By Connor Ryan and Dylan Gaillard – Advocate Editors

“NBA 2K26” is the latest basketball game in the “2K” series, and it has definitely been a solid addition. It has realistic gameplay, improved graphics, and a few new features to the table, but they haven’t changed the game completely.

Most importantly, the graphics this year are much improved from “NBA 2K25.” The movement and shot meters this year are visually much cleaner and with no delay. Lighting this year is also great in all game modes.

There are many game modes in “NBA 2K26” but the most played one is MyCareer. Behind it is MyTeam where you try and get players to build a team of NBA stars and compete vs other teams of NBA stars. There is a game mode that is played now where you can play with teams 5v5 against your friends and online. 

The worst part about the game so far is the MyCareer game mode builds. Users this year are making 7’4″ builds which can do almost everything in the game. They can shoot almost over any build in the game besides another 7’4″ player. They can dribble, shoot, pass, and make dunks and layups. Their rebounding isn’t the best to be 7-feet-tall but it definitely gets the job done. The area it is most broken in is the 3s game mode in MyCareer. They can set screens for the point guard then either roll to the rim or pop to the three point line. Even with defenders jumping with their hands up it’s still almost impossible to even get the littlest bit of contest with the tall jump shot of the 7’4″ player.

Lastly, the best part of the game so far is definitely the shooting this year. Last year, they made it so it is literally impossible to go 7/7 shooting. This was called RNG shooting and they decided to remove it this year making it so you can now go 7/7. The one problem they have run into with this is the people who use cheats. The cheat that you can use in 2K is called Zen. All you have to do is tap a button and then the shot will go in with it being great tempo every time.

Overall, “NBA 2K26” has been a blast for gamers around the world and is easily the best “2K” in the last few years. They just have to fix the contests on bigs and somehow ban the “Zenners.”