With one second left on the clock in overtime, my Grizz Gaming team exited the timeout huddle and filed back out onto the virtual NBA 2K League court. This was the third game of a three-game series against Knicks GC—we’d lost game one, fought back from down 16 to win game two, and come back from down 17 in game three, where we were desperately clinging to a three-point lead with one second left in OT. The winner would advance to the next round of the NBA 2K League season’s final tournament. For the team that lost, their season would end immediately.
I don’t know about the Grizz Gaming players, but in this moment I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. Six months of work, of stress, of lows and highs, was all coming to a decision point. This was it. Stop the Knicks from making a three, and we wouldn’t be finished just yet.
We did our best to double-team Malik, the Knicks’ best shooter, on the inbounds play, and when he came off a screen up top the pass dragged him just inside the three-point line. He got up a shot, but it wouldn’t matter. We won the game, 90-87, which meant the series was ours.
I collapsed down onto the desk in front of me and rested my cheek against the cool wooden surface. While the players were in the Grizz Gaming practice facility, because of Covid restrictions I wasn’t allowed to be in the same room as the team, so I was coaching them alone in the Grind City Media broadcast studio, watching the action on my laptop and communicating with them via headset through an app called Discord. I could hear all the guys cheering and applauding, and I felt great for them. (I would later see a clip of them celebrating on the ESPN broadcast.)
As I lay there trying to catch my breath, I heard a chime indicating that someone new had joined our room on Discord.
“Hey Lang? Coach, you there?”
I recognized the voice as that of Glitch, one of the 2K League game admins.
“Yessir?” I responded, over the noise of the guys yelling.
“Congrats on the win, but your next series will start in about 12 minutes,” Glitch said. “We have a quick turnaround time for broadcast.”
“OK,” I said, sitting up and trying to turn my focus forward. “Wait,” I asked, “who are we even playing against?” It was at that moment I realized I had no idea who had won a simultaneous series on the other side of the bracket.
A dozen minutes later, we started a new series against Blazer5 Gaming. We got blown out in game one, fought back from behind in game two, and got it down to a one-point game before missing a shot at the buzzer, ending our season. From the highs of winning a series a few hours earlier, we were now done. I went from thinking about a play to run at the end of the game to immediately having to put on a stoic upper lip and giving the guys an end-of-season speech.
While each season of the 2K League presents its own unique set of challenges, this had been a season unlike any other. Shortly after the guys arrived in Memphis, a global pandemic broke out. Our weekly trips to New York City to play 2K League games were canceled, and for a while we all just sheltered in our respective places—I was with my family, while the guys were with each other, creating their own family unit.
And it was tough! Everyone, including myself, had questions, and it was hard to find solid answers. It was emotionally trying for me, and I had the comfort of my family. Meanwhile, these guys were thousands of miles from home, worried about their loved ones, but couldn’t physically be with them. All we could do was practice the game and try to remain positive. I’m pretty good at keeping the mood light, but even that only went so far.
Eventually, we abandoned our practice facility and moved all the CPUs and monitors to the apartments via the Grizzlies’ pickup truck. (Thanks for letting me borrow the key, Grizz.) Because of safety directives from the league, I went weeks without physically being around the guys, as we tried to mitigate any risk, although I saw them and talked to them seven days a week via Discord for practices and scrimmages. We had a couple of socially distanced team meetings on the sidewalk outside their apartments, and a few times I cooked for the guys, put the food in trays, then drove over and let the guys retrieve it from my trunk.
Once the 2K League announced plans to pivot to a remote play schedule, with there being a complete lack of other sports taking place, ESPN quickly picked up most of the 2K League broadcasts, which was pretty surreal. We began the season playing from our respective apartments on international television, which meant we had to figure out how to hook up a giant box of electronic equipment the production company shipped us inside our point guard Vandi’s apartment, and I wasn’t allowed to be there to help. We were playing on the fastest internet connection we could pay for, but it was still apartment internet, complete with spikes and lags in the middle of games. Playing from three different apartments and sending a broadcast stream to ESPN when you’re occasionally getting an upload speed around 10 Mbps? It wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t really have a choice. We just kept playing.
We started 0-4, then rallied to win four in a row. We found a groove midway through the season, winning four straight to get to .500, ultimately finishing 7-9, when 8-8 would have gotten us into the playoffs. We won several tournament games, for the first time in franchise history, but for the third season in a row, we finished one win out of a playoff spot. One win away!
As I got in my car to drive home that night after our final loss, I felt a mixture of emotions, from disappointment to frustration. And yet, the feeling I’ve found myself returning to, more and more, is gratitude. There were so many times we all could have quit, or folded, or given up and walked away. But we just kept working. We dealt with everything from severe migraines to upset stomachs, from anxiety to stress to homesickness. It often felt like the world around us was falling apart, but we kept grinding. I must have reminded the guys a million times to wash their hands, as I did my best to keep everyone healthy and well. It was also not lost on any of us that in a time when so many people were struggling to find work, we all managed to stay employed throughout and provide an outlet for a ton of people looking for an escape for what they were going through.
The season didn’t go the way we had hoped, but to be fair, 2020 has been a mess for everyone. What I told my team, over and over, was try your best and leave it all out there. And that we did.
The NBA 2K League Finals happened on Friday night, with Wizards District Gaming taking the season three title. At some point my brain will turn forward and start thinking about the offseason, and what we can do to improve our roster.
But for now, I’m just sitting here feeling grateful. When the whole world shut down, we just kept going. We never gave up, we never quit.
And for all of that, I could not be prouder of my team.