Like the 2007 New England Patriots, Raptors Uprising GC finished their regular season 16-0.
Unlike those Patriots, however, the Uprising can still complete a perfect 19-0 record.
The Uprising will begin their NBA 2K League playoff pursuit Friday at 5 p.m. ET against Hornets Venom GT and attempt to do one of the rarest of sporting feats: Run the table through the entire season.
And when we say the entire season, we literally mean every game they played this season, as the Uprising not only won all 16 of their regular-season matchups, but they also won a couple in-season tournaments, which, if you include the victories from those events, would bring their record to an astounding 25-0.
From the two in-season tournaments, the Uprising have earned $194,500 in prize money this season and now have their eyes on the $420,000 first-place prize that will come with winning the 2020 2K League playoffs.
It won’t be easy, and given their undefeated status the Uprising certainly are the team to beat heading into the post-season, but they appear to be a team ready for the challenge.
“When you win as much as we do, you become the target of the league,” MLSE esports director Shane Talbot said in a recent interview. “So, of course, everybody’s watching us, trying to mimic us or figure out how to beat us. And so the pressure is there now and I think we would give back both of the tournament titles and every accolade that we’ve won individually in exchange for the championship. So that’s the goal and we’ve got to stay focused.
“We are confident; there’s obviously no other team in the league that I would want to have heading into this playoffs, but at the same time in the past two years, it’s been underdogs who have won, it’s not been the clear favourites. So we need to keep that top of mind. In this game all it requires is to get hot for a tournament and that’s essentially what the playoffs are.”
Eyes on the chip, never been more locked.
taken on the #LGG8ThinQ pic.twitter.com/8GB8HoOz89
— x-Raptors Uprising GC (@RaptorsGC) August 17, 2020
The Uprising are a team as old as the 2K League itself – three seasons – and have gone through much change over their lifespan. In fact, the team this season is composed almost entirely of players who weren’t around last year.
While there’s been much transition among the Uprising’s history, the one constant has been the first pick they ever made back in 2018 with the 11th-overall selection, Kenneth “Kenny Got Work” Hailey.
The Uprising’s franchise story since the team’s inception, Hailey had enjoyed a solid 2K League career until this season, when he raised his individual level to the point that it’s all but a foregone conclusion that he’ll win league MVP thanks to his league-leading 35.3 points-per-game scoring average.
Hailey’s leap into the MVP conversation came at about the time in the off-season that he decided to take the reins and play point guard – NBA 2K’s premier position – full time after spending the first two seasons bouncing between multiple positions.
He was also aided by a strong supporting cast that, as he said, has allowed him to flourish this season.
“I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my teammates,” Hailey said. “After the off-season we went into the regular season and we knew what our game plan was. We found our identity and that was always lacking in the first two seasons, is we never really had an identity. We were bouncing around lineups and everything.
“So I was gonna play point guard for this whole season and we stuck with it and the defence that we’ve been playing all season long helped out my numbers, but I was planning on having this season from the beginning.”
Hailey and Gerald “Sick One” Knapp were the only players remaining from last year’s team. The rest of the roster was filled in with players who all have a shared history with one another dating back to the pre-2K League days.
“To be honest, we’ve been playing with each other since about 2K17 with at least one other person on the team. So we’ve all kinda got a real good feel for each other,” Knapp told Sportsnet back in May. “Kenny and [Eric “TimelyCook” Donald], they won $250,000 together in 2K17. Me and [Maurice “ReeceMode” Flowers] competed in the same tournament. And then my brother [Jake “Legit 973” Knapp] is the other player. So we all have a really unique chemistry together that other teams don’t have.”
It’s not just chemistry that the Uprising boast that others in the 2K League don’t seem to have.
Given all the success the team’s enjoyed so far, it’s clear this team is just plain different, but what exactly that difference is can’t easily be defined.
“We did not come into the season with an expectation of having a perfect season, but after Week 2, and I looked at the schedule and I saw how we were playing and I knew how we were scrimmaging against the teams we had left to play, it actually dawned on me for the first time that we might not lose,” Talbot said.
“… Early on in the season, looking ahead at the schedule, seeing how consistently we had been playing and then knowing how our perfect start was supplemented with, essentially, perfect scrimmages it dawned on me that there might be an opportunity here to do something really, really special.”
The Uprising no longer might have an opportunity do something special, the opportunity is right here in front of them.
Just three more wins to immortality.
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