NBA 2K21

MyCareer, a major part of the series, returned as one of the available game modes. MyCareer is a career mode in which the player creates their own customizable basketball player and plays through their basketball career. Players may make a male or female player, although female player creation is exclusively available on next-gen consoles.[11] The Neighborhood also returns to MyCareer, as 2K Beach, in which players can customize their wardrobe, get haircuts and tattoos, and purchase boosts. They can also do workouts and run drills to improve their character's attributes at their current team's practice facility. Progress in MyCareer may not carry over across generations, due to some changes made exclusively for next-gen.[12]

In MyTeam, players collect cards of NBA players (current or past) to put on their team. This game mode has packs (or loot boxes) that can be purchased with Virtual Currency (VC) or My Team Points (MT). Players can also buy cards from each other at the auction house using VC or MT.

In the next-generation release for the game, The MyCareer online staple The Neighborhood mode was rebranded into The City with the return of affiliations from NBA 2K16. Players start in Rookieville where they play similarly low-leveled players before they can choose an affiliation to enter The City. MyRep, the level system exclusive to The City mode, is shared across all MyPlayer builds, so players only have to level up out of Rookieville once for all their characters. Once a player levels out of Rookieville, they are automatically assigned without choice to one of four of The City's affiliations, ranging from the North Side Knights, South City Vipers, Beasts of the East, and the Western Wildcats. Players are free to switch their affiliation, however they are penalized for doing so by their level being reset down to Pro 1, the same level the player was upon leaving Rookieville. Although the player can play in affiliations that they are not a member of, there is a penalty by reducing the amount of MyRep experience gained in matches. Players can participate in quests given by NPCs, which are either single-player 3v3 games against famous basketball players, or playing games against other MyPlayers in The City. The rewards are typically VC and customizations.[13]

Every affiliation has elections for a Mayor, which are typically community influencers who are responsible for making videos that display in-game, court designs, in-game playlists, design of murals, and uniform selections. Each mayoral term lasts 6 weeks.[13]

NBA 2K21 features both MyLeague and MyGM from previous games, where the player can take the helm of a franchise and fully simulate an NBA season while making trades, drafting, and playing games with their teams. Compared to prior titles, eighth-generation console releases of NBA 2K21 were left with little changes for their staple franchise modes, MyLeague and MyGM. Outside of roster changes, the main changes focuses with MyLeague Online where certain users can be given different admin controls. WNBA teams were also given more representation as players were now able to play through a whole season with all 12 teams.[14]

In the game's Xbox Series X/S and PS5 release, MyGM and MyLeague were combined and rebranded into MyNBA. Instead of the role-playing aspects such as cutscenes, player morale, and tasks being locked solely to MyGM, they are now individually toggleable under role-playing elements before one starts MyNBA. NBA G League games are also playable as well, however playoffs and the championship for the NBA G League are not featured. The boom/bust system was also revamped, giving more unpredictability to draft prospects and young players in terms of how their career will turn out.[15]