Countless NBA players have experienced this feeling.

Dingranran
3 min readApr 17, 2021

Countless NBA players have experienced this feeling. But not just one WNBA participant had until recently. When NBA 2K20 premiered in 2019, it had been the first time the annual match — that premiered in 1999 — showcased WNBA players. Her predecessors didn’t get the chance to perform as themselves, but Washington Mystics wing Aerial Powers couldn’t help but make a comparison when she played as herself. “This is most likely the way the guys feel when they get in the league and they get a opportunity to play themselves 2K,” she said. “It is just surreal and is pretty fun.”

“I would have never believed they’d implement girls to the game,” Powers told USA TODAY Sports. “Even though I feel like we should be in there.” Dallas Wings shield Allisha Gray was playing 2K since Shaquille O’Neal graced the cover at 2005, and that she still has trouble believing that she is part of it. “I never would have imagined seeing myself in a video game,” Gray said. Alexis Jones, who had been waived by the Atlanta Fantasy in August, has consistently enjoyed making her own player on 2K and will mold his match after her very own. This will be the first year she won’t need to make herself at the picture of a man.

“That has been my dream come true, ‘’ I don’t know about everybody else,” Jones said. “I understand that’s one thing I always dreamed of as a little woman — to maintain a 2K game. This opportunity to create yourself and build yourself and be a girl is dope.” The importance of building your own WNBA player can’t be overstated, particularly for young girls who hope to play basketball or are just fans of this game. “I think it’s astonishing that little girls can grow up and really play the game and understand that they can still have the same goals and accomplishments as men,” Jones said. Powers echoed the opinion and how important representation is for young women. She also wants to see more advancement together with girls in the video game business in general.

Powers streams and plays video games on Twitch and is now particularly active in gaming because the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She even hosted an all-female 2K championship in October that included a 30-minute opening musical group by Grammy Award Winning artist DJ Jazzy Jeff. The flow garnered over 26,000 viewers. The 2019 WNBA winner says if she plays video games she is sometimes satisfied with misogynistic messages from other users, and she hopes that new modes such as”The W” can make it much easier for women playing video games. “It sort of gives the younger girls a fantastic look and says,’Hey, it’s alright to be a female, like basketball and want to playwith,’ since I understand a few of their male buddies may have a different view,” Powers said. “But if you see the women in the game, it is like,’Hey, this is right.’” In a word, most consumers locate making shots consistently to be: hard. Having logged some hours on the game myself, I concur this aspect of NBA 2K is definitely harder. However, I am part of the group that doesn’t wish to see anything changed. The gameplay is strong and a bit more strategic in every mode, and also the changes to shooting are mainly part of the quality.

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