Esports notebook: What Raptors are looking for in 2K League combine

Raptors Uprising GC Seanquai Harris, left to right, Joshua McKenna, Kenneth Hailey, Christopher Doyle, Trevion Hendrix, and Yusuf Abdulla (Tijana Martin/CP)

The NBA 2K League’s second season is quickly approaching, and with it will be four new expansion teams bringing the total up to 21 clubs for 2019.

The Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves are all NBA teams who will be getting a 2K League affiliate for the forthcoming season. That means more players coming into the league and another expansion draft.

As the off-season of the inaugural year rolled around, the 17 original 2K League teams were asked to retain just two of their players. In Raptors Uprising GC’s case, they opted to keep 2018 first-round pick Kenneth “Kenny” Hailey and defensive specialist Trevion “All Hail Trey” Hendrix.

This leaves 68 players without a team for this coming season with an even larger pool of prospective players also knocking on the door of the world’s first and only esports league run by a major professional sports league.

Former Uprising player, and Scarborough, Ont., native, Yusuf “Yusuf_Scarbz” Abdulla is among that group of 68 left unretained by his former team and will also have to compete with an even larger group of hungry competitors looking to make all of their NBA 2K dreams come true much the way he already did.

Abdulla isn’t too worried about his situation, however.

“All I’ve gotta do is — for guys who were in the league last year — we just have to get updated stats,” Abdulla told Sportsnet. “If you weren’t retained, which I wasn’t retained by the Raptors, they just need updated combine stats.”

The 2K League’s initial qualifier for prospective Season 2 players ends Tuesday night and from that cut-off those players will be entered into the league’s combine beginning in December. From that combine, the draft pool for Season 2 will be determined, so even though Abdulla got to skip the first step, there’s still a fair bit on the line for him – not that he’s concerned about that, either.

“I’m just confident, honestly, because I’ve been in the league,” Abdulla said. “People know what I did in the league and I’m playing against the best of the best and I’ve been playing well against them.”

With the combine close, that kind of confidence will be an important trait for players vying for a spot in the league. It may also be a trait evaluators look out for as teams begin doing their pre-draft work.

Like any sport, identifying talent in NBA 2K is an inexact science. For Shane Talbot, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s esports manager, however, he’s trying to make it as exact as possible.

“We have a great partnership with IBM,” said Talbot. “Last year we worked with them on advanced analytics regarding the combine data. I met with them recently and we looked at those rankings for the first time, really, since the draft and was shocked at the order on that list relative to the players that stood out in the regular season.

“It shows that there was more there than we even appreciated at the time.

“We are now exploring how to take that to the next level. We have more data now. We have even more experience and understanding of what translates to good gameplay in the NBA 2K League. So we’re ramping that up to the next level as we prepare for the Season 2 draft.”

Of course, data isn’t everything, and while Talbot will make use of any and all available data to assess and evaluate players during and after the combine, he’s also on the hunt for a more traditional trait that can be seen across all sports, electronic or not.

“I think, fundamentally, the most important thing that I learned is the importance of the team’s ability to work together with the chemistry off the court, especially because they all live together under one roof in our gaming house,” Talbot said of what his biggest takeaway from the inaugural season was.

“So even more emphasis on building chemistry through the draft this year is one of the priorities heading into [next season].”

That chemistry played a key role last season as the Uprising started the season 1-5, but still managed to make the playoffs.

“Starting 1-5 and being able to get back [in] by winning seven in a row. That takes courage,” said Abdulla. “Winning seven in a row against professional teams is tough. All odds were against us and I’m proud of the guys.

“I feel like that experience will help our draft stock as well because we pushed through adversity. We never gave up. Most guys when they start 1-5 they’d be like, ‘Oh man, the season’s over.’ We just fought through it.”

The exact date of the NBA 2K League’s draft is not yet known, but chances are talent evaluators will be looking for resiliency like that in addition to technical ability.

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Even more esports expansion in Toronto?

The year 2018 has been a wild one in Toronto for esports and the proliferation of esports expansion within the city.

Over the course of the calendar year Raptors Uprising, and the rest of the 2K League, launched, the city got an Overwatch League team in the Toronto Defiant and, just recently, it was announced that Defiant ownership group OverActive Media had acquired multi-esports organization Splyce, bolstering the Toronto-based company’s esports footprint to be among the largest in the world.

And as big as 2018 has been for esports in Toronto, it looks like 2019 and beyond could be even bigger.

“I don’t expect that we’re done,” Chris Overholt, OverActive Media’s president and CEO, told Sportsnet. “We have an aspirational goal to build a world-leading esports organization right here in Toronto.

“The reason why Overwatch makes sense to us is because of the Activision Blizzard model around the league and its revenue sharing and how they built out that strategy with their franchise holders. Similarly with Riot, they have a very clear plan here to evolve League of Legends on a global basis and they’ve got a league model that makes sense to us.

“So where there are opportunities like that for us in our future then I expect that we’ll be in those conversations. … Our model looks not dissimilar to Madison Square Garden or to Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. We’re gonna build out an esports organization that builds franchises, that builds brands, that sells consumer products and global partnerships. That’s our strategy.”

In addition to OverActive Media, MLSE, an organization that has teamed up with esports team FaZe Clan at times this season, could also be looking at an expanded esports portfolio that extends beyond just sports games.

“We’re always evaluating the opportunities that are relevant to an organization like ours in the industry,” said Talbot “So we’re not exactly certain where our learnings are going to lead us, but we are confident in that, yeah, you are going to see more and more endemic integration with us into other games outside of sports games where we’re currently focused at the moment.”

The Six is quickly becoming a hot bed of esports activity.

What Luminosity brings to Vancouver’s OWL team

Before he took the reins as MLSE’s esports manager, Talbot was the COO at Luminosity Gaming, the esports organization that partnered with the as-yet unnamed Vancouver OWL franchise.

Talbot says the Vancouver team is in good hands with Luminosity.

“Luminosity’s experience in Overwatch is on the record,” said Talbot. “At the time that I was there we had two top-10 teams. One was made up of a group of Europeans, one a group of North Americans. Both teams had players who are playing in Overwatch League today, including one of the guys who have emerged as the face and voice of North American Overwatch, which is Jake [Lyon], who’s on the Houston Outlaws.

“So Luminosity has a track record of finding and developing talent in Overwatch and I think that they’ll be able to assist the Vancouver [team] in a great way.”

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