NBA 2K23: 6 star players with shockingly low attribute ratings

5. NBA 2K23 gave LeBron James a 79 3-point rating.

At no point in his career has LeBron James been known as a sharpshooter, but he’s also exceptional at virtually everything else on the basketball court. This past season, LeBron had some of the most impressive 3-pointers of his career, pulling up from deep and in transition for buckets that would be tough for anyone to pull off — let alone a 34.6% career shooter at 37.

Per The Basketball Index, LeBron nailed 45.5% of his limited corner threes and 37.7% of his pull-ups. Furthermore, the average distance on 3-point shots was 26.3 feet from the basket, which was deeper than roughly 90% of the league. So he may have settled around league average at 36.5% from 3-point land, but the degree of difficulty on these shots was much higher than your average catch-and-shoot specialist.

All of this information poses a pair of intriguing questions: how far does the 2K development team go into the stats when deciding these ratings, and should they be spending more time analyzing the real world to determine in-game attributes?

This rating would be a lot more understandable if LeBron received an in-game boost when he looks down at the ball before shooting it, but something tells me that’s pretty difficult to program into the game. Maybe they’ll consider it the next time he’s on the cover.