As soon as the Kyrie Irving trade was announced, one section of the sports population only had one question on their mind: "but what about the NBA 2K18 cover?"
Back on July 1st, Irving was announced as the cover athlete for NBA 2K18. Just under two months later, Irving was traded to the Celtics on August 22nd, putting the team at 2K Games in a bit of a tough spot. Now, while you may think that changing the cover after Irving swapped teams would be as easy as photoshopping the point guard into another jersey, it wasn't that simple.
Speaking on the Scoop B Radio podcast, NBA 2K producer Ronnie Singh discussed the challenge that his team faced with having to alter their game's cover after the Kyrie trade.
“I think it’s more of a headache than a lot of people think. The manufacturing doesn’t happen overnight.”
“We don’t turn on a switch and the games are produced. There is a lot of effect to retail, you know? Like there is signage that will be there that is going to be Cavaliers.”
“It is nice that people relate that huge transaction in the league to thinking about how it affects a 2K cover, so all in all it’s a good thing. But yeah, obviously there are procedural things that are difficult about it, but nothing that we are challenged by. We make it work.” (Ronnie Singh/ Scoop B podcast)
Not a bad situation to be in. Yeah, sure it likely took a lot of work to make sure that the game shipped with Kyrie in the correct jersey. But it must have been pretty nice to have fans thinking about their game immediately after one of the biggest moves of the offseason.
You can check out our full NBA 2K18 review, here.
