Media fall short against athletes in pick-up basketball game at Rogers Arena

As part of 2K Sports' campaign to promote NBA 2K15, a few Vancouver media reps and people affiliated with the gaming industry were invited to a session at Rogers Arena on October 5.

In advance of the event, we were asked to provide our shirt, shorts, and shoe size, so there was an expectation that we might get a chance to hit the court. I thought maybe we’d do a shoot around, so I arranged for my seven-year-old daughter, who has expressed curiousity about the sport, to join me.

Were we in for a surprise.

After spending about 20 minutes with a demo version of NBA 2K15, the media and video gamers learned that we were actually going to be playing in a game. Against a bunch of shoe connoisseurs who entered a Foot Locker contest for the privilege and were wearing brand new basketball shoes.

To make matters worse, most of our group had worn loafers to the event because they expected that they were going to have shoes waiting for them. But while the Foot Locker team was walking around with new kicks, all we had was a photo of some nice Adidas basketball shoes and a gift card.

Matt Devlin and Jack Armstrong, the broadcast team for the Raptors, were the coaches of the two teams. Armstrong was a good sport, and was as encouraging as he could be under the circumstances.

About half-way into the 20-minute game we had The Raptor playing for us. By the end of the game we were playing eight on five (which actually made it worse; the court was just too plugged with people to move the ball). My daughter got on my shoulders near the end of the game and scored a basket, to great cheering and sportsmanship by everyone present.

Former NBA player and coach Isaiah Thomas, now a broadcaster and contributor to NBA.com, joined us all on the court after the game. Erudite, he joked about how the NBA 2K15 team, consisting of “video gamers” fared as well as he expected against a bunch of guys who were used to running and jumping (that would be the Foot Locker team).

After taking a few questions, we all got a photo with him and the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy.

We all had fun, even though some of us maybe weren’t as great at the real sport as we might be at the video-game simulation.

And my daughter is even more interested in basketball. Time to find out what programs Canada Basketball has running in the city.