An inspired moment

[Eugene]

You know what'd be nice?

You know how we all complained about the silly lob passes and general sloppiness of the ball movement in Live 2005 (Like when Wade lobs the ball in to Shaq and he jumps out 5 feet to catch it then take 3 seconds to recover, making the inside game absolutely useless)? Maybe in future iterations, it'd be neat to keep that kind of sloppy ball handling and gradually tighten it up as you play with the team longer. That is, as you play longer with the same players, you build up chemistry, and instead of just bumping up ratings (because that's really kind of corny), it'd be nice if you just got more solid passes, and better ball movement, better court spacing, quicker responses when you call for picks.

Also, the five-man unit that plays together the longest would have the highest "efficiency" rating, so to speak, and they'd have the best ball-handling and execution. So, in crunch time, you wouldn't necessarily have the five highest rated players on the court, but you would have the five man unit with the most chemistry.

And when you make trades, the execution would be poorer even though you got a more talented player in return. Or, even just a trade rumor can impact team chemistry and performance on the court.

The possibilities, of course, are endless. A lack of training camp results in sloppy execution. Steve Nash gets injured, then the ball movement isn't as crisp. Get a bunch of scorers on the team, and no one knows how to pass the ball, making a "pass-first" point guard an actual necessity (and of course, making that "pass" rating actually worth something. Change the coach, then you mess up whatever offensive philosophy he had going.

But, on the other hands, trades can actually be good for your team chemistry. Getting rid of Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell is only going to help your team chemistry.

It would also apply to the other end of the court. I'm tired of Chris Mihm NOT stepping up on help side D. But, as you play longer, the team starts to buy into the defensive concepts, and the TEAM plays better defense. Let's face it, the Spurs are a great defensive team, not only because of Duncan and Bowen, but because when Brent Barry gets beat off the dribble, you still have 1 or 4 of the other Spurs coming at you. That's what I'm talking about: better responses on TEAM defense.

Again, maybe if you trade for a defensive stopper, then it breeds the defensive mentality, so you might sacrifice a scorer for a stopper. And you can hire a defensive coach.

And it creates a great give and take system. As your offense gets better, the opponent's defense gets better and vice versa. And it adds another dimension to trades and free agency because now, you can have you Bowens taking less money to stay on the Spurs and you can have Carter being traded for draft picks and a kidney. See?

I'm not discovering fire here. Everyone's been clamoring for team chemistry to factor into gameplay, and ESPN has already started implementing that into their game. I think this is a nice way to implement the team-chemistry system and generally improve the game.

So, what do you think?

[Bang]

Yes, it will be great to have a teamwork rating. In Winning Eleven there is a teamwork rating that goes up whenever you play games together. I guess there should be a teamwork rating and a disruptiveness rating, so if you have a disruptive player, there is a chance that your teamwork might fall instead of rising. It would make dynasty mode much better.

I think maybe having some sort of indepedent team rating might help. I mean, a lot of teams are much better as a team than by themselves. Teams like Detroit especially. It wouldn't be too hard to implement these bonuses either, they could be something easy as just stat bonuses.

[Andrew]

No arguments there, but while sloppy play before developing chemistry would be a realistic and challenging element, talented players can generally play pretty well together and an entry pass into the post is a fairly simple plan on offense. Better logic/quicker recovery when it comes to a player stepping/jumping out to receive a pass wouldn't go astray, but it would be much cooler if there was a chemistry aspect that affected it (amongst other elements of the game).

[Matt]

Chemistry would be an excellent addition.

Also i'd like to add to Eugene's idea. If you trade a player with a low chemistry rating to another team then his rating should increase. Say T-Mac to Houston. Surely after being traded to a good situation his rating should increase. Or Carter to the Nets.

I like the idea of teams playing differently with different lineups.

EA, step up!

[nbalive744]

a teamwork rating would be very nice, if they cared a lot they would step up and be more like nba 2k5 but i dont know why they dont wanna do much improvement to their games

[hornets_fan]

nba 2k5 sucked this year but wil lget better every year