Predicting the NBA finals in 2K23, except it’s 5 Nikola Jokics vs. 5 Jimmy Butlers

I made a roster on NBA 2K23 where the Heat are just five Jimmy Butlers and the Nuggets are five Nikola Jokics, and then watched the finals play out

The sports data crowd calls basketball a strong link sport. Unlike other team sports like soccer, where it’s often the mistakes made by the weakest players on a team that decide the outcome of a match, the NBA is a venue for the very best players to just take over. Giannis can simply take over a game and force his way to the rim, possession after possession. Steph can keep shooting threes until his Warriors are out of sight. James Harden will shamelessly Euro-step his way to the foul line all night. They’re the strong links of their team, and they have a massive say on the outcome of a game.

As I’m writing this, the Heat and Nuggets are tied 1-1 in the 2023 playoff finals. Nikola Jokic and Jimmy Butler are leading the charge for their teams, making big contributions just as they did throughout the regular season, and if they stay healthy, they’ll likely be the deciding factors of these finals. What I’m trying to say is: I made a roster on NBA 2K23 where the Heat are just five Jimmy Butlers and the Nuggets are five Nikola Jokics and then watched the finals play out.

No disrespect to Bam, or to Jamal Murray. It’s not like the entire rest of each team’s roster are bit players. But this is what video games can do for us. They can bring our wildest flights of fancy to life. They can settle the fatuous hypotheticals we’d otherwise simply have to argue about in a Buffalo Wild Wings.

And now that everybody’s on board with this utterly pointless endeavor, let’s get to it. The All-Butler, All-Jokic finals, baby. Roll up, get your tickets. Get ready to watch a 6”11 Serbian point guard passing to himself at PF while five immaculately corn-rowed 6”7 Butlers guard him/them.

I create a new 14-game season to get each team to the playoff finals as fast as possible. Both teams finish top of their conference, the Heat going 11-3 while over in the west, the Nuggets pull off an impressive 13-1. Is this an early indication that a 6”11 center works better in all positions than a 6”7 SF? If you’ve spent much time in 2K’s MyPlayer creators over the past few years you’ll know how much height can trump all other attributes and badges. Maybe Jokic is that ‘BROKEN MyPlayer Build you HAVE to try!!!’ that all the NBA 2K YouTubers have been shouting about in their thumbnails all this time.

I can tell you, however, that the regular season MVP was awarded to Jimmy Butler. I just can’t tell you which one of him. Three of him are getting about 30 minutes a night, so I’d venture it’d be one of them. But you never know - it could have been one of the bench Jimmys.

(NBA 2K doesn’t allow rosters of fewer than 14 players, so in fact, I ended up having to fill each team with 10 of their star players, some of whom get pretty limited game time. It must be a difficult conversation between the coaching staff and the benchwarmer Nikolas, explaining why they’re not out there with the Nikola starters despite being, literally, on a molecular level, just as good as them.)

No matter. In order to guarantee a Heat-Nuggets final, I have to take control of both teams and judiciously sim their way through the earlier playoff rounds. Quite unfazed by the fact they’re clearly facing a team of genetic mutants, the Detroit Pistons put up some resistance in the opening round over in the East but they’re swept 4-0. Same story vs. the Hawks in the next round, another four-game sweep. Philadelphia gets one game against the Miami Jimmy Butlers in the conference finals, but it’s still a convincing 4-1 series victory for the Butler army.

It’s a tense opening series for the Nuggets, meanwhile, who get taken to 7 games by the Pelicans but prevail and then hit their stride with a 4-0 sweep of the Suns. Now Nikola’s woken up and stretched out, the Nuggets sweep Memphis aside in four games in the conference finals too. So now we’ve got our finals.

I can confirm that all Jimmys and all Nikolas remained healthy leading up to the finals, so both teams are at full strength. Bad news for the bench clones, good news for fans of… well, I’m not sure if this can technically be called basketball anymore, but whatever genetics experiment is about to take place.

Firstly and most obviously - there’s a size advantage to the Nuggets on every mismatch on the floor. If Jokic shot the three, that advantage might be most obvious at point guard, where the 1 could consistently shoot over the Butler PG. But Nikola’s not much of a three-shooter.

Instead, it’s likely to be in the paint where the Nuggets press that height advantage, driving in close and getting the high-percentage looks.

For their part, the Heat will probably be looking to exert their speed and athleticism advantage over the Nuggets, emphasizing quick transitions and looking for gaps in the wall of Jokic.

There’s one more wrinkle to consider: NBA 2K23 rates Jokic considerably higher than Butler. The Nuggets talisman is rated 97, whereas Butler’s a lowly 93. Now, in reality we know from MyCareer experience that beyond a certain OVR rating our players feel pretty much the same. 75 to 85 feels like playing different games, and 85 to 95 is a joyous transformation, but the individual numbers up in the 90s don’t mean much for what a player’s capable of. Still - the Heat have got to be worried about those ratings.

Game 1 begins, and for the first time I actually see my clones take to the court, having simmed the previous rounds. That height advantage is real - the Jokics are able to bully their way into the paint with regularity, and pull out a healthy lead in the first quarter. The Butlers are quick, aggressive, and defending well at the perimeter. But they’re having a hell of a time trying to get a look near the basket when they’re surrounded by five centers.

After I watch two sets of identical men high-fiving each other and chatting to five more of themselves on the bench, the Butlers come back swinging in the second. Their extra speed and agility is making the difference. Jokic looks slow and uninterested all over the court.

And that’s the thing about the real Jokic. He does sometimes look uninterested. He looks like he should be slow. But that’s his great deception. A few seasons ago, when he started blowing up, he relied on defenders underestimated him. He looked - and still looks - like he could just barely be bothered to get off a shot or a flashy pass, as if it’d be the last action he’d complete before walking to the bench winded. But at the end of the game, there he still is, still ambling around, with 40 points and a triple-double.

This is a subtlety to an individual’s game that NBA 2K just can’t capture yet. How could it? Jokic’s generational talent is about performing feats of incredible footwork while his upper body looks fit to collapse. It’s about his vision, maybe even his facial expression while he plays. And in NBA 2K, where every player looks equally dead behind the eyes, you just can’t capture the Jokic deception.

So instead, the five AI Jokics play the way you’d think he’d play, if you hadn’t seen a Nuggets game for the last five seasons. He’s lumbering, clumsy in defense. His crossovers take about three seconds. And the Heat are exploiting that.

But 2K23 can’t capture the best things about Butler’s game, either. Because even though he’s an intimidating and lithe athletic presence with great defense and finishing, his strongest assets are mental. Smarter basketball minds than I will tell you about how well he reads the game, how he tracks the flight of the ball, and maintains a superhuman level of focus for every minute he’s on the court. And despite all this, he considers himself a role player.

You can’t map that out in a game. You can’t show how well someone’s reading the game, how tenacious they’re feeling in a given moment. And you especially can’t show how unselfish they are when they’re on a team of five of themself. I’ll admit that latter point’s my fault more than 2K’s.

The Heat take game 1, through a lot of stutter steps and crossovers that create open looks and easy layups.

And then they take the next two.

It hasn’t been spectacular to watch, but the Heat have been efficient for three straight games, regularly getting at least one Jimmy hot and relying on him for scoring. Nikola can get himself into the paint enough to keep in touch, but the Nuggets often start slow in the first quarter and find themselves chasing back a 15-point Heat lead. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone attempted. At certain points in this series, I forget the three even exists in basketball.

But the Jokics rally in game four. With everything on the line, they pull not just this game but the next one back. It’s not sophisticated basketball - no screens, very little clever dribbling. Just safe passes and reliable points in the paint. Greg Popovich would be loving this.

Game 6, then. The Nuggets have been on a knife-edge for three games now, the Heat on the brink of their first title for a decade. Still, nobody wants to shoot a three or set a screen, and the elbows-out, attritional basketball played by both teams continues as the Heat come out strong, as always, in the first quarter.

This time it doesn’t look like Jokic x5 has got it in him. Maybe it’s the stamina. Maybe it’s Butler’s notorious extra gear he reserves for playoffs, but the Heat maintain a lead for four quarters that only narrows to within 10 in the last five minutes of the fourth. In the end, the five Serbian towers of Denver just can’t protect the rim fast enough to keep Jimmy out.

The Heat take the 2023 NBA finals in six.

Butler wins playoff MVP. Don’t ask me which one.