NBA 2k11 Association DETAILS!! (Yes President Obama is in the game)

*Taken directly from 2KSports.com*

The Little Things
For anyone that has read one of my Insights before, you know I love to point out the Little Things. Little Things are small additions to the game that often make a world of a difference, though that’s not necessarily apparent from their description. The following is a few of the items that stood out the most to me this year.

- Hall of Fame: New to The Association this year is the Hall of Fame. As players play through their careers, we internally keep a ‘Hall of Fame’ score that tallies their accolades and statistical accomplishments. Upon retiring, proven players will be selected to the Hall of Fame where you’ll be able to reminisce on their careers while viewing their career stats and accolades.

- Classic Teams: I’ve seen so much discussion on this in the forums despite us previously confirming this. Yes, you absolutely can take our classic teams into Association. This means you can bring any of Jordan’s Bulls into the league. Equally as fun I have found is to bring in the Malone/Stockton Jazz and the Ewing Knicks alongside the Jordan teams. It’s an interesting wrinkle to the Association formula that people in the office have been enjoying for months now!

- Player Progression Tracking: At the end of every season, you will now be presented with a menu that will you show you how much your players have progressed/regressed since the last offseason. You’ll be able to see both the before and after for every rating, for every player in the league. This is a very handy feature that will definitively tell who is in the up-and-up, and who is on their last legs.



- White House Visit: This one is quite possibly my favorite visual addition to the mode this year. Every offseason, you have the opportunity of watching the team that won the Finals visit Barack Obama at the White House. The White House Visit consists of the championship team donning suits and posing for a variety of pictures with Barack. It’s a pretty simple thing, but it’s what I like to call icing on the cake.


My beloved Clippers are seen here visiting the White House after dispatching the Heat in 5 games at the NBA Finals. A man can dream, can’t he?

- Auto-Generated Portraits: For those of you who play many years into Association, you will recall from last year that all generated players had silhouettes for their portraits. Aside from being unsightly, this really draws you away from the authentic feel of being in the NBA. In NBA 2K11, ALL generated players will have auto-generated portraits that will 100% resemble the physical appearance of the player. No longer will you have a league full of players who have silhouettes as portraits!

- Autosave: For those of you who were frustrated by the inability to disable Autosave within Association last year, we have re-engineered the mode such that box scores are not lost when there isn’t a save file present. In short, yes, you will be able to successfully turn off Autosave this year if you so choose.

- Intra-Squad Scrimmages: Another new feature this year is the ability to run Intra-Squad Scrimmages with your team. Here, we pit the starting 5 against the best of your bench players. You can choose to run with the starters or with the bench unit. This is a great way to get some time with some of your lesser talent in a ‘game’ situation without having to worry about Ls piling up in the loss column.

- Simulator Improvements: We spent a lot of time this year working on our simulator and the various components of it. For starters, you will notice that simulated stats will be much more accurate this year as we continue to tweak and tune our stat engine to be closer and closer to real life. I can personally guarantee that Chris Bosh will no longer be your league leader in Rebounding! As for how it determines who wins and losses, we put a lot of effort into the matchups when simulating the games possession by possession. In previous years, it was not uncommon to have a 6 seed playing a 5 seed (or some similar configuration) in the NBA Finals. Upsets should occur at a much lower frequency now and will be dictated exclusively by matchups. We really feel we hit the nail on the head this year in regards to the simulator.

- New Metric Stats: I can admit that I am a huge stats/numbers geek. I’m always looking for new ways to measure players against one another, to find out who stands out from the crowd in various ways. There are a number of new Metric Stats in The Association this year, the following is just a few of them:
- Rebound Rate: This stat will tell you the percentage of rebounds a player grabs during his time on the court. The true rebounders are on your team will immediately jump out at you here.
- Usage Rate: This stat will tell you the percentage of offensive possessions a player is personally responsible for ending while he is on the floor (either via a field goal attempt or a turnover).
- Estimated Wins Added: This stat aims to estimate the number of wins that a player adds to a team’s season total above what a league average player player at that position would add. This is a great tool to determine where upgrades are needed on your roster.

- Splitting The MLE: This one is short and sweet. Users are now able to split the MLE amongst as many players as they want during free agency. This should give you a little more flexibility when it comes to filling out your teams.

- D-League Utilization: CPU teams will now be making effective use of the NBA D-League this year. They will be sending down young players who aren’t getting enough playing time to ensure they continue to develop. Remember, the more playing time young players get, the better the chance they have of reaching their full potential. If you draft a player and stash him on your bench for a few years, his development will take a significant hit. Give your players every opportunity to develop into all they can be!

- Morale & Foul Trouble: A highly requested addition, players will no longer take negative morale hits when they don’t play their desired minutes due to foul trouble. They will now only get mad at themselves and not at you for keeping them off the court!

- Season Awards: Where appropriate, Season Awards are now handed out properly using the 2 guards, 2 forwards, and 1 center format rather than how we have had it in years past where it was strictly, 1 PG, 1 SG, 1 SF, 1 PF, and 1 C. It should be noted that the All-Rookie teams are also now handed out without respect to position.

For sooooo much more click here: 2k11