The Milwaukee Bucks are one of 17 teams participating in the new NBA 2K League, which officially starts in May. Earlier this week, Bucks Gaming selected the first six players in team history during the NBA 2K League Draft, and today we learned a little more about the competition structure for the inaugural season.
The first-ever games will take place May 1-5 during the Tip-Off Tournament, one of three tournaments over the course of the first year. The season will run for 17 weeks from May to August and combine elements of esports and the NBA, a blend of weekly matchups and tournaments that lead to the playoffs and the NBA 2K League Finals.
Regular season
The 15-week regular season begins on May 1, comprising 12 weeks of matchups and three weeks of tournaments. All 17 teams will compete in a minimum of 19 games, including 14 regular-season games and three additional tournaments. Playoff seeding will be determined by regular-season standings. Tournament results will not count toward teams’ 14-game regular-season record, but will serve as a tiebreaker for the postseason. Throughout the season, teams will be competing for $1 million prize money across the three tournaments and playoffs.
Weekly matchups will take place on Fridays and Saturdays with staggered game windows to provide convenient viewing for both domestic and international audiences.
Tournament Play
The tip-off tournament will feature pool play, with four groups competing over five days. The top two teams in each group will advance to the single-elimination playoff rounds. The tip-off tournament has a prize pool of $100,000.
Seeding for the other two in-season tournaments will be determined by a team’s record during the four weeks of regular-season games that precede each tournament. These single-elimination tournaments will include a play-in game between the 16th and 17th seeds. Each of these tournaments will feature a prize pool of $150,000. The final tournament will also award a playoff spot to the winner.
Playoffs/Finals
The playoffs will begin on Aug. 17 and run for two weeks. The seven teams with the best regular-season records and the winner of the final tournament are guaranteed playoff spots. If the tournament winner has one of the league’s top eight records, then the top eight teams will make the playoffs.
The quarterfinals will be single-elimination play. The semifinals and NBA 2K League Finals will each be best-of-three.
The playoff prize pool will be $600,000, with the NBA 2K League champion receiving $300,000 from the pool.
NBA 2K League 2018 Schedule
May 1-5: Tip-off tournament
May 11-12: Weekly matchup
May 18-19: Weekly matchup
May 25-26: Weekly matchup
June 1-2: Weekly matchup
June 8-9: Tournament
June 15-16: Weekly matchup
June 22-23: Weekly matchup
June 29-20: Weekly matchup
July 6-7: Weekly matchup
July 13-14: Tournament
July 20-21: Weekly matchup
July 27-28: Weekly matchup
August 3-4: Weekly matchup
August 10-11: Weekly matchup
August 17: Playoffs (Quarterfinals)
August 18: Playoffs (Semifinals)
August 25: NBA 2K League Finals
The NBA 2K League is a professional esports league co-founded by the NBA and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. that features the best 102 NBA 2K players in the world. Each of the league’s 17 teams will draft six players to compete as unique characters in 5-on-5 play against the other teams in a mix of regular-season games, tournaments and playoffs. The league hosted tryouts in early 2018 before the draft in April and the season tip-off in May.
Bucks Gaming
In the NBA 2K League Draft on Wednesday, Bucks Gaming had the 10th overall pick and selected DRAKE GRIFFIN (gamer tag; real name Aaron Rookwood), a point guard from New York, as the first player in team history.
With their second pick, Bucks Gaming chose oLarry (Timothy Anselimo), a center from Florida; in the third round, they took Procis1on (Jacob Walls), shooting guard from Illinois; fourth, they picked XxSTL2LAxS (Mark Hampton Jr.), a small forward from Missouri; in the fifth round, they selected KinG PeroXide (Matthew Hofmann), power forward from New York; and, sixth, Bucks Gaming picked BigBaby2k (Jovan Tenner), a small forward from Texas).
The players were selected from a pool of 102 draftees chosen by the league after an extensive tryout process that began in January 2018. Each team had to use their first five selections to select a point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward and center (in any order they chose) before using their final pick to select a player from any position.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
