NBA 2K21 is a 2020 basketball video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K. Based on the National Basketball Association (NBA), it is the 22nd installment in the NBA 2K franchise, the successor to NBA 2K20 and the predecessor to NBA 2K22. The game was released on September 4, 2020, for Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, and the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S versions were released in November 2020, as well as a different version of the main game featuring Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans. The NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition was released for Apple Arcade on April 2, 2021. Most versions were released to heavy criticism, citing the lack of originality in the gameplay and many microtransactions and bugs.

Promotion

A teaser of the game was released on June 11, 2020, during the PS5 reveal event and featured the player model of New Orleans Pelicans' Zion Williamson. It showed a few seconds of pre-alpha, in-engine footage, and showed many effects, such as ray-tracing and shadow details. On June 30, 2020, NBA 2K announced Damian Lillard, of the Portland Trail Blazers, would be the cover for the standard edition on the previous-generation consoles. On July 1, 2020, NBA 2K announced Zion Williamson as the cover athlete for the standard edition of the next-generation consoles. The last covers were released on July 2, 2020, honoring the late Kobe Bryant. The demo for the game was released on August 24, 2020

Gameplay

MyCareer

MyCareer, a major part of the series, returned as one of the available game modes. MyCareer is a career mode in which the player creates their own customizable basketball player and plays through their basketball career. Players may make a male or female player, although female player creation is exclusively available on next-gen consoles. The Neighborhood also returns to MyCareer, as 2K Beach, in which players can customize their wardrobe, get haircuts and tattoos, and purchase boosts. They can also do workouts and run drills to improve their character's attributes at their current team's practice facility. Progress in MyCareer may not carry over across generations, due to some changes made exclusively for next-gen.

In MyTeam, players collect cards of NBA players (current or past) to put on their team. This game mode has packs (or loot boxes) that can be purchased with Virtual Currency (VC) or My Team Points (MT). Players can also buy cards from each other at the auction house using VC or MT.

NBA 2K21 features both MyLeague and MyGM from previous games, where the player can take the helm of a franchise and fully simulate an NBA season while making trades, drafting, and playing games with their teams. Compared to prior titles, eighth-generation console releases of NBA 2K21 were left with little changes for their staple franchise modes, MyLeague and MyGM. Outside of roster changes, the main changes focuses with MyLeague Online where certain users can be given different admin controls. WNBA teams were also given more representation as players were now able to play through a whole season with all 12 teams.^{[unreliable source?]}

Reception

NBA 2K21 received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic, and "generally favorable reviews" on the ninth-generation consoles.

Michael Higham from GameSpot gave the game a score of 6-out-of-10. He states "NBA 2K21 shows that the lone basketball sim we have now has largely stagnated. It's a full package, for sure, but one that demonstrates little-to-no motivation to meaningfully improve upon itself. That doesn't take away from the strong foundation that makes NBA 2K a fun and rewarding time. However, when you go through the same grind and the same process with only superficial changes, you just get burnt out faster than years prior."

Ben Vollmer from IGN gave the game a score of 6 out of 10, stating "More of the same isn't good enough anymore, especially when it includes such obtrusive microtransactions." Vollmer also says "At the same time, it's a shame that 2K's focus isn't on the fun you can have on the court, but instead the money that can be extracted from your wallet off of the court in the MyCareer and MyTeam modes, whist aren't fun to grind through without paying. Maybe the new set of consoles on the horizon will bring a fresh start for the NBA 2K franchise, but right now I feel more pessimistic about the series’ future than ever."

The PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K21 sold 8,541 physical copies within its first week on sale in Japan, making it the seventh bestselling retail game of the week. The game had sold more than 8 million copies by the end of December 2020.

It was nominated in the category of Best Sports/Racing Game at The Game Awards 2020, as well as Sports Game of the Year at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.

Soundtrack

The NBA 2K21 in-game soundtrack uniquely featured songs from cover athlete Damian ‘Dame D.O.L.L.A.’ Lillard, global artists such as Stormzy, Roddy Ricch, Little Simz and more, giving opportunity to independent artists to be featured in connection with United Masters.

Current Gen Soundtrack

On November 12, 2020, rapper 2 Chainz premiered five songs from his upcoming album So Help Me God in the game.

The Next-Gen soundtrack features 150 different songs, more than 100 songs distributed by UnitedMasters.

2K and UnitedMasters launched their 2K Beats: The Search competition and selected 10 artists to join the NBA 2K21 next gen soundtrack. With over 13,000 submissions, winners were chosen by rapper Jadakiss, Ronnie 2K, producers Murda Beatz and Tay Keith. The ten songs were added with a patch in February 2021.