The key to winning in NBA 2K16 is to use plays intelligently as plays don’t break as often as previous generations, use this to your advantage. In this NBA 2K16 Offensive Guide, we detail 5 money plays from the Dallas Mavericks playbook being utilized online and offline to great success. As a matter of fact, two of these plays are constantly used by famous MyTeam YouTubers such as CashNasty, OSN, EpikKai, and JesserTheLazer. However, these “money” plays are not the cheesy glitchy plays you know from previous generations of 2K. The levels of success you can have with these plays are dependent on your ability to read and react, on top of your familiarity with your roster.
Running plays to follow the play-art and hoping for a good shot is no longer viable, to win in 2K16 you need to run plays to utilize its unique spacing and movement to your advantage. In this year’s version of the game, plays actually don’t break if you choose to go away from the play-art. Plays will continue to run until you either break it for good with a shot, turnover, calling quick isolation or running a manual pick + roll.
This “unbreaking” nature of plays can be seen most apparent in my money play #4 here:
At its basic level, this is a flex motion set running through floppy action. In older versions of 2K, any pass you make away from the intended play-art target would most likely cost the play to break and reset back into your freelance. However, in 2K16 — as you can see from the video — I am purposely passing away from the intended receiver, yet the play still continues. This opens up a whole new crop of options; instead of simply waiting for a pin down, jumper to the SF via passing by the SG. This is what you get if you follow the play-art to the tee.
I can now get an iso post from the C, a dug-in for a standing dunk with the PF, and a much more open jumper for the SF because of the extra attention given to the C and PF. Running the play my way also allows for the SG, C, and PF to make the jumper pass to the SF; not just the SG. This is not achievable if one doesn’t understand the concept that plays no longer break down easily in NBA 2K16.
Now, with all this said, plays still aren’t guaranteed to score 100% of the time; therefore you still need to have a good base freelance incase your play-sets amount to nothing. This aspect of play utilization is demonstrated to its full effect in my money play #2:
On its own this play has 4 options because it has multiple branches built in. However, what makes this play extremely deadly is the fact that you can’t break off to your freelance anytime and attack through that. The freelance I find best to do this with is the pace motion cuts.
You can see in the video that I will follow the play-art, and when the moment is right I will call a manual pick and roll to break the play. I do this purposely so I can easily flow right into my pace motion freelance, which is built to attack with high pick and rolls. Essentially, I am using this money play to hide my freelance pace motion pick and roll attack. At the same time, if the play generates me an open three, I am going to take it. But, if it doesn’t, I won’t panic because I know the unique spacing/movement of this play allows me to easily to flow into another attack of mine.
So there you have it, running plays is nice, but remember to run it smart. Take full advantage of plays no longer breaking down and move the ball around more to create extra opportunities. Or, go with the opposite approach, and purposely break plays at the right times to hide your true intentions.
I suggest to also look at the other 3 money plays to take your offensive game even further. I am glad I got to write this up, hopefully everyone can have more fun with the offensive side of the ball now.
Did this NBA 2K16 Offensive Guide guide help you improve your game? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out the website here at SGO for more NBA 2K16 tips and guides.