TORONTO – Raptors Uprising GC, the Toronto Raptors’ official NBA 2K League club, begin their new season Tuesday against Mavs Gaming in the “Tip Off Tournament,” where a prize pool of $120,000 will be up for grabs.
For the Uprising, more so than just excitement to begin their new season, the team is entering Season 2 of the 2K League with a sense of purpose and a feeling of some unfinished business.
“We’ve got four of our six guys from last year,” standout defender Tevion “All Hail Trey” Hendrix told Sportsnet in the Uprising’s gaming house last week. “Everything is gonna fall into place this year.”
Last season, RUGC began their season with a 1-5 record, but ended up running the table the rest of the way to reach the post-season as the hottest team in the league. They ended up falling to – who else? – Cavs Legion GC in the first round of the playoffs, but that confidence the team had during that streak last year has carried over to this season in no small part because of the way the squad has been assembled.
As Hendrix alluded to, the 2019 version of the Uprising is remarkably similar to the 2018 one.
During the off-season, because the league was expanding to 21 teams from 17, teams were only allowed to retain two players on their existing rosters and in RUGC’s case, they ended up keeping Hendrix and 2018 first-round pick Kennth “Kenny” Hailey, meaning the other four members of the team – Seanquai “KingQuai614” Harris, Joshua “TsJosh” McKenna, Christopher “Detoxys” Doyle and Scarborough, Ont., native Yusuf “Yusef Scarbz” Abdulla – would be left free for other teams to take.
And in a small stroke of luck, RUGC was able to bring back two of those unprotected four, spending their third- and fourth-round picks on Harris and McKenna this year, meaning that four of the team’s five starters from a year ago are returning to run it back this year.
“I’ve been telling people it gives us a head start because we already were one of the closest teams last year,” said McKenna of what having four of the same guys back for the second year means for the team.
Joining the existing Uprising members this year will be 2019 first-round pick Frederick “Doza” Mendoza, who played for Pistons GT last year, and league newcomer Georgio “OOC Slim” Bonte, a pair that the existing group of guys were already familiar and comfortable playing with.
“I actually won a championship with Doza in the off-season, a Pro-Am championship, so we’ve been playing in the off-season for a little bit,” said Hendrix. “I’ve known Slim since about 2K16. I played on his team – it might’ve been 2K17 – and he had his own team and he was actually playing point guard when I met him and now he’s at a different position.
“So I knew that when we drafted those two guys we got some versatile guys to join us.”
Not just versatile guys, but also ones who come with previous pedigree within the game.
Like Hendrix said, Mendoza is coming off a minor-league championship in the off-season and in the case of Bonte, he was actually a two-time MVP and champion in what used to be NBA 2K’s top esports league, the My Player Basketball Association.
But while the pre-existing chemistry the Uprising have, in addition to the little bit of championship experience they added, certainly has this group feeling very self-assured coming into the new season, the team’s manager believes that just the simple fact they the team’s figured out how to prepare properly will immediately make them better this year.
“One of them is in the structure in how we prepare for each week because that structure became invaluable,” said Shane Talbot, MLSE esports manager, of lessons he learned from last year that he’s applying to this year. “We were freestyling and I was feeling it out a little bit in the beginning of the season. But as we got towards the end of the season the things that we needed to schedule and the areas that we needed to apply structure to became apparent and now we’re starting the season off with that level of structure.”
So optimism is high for the Uprising, and for good reason. This is a team that’s motivated, experienced and already knows how play with each other, for the most part. All that’s left now is to get this thing started.
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