We are living in the golden age of women’s sports. The WNBA is expanding more than ever before, and several players in The W have become household names. The annual NBA 2K video game has featured The W as its own separate mode since 2019. But this year, the developers have included the WNBA in the MyTeam mode, the mode dedicated to opening blind packs of cards to draft players to your fantasy team. You can have Michael Jordan playing with Breanna Stewart, wearing Los Angeles Clippers uniforms, in the Seattle Storm’s stadium, for example.
While I’m pleased that this is going to introduce a lot more sports fans to how amazing the WNBA is, I have extremely mixed feelings about the implementation. Let’s dig into that a bit more.
Women? On MyTeam? It’s more likely than you’d think
I haven’t engaged much with the MyTeam mode in the past, mostly sticking to the MyCareer and W modes (I have played every year since NBA 2K7). From a distance, MyTeam just always came across as a way to shake down players for more money, with packs of cards (and thus the slim chance at a good player) coming at a surprisingly high cost – around $4-7 per pack of 5 cards. In the real word of trading cards, that’s not awful.
But this is in a game that already retails for between $79-$150, you can’t sell your cards for real money if you open something good, and next year your collection will be worthless because everyone will have moved onto the next version of the game. You can forgive it in a free to play gacha game, that’s expected. That’s not the kind of thing we can normalise in a AAA game.
That said, I liked the idea of being able to play with basketball players and team line ups like dolls, see what would happen if you put this player with that player. Would it work? It’s why I always wished they would introduce maybe an offline, single-player mode without all the pay to win stuff, just the ability to draft players from across the eras. No cards, no VC spend, just basketball. Alas, that’s not profitable, just enjoyable for players.
Adding The W to the men’s NBA players in MyTeam was a really interesting prospect. How could 6ft Chris Paul successfully match up against the 6ft 9in Brittney Griner? Plus the WNBA is stacked with talent: A’ja Wilson is rated at 98OVR, Breanna Stewart is 96, as is Caitlin Clark. On the men’s side you have Nikola Jokic at 98, Stephen Curry at 94 and LeBron James at 94. On both sides there are a few names missing in between, but these are the big stars. That’s before you even get to the salary cap mode. From that list, the MNBA’s players’ current annual salaries are:
Chris Paul – $3.6million (down from a career high of $39.9million)
Nikola Jokic – $55.2m
Stephen Curry – $62.6m
LeBron James – $52.6m
Meanwhile, the women are far more affordable in a way that hurts you right in the feminism and sense of fairness.
Brittney Griner – $214.5k
A’ja Wilson – $200k
Breanna Stewart – $222k
Caitlin Clark – $78k
On paper, the WNBA players should be poised to take over MyTeam, and also set the mode up for a really interesting exploration for how the WNBA and MNBA’s playing styles are different. The MNBA is all about egotistical star players making 3 point shots and dunks. It’s a high scoring, fast-paced game with a focus on offence and the individual players. Whereas the WNBA is much more of a team sport and mid-range shooting is what it’s all about. It’s lower scoring, with a higher emphasis on defence, because every single bucket matters, it makes for a thrilling game in a completely different way.
There are so many debates that could have been settled if this mode had been done properly.
There’s also the added excitement and drama in the WNBA vs MNBA. While there have almost definitely been male NBA players who’ve had to play together or against each other while dating, or fresh from a breakup at some point, we haven’t yet been privy to that drama. The story of MNBA players that gets centred is always how much they love their families and are willing to leave it all on the court in the pursuit of greatness, individual glory, and cash, blah blah blah . In the WNBA you can see girlfriends playing against each other, exes playing together, and all kinds of other entanglements and dramas, as well as the pursuit of greatness as a team. It means you get to watch multiple stories play out at once, and the interpersonal drama makes the sport more interesting and exciting.
Did they nail it? No.
However, much like The W mode, the MyTeam mode isn’t really interested in exploring the differences between the MNBA and the WMNA, or the impact playing with a different sized ball and different court line measurements would have on players. 2K has taken the medical research approach to the WNBA, and decided that women are just short men. The stats just copy across, and so Breanna Stewart plays like a top rated MNBA player. She she just takes over the court as a star male player would, not really acting like she would in the WNBA at all.
While I was ready and excited to see how the salary discrepancies would affect the way people approached the salary cap mode, 2K has closed the gender pay gap.
Given MyTeam is so focussed on big players, and height above all, the lack of shake up in the gameplay, and the lack of impact this mingling has on the approach to the game means that we’re unlikely to see much WNBA play in MyTeam, which is such a shame. It’s a missed opportunity to do something interesting and real. It’s something I hope they explore next year.
And yet, I’m not mad at it
The thing is, though, I don’t know how else 2K could have approached this and still have it make sense. How do you grapple with the legacy of underfunding and discouragement of women’s sports from a pre-school level through to professional leagues, the discrepancies in facilities and opportunities, how a short season vs long season would affect player readiness and injury load, and incorporate two different rule sets and game culture in a single trading card game? It’s too big a weight to carry in a fun fantasy draft mode.
Is it better to make a statement about the gender pay gap, or introduce equality in a fictional game? Is it worse to ignore the reality of how players are paid, or perpetuate inequality in a new medium?
Is it better to have a half-arsed integration (given the whole-arsing would involve looking complicated, historical inequality in the eye, but in a fun way somehow) or none at all?
I don’t think I have the answers to these questions. I know the shadow of what I wish would have happened instead, but how it could be implemented.
I know that it was great to play with my favourite players from across the leagues, and I enjoyed discovering that having at least one or two absolute gun shorter female players meant I successfully stole the ball a lot more. Sure, it’s impossible to block a 7ft player when you’re less than 6ft, but that’s a long way for the ball to travel from the floor to their hand while they dribble, so it’s easy to pickpocket them on the run.
I wanted the mode to be deeper, and I certainly want the mode to be less greedy and less focussed on multi-player, but I truly loved all the single-player games I played in MyTeam, and plan to keep playing it throughout the year. I’m also interested to see how 2K allows the mode to grow and evolve.
Is The W good at least?
The W mode is largely the same as it was last year. This is great news, because I loved The W last year. It doesn’t have the same polish as the men’s MyCareer mode, and it still doesn’t really embrace the differences that make the real life WNBA special and exciting. But it’s charming and the script for those corny press conferences between games (the only part where any narrative is expressed) was clearly written by someone who is passionate about the WNBA and the players past and present. You can feel the love and respect, and in turn it makes me fall more in love with a league that I only started to learn properly about 6 years ago.
I tried to jump into the online mode to see how that’s been updated, because last year it just looked like an afterthought or test environment. However, I could never find a matchup at the hours when I was playing, which seems like a bad sign for the popularity of the mode (or purely that WNBA fans are happy to wait for prices to inevitably tumble before they jump in).
The good news about The W being largely unchanged is that it’s still untouched by the monetisation scourge that’s taken over the rest of the game. The MyCareer mode is borderline unplayable because it focuses so much on things that aren’t basketball, and your player just kinda sucks to begin with unless you’re willing to spend money on VC to level him up.
In The W, it’s just about the love of basketball. It’s quick and easy to jump into a game, without having to run through a city filled with shops and billboards. There are no distractions to take you away from the sport. It’s the one area remaining in the game that’s not trying to do anything other than let you get close to your favourite teams, and experience the joy inherent in basketball. It’s the mode for purists.
I would still love for The W to get a polish, maybe a story mode where you get to go deeper into your player and her relationships with her team, and certainly a closer to life WNBA gameplay experience. But if missing out on that is the price of not having to deal with VC at all, then I’m happy to accept the tradeoff.
Verdict
If you’re coming to NBA 2K26 for an accurate WNBA experience, or a meditation on what would happen if the MNBA and WNBA were merged, you’re going to be disappointed. That’s not to say it’s bad, 2K just hasn’t engaged with anything beyond the surface level.
If you’re a WNBA fan who loves MyTeam, then you’re in for a challenge but a potentially fun one. It’s worth picking up the game if that’s what you’re after, because you can’t get this experience anywhere else.
However, if you’re just wanting to play The W mode, and you’re ok with not having a freshly updated roster, then you can get an almost identical experience by picking up NBA 2K25, which is available for less than half the price of 26 (and is available on some subscription services if you want to try it first).
As always, NBA 2K26 is the best basketball game available. It’s just a matter of whether it’s worth upgrading to the latest title for what you’re wanting out of it.
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