The Bucks add an eSports team to their roster. Yes, the gamers will be coddled like pros
James B. NelsonThe Milwaukee Bucks chose their NBA 2K team Wednesday — professional video game players who will be paid employees of the team, provided with a luxury apartment and coddled like all-stars.
The six players were selected as part of the first-ever draft for players of the NBA 2K League. A total of 17 NBA teams chose players who will compete against each other during a season that begins next month and ends in August.
Players selected by the Bucks include first-rounder Aaron Rookwood, who goes by the gamer name "Drake Griffin." With their last pick, the Bucks chose Jovan Tenner ("BigBaby2k"). Other players chosen include Matt Hofman ("King Peroxide"), Mark Hampton ("STL2LA"), Jacob Walls ("Procis1on"), and Timothy Anselimo ("Olarry").
The draft was conducted with some of the same elements of hype that surround the annual NBA draft, including teams "on the clock" to make these decisions and anxious players waiting in a live audience.
The teams will compete in a series of regular-season games, tournaments and playoffs. At stake: $1 million that will be distributed to winning teams throughout the season.
The new league is part of the NBA's efforts to tap into a large, young international audience. All 30 NBA teams will be included in the video game league in the next couple of years.
For the NBA and the Bucks, it's a way of bridging their professional basketball franchise with the world of gaming, which has its own cadre of superstars. Some teams have brought out big names to draw attention to their NBA 2K operations — the Sacramento Kings, for instance, named Shaquille O'Neal as general manager of the team.
It's also another way of building on the huge followings that the top players have built. For some, the world of gaming could be far more than long evenings spent in the family's rec room with a bunch of buddies.
"This is a job," said Cayle Drabinsky, the Bucks director of business operations.
The first-round pick will be paid $35,000, while the other five players will receive $32,000, he said.
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The creation of the NBA gaming league was led by Bucks co-owner Wes Edens in an effort to tap the huge interest in the eSports industry, which is expected to be a $1.5 billion business by 2020.
More than 9 million copies of the NBA 2K game have been sold worldwide. In China, there are 34 million people who play a version of the game using a download.
The league is a joint effort between the NBA and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., a New York-based video game publisher-distributor that owns 2K Games and Rockstar Games.
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The Bucks spent months scouting players who will be eligible for the NBA 2K draft.
That includes a recent trip to Chicago to meet with young men who play the video game for hours on end.
"We ordered a bunch of pizzas and we just talked with them," Drabinsky said. "What makes them want to play for 12 or 14 hours a day?"
The afternoon-long draft based at Madison Square Garden started about noon and streamed live on Twitch, a website dedicated to online gaming. The 102 players eligible for the draft were put through a tryout and narrowed from a field of about 72,000 gamers originally deemed qualified to participate.
The Bucks have invested about $250,000 in the creation of their team and have sold a variety of sponsorships to companies supplying equipment like specialized gaming chairs.
The Bucks spent about $100,000 to renovate part of a warehouse near Schlitz Park into a training facility for the NBA 2K team. That includes a gaming area, a lounge and a kitchen. The players will be housed at The Moderne high-rise and expected to report to the training facility a few minutes away every day.
The players will be equipped with state-of-the-art gaming consoles, headsets and chairs. A local team of gamers will serve as a "scrimmage team" to compete with the professional players, Drabinsky said.
And the players will have their own gear, including uniforms for training and game days.
"These guys are going to be decked out in the latest gear," Drabinsky said. "Everything that you can market or sell, they've thought of."
The players won't be using the names or likenesses of actual Bucks players. Rather, they'll create their own identities that correspond to their personalities.
"The NBA really sees this as their fourth league," said Andrew Buck, the Bucks eSports manager. In addition to the main NBA teams, the league runs a minor league G League and the WNBA.