweaks and then come out and win afterwards.
Within pool play, however, with records and point differential being so paramount, the Uprising won’t be able to afford dropping a game here or there. To give themselves their best chance, not only of reaching the knockout stage but of better seeding, the Uprising will need to go a perfect 4-0.
Looking at it objectively, however, the opponents the Uprising will see in pool play should make it so that 4-0 is possible. They’re not in action until Wednesday, with their first match at 6:00 p.m. ET against the 4-5 Blazer5 Gaming, and then at 8:00 p.m. ET, they’ll face the dismal 1-8 Lakers Gaming.
Lakers Gaming should be a cakewalk for the Uprising, but the problem lies in Blazer5 Gaming, one of only three teams that’s taken a game off the Uprising, including the opener of last week’s match between the two.
The Uprising, obviously, managed to recover, but in pool play, a loss off the bat like that could really hurt the team.
With that said, it’s not as if the Uprising are exactly all that fearful of the format because they feel confident in their status as the league’s elite.
“Because each game is considered individually (in the tournament) you won’t have the ability to turn that opening game loss into a series win, which we’ve done twice so far in the regular season. So we’re not going to have that opportunity,” said Talbot. “With that said, we’re still confident that we are the best team in the league and that we are the favourite to win all of our games.”
At 9-0 with a player in Hailey playing like an MVP at the most important position in all of NBA 2K and a supporting cast that only seem to want to let him live up to his nickname, it’s hard not to see why the Uprising are so confident and, at the very least, we should expect to see them play on Thursday.
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Around the league
The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the 2K League will most visibly be felt when this week’s tournament gets going.
This is because in the two years past, these tournaments have acted as large-scale gatherings for the league, with every team in town in New York at its studio.
A beacon for the entire NBA 2K competitive community, the interpersonal relationship aspect of these tournaments, unfortunately, can’t be made a part of it this time.
The show must go on, however, and regardless of the setting, a tournament environment will always be a little different, so who knows what will happen this time?
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