Washington Wizards: Assessing John Wall’s NBA 2K18 rating

With the basketball fan’s most popular video game, NBA 2K18, releasing in September, many players, including John Wall, are starting to find out where their overall rating stacks up against their peers.

It goes without saying that some NBA players may think higher of themselves than the rest of the world does.

Many players, who statistically are in no way the best player in the league, have called themselves the best player in the league.

Even Darrell Arthur of the Denver Nuggets jumped on the ridiculous train, stating the following:

That’s a pretty bold statement that I’d argue most fans don’t agree with. But as we know, NBA players are incredibly competitive with each other — not just on the basketball court, but in pretty much all facets of life. They are usually bred as competitive, don’t-accept-failure people.

Needless to say, one’s NBA 2K rating is a topic that a lot of players take as another one of these competitions. On Aug. 3, 2017, NBA 2K announced that John Wall’s rating for the 2018 iteration of the popular video game would be a 90 overall (on a 100-point scale of course).

This was the best rating John Wall has ever gotten in the 2K franchise, with his previous ratings steadily rising:

• NBA 2K14:  85
• NBA 2K15:  86
• NBA 2K16:  87
• NBA 2K17:  87
• NBA 2K18:  90

While in most scenarios, players would be ecstatic to receive a 90 overall, the face of the Washington Wizards franchise did not seem very happy about it:

Which spawned one of the greatest things about Twitter as a website: NBA beefs.

A couple of quick observations about this amazing Twitter exchange. The first being that Ronnie 2K, the spokesperson for the franchise, does not fear speaking to NBA players. He will defend his product until the end of time, and make fun of those who stand in his way.

The next thing to notice here is, even though John Wall pretended like he didn’t know his rating from the previous year, he was quick to correct Ronnie 2K with his exact number once it was challenged. If you are to be a spokesperson for video game ratings in the NBA, you should definitely know a player’s overall rating before entering a tweet war with them.

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The other thing to consider here is John Wall’s rating, from a completely unbiased standpoint, might make sense. If at the end of last season his rating was a 90, does it not make sense that that’s where he’d start in the next season? Wall may have improved over the offseason, but there’s no way to know that until it’s shown on the court during the actual NBA season.

It seems that John Wall, and some diehard Wizards fans, including Washington sports fan/troll Mia Khalifa, are requesting Ronnie 2K change Wall’s rating from a 90 overall to a 93. Just for reference, of the players that have been announced already, this would put John Wall one overall point under Steph Curry and two above Paul George and Karl-Anthony Towns. At the moment, Wall rests next to Kyrie Irving (90) and DeMar DeRozan (89).

Where Wall is now might actually make more sense for the 2017 All-Star, since both Kyrie and DeMar DeRozan started over him in the actual All-Star game in New Orleans the previous season. This might actually just be a case of another NBA player thinking they deserve more recognition than they actually do.

Next: 2017 NBA free agency tracker - Grades for every deal so far

Maybe John Wall just doesn’t like losing to his fellow Kentucky alumni Karl-Anthony Towns. It’s impossible to tell what the reason is, but regardless, it might end up spurring Wall to play with another chip on his shoulder this upcoming season.