NBA 2K19 released their ratings for each team’s starting five and New York Knicks fans should not be happy with the results.
NBA 2K19 results are meaningless, but they always seem to stir up controversy. This time around, New York Knicks fans are not happy with the perceived disrespect. Furthermore, the 2K team shows their lack of basketball knowledge with their lineup.
PG - Frank Ntilikina - 74
SG - Mario Hezonja - 76
SF - Tim Hardaway Jr. - 78
PF - Kristaps Porzingis - 88
C - Enes Kanter - 79
First things first, putting Tim Hardaway Jr. at the three and Mario Hezonja at the two shows NBA 2K19’s lack of credibility. If they watched any Knicks games last year they would know that THJ fits better at the two. Not to mention Hezonja has been listed as a small forward for his entire career.
But in the grand scheme of things, positions aren’t that important. What’s far more important is the haphazard ratings. Full disclosure, I made predictions for these ratings earlier this month. I had each player ranked slightly higher. The ratings aren’t so far off when looked at in a vacuum, but when compared to some of the other ratings around the league, there are some serious head-scratchers.
Jayson Tatum comes in at an 87!? Is that for real?
So the makers of 2K are saying that it is basically a toss-up between Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis? Down the line, that’s certainly possible. But a healthy KP is still far better than Tatum right now. There’s no need to take a deep dive into the stats to justify this one. Porzingis is clearly the better offensive player and defensively, Tatum isn’t even in the same stratosphere as KP.
Hardaway is a much closer comparison for Tatum than Porzingis at this point. Hardaway had per game averages of 17.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.7 assists. In similar minutes, Tatum averaged 13.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 1.6 assists. Defensively, there isn’t an eight-point difference between these two so that argument can be tossed out as well.
I’m not even saying that Hardaway should be rated higher than Tatum. All I’m saying is that Tatum should be closer to THJ than KP.
Either Porzingis is criminally underrated or Tatum is laughably overrated.
