Is your hometown club on the list?
The NBA 2K esports league will launch next year with teams for 17 NBA franchises, including the New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA and publisher Take-Two Interactive announced today.
Each of the 17 franchises will run its own five-person esports team to represent it in the NBA 2K league. That’s just over half of the NBA’s 30 clubs; here’s the full list:
- Boston Celtics
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Dallas Mavericks
- Detroit Pistons
- Golden State Warriors
- Indiana Pacers
- Memphis Grizzlies
- Miami Heat
- Milwaukee Bucks
- New York Knicks
- Orlando Magic
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Portland Trail Blazers
- Sacramento Kings
- Toronto Raptors
- Utah Jazz
- Washington Wizards
2K Sports/NBA
“These teams have expressed a tremendous level of enthusiasm around esports and the potential for our new league,” said Brendan Donohue, the recently appointed managing director of the esports organization, in a news release.
It makes sense that the NBA franchises would determine themselves whether to participate in the esports organization — there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the selection of teams involved. Many big-market NBA clubs, like the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers and the Chicago Bulls, do not appear in the list. The lineup also does not include perennial contenders such as the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs.
Take-Two, the parent company of NBA 2K publisher 2K Sports, will run the league jointly with the NBA. The two companies announced the organization in February as the NBA 2K eLeague, but they did not use that name in two news releases issued over the past two weeks. A representative for 2K Sports confirmed to Polygon that the organizers are “in the process of revising the name.” For the time being, they are referring to it by a generic moniker: the “NBA 2K esports league.”
The NBA and Take-Two said that they will provide updates on issues like the selection of players, the structure of the competition and the business side of the league “in the coming months.” For now, all we know is that the esports organization — whatever it ends up being called — will kick off sometime in 2018.
Source: Polygon – Full
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