Today we are going to show you guys how to navigate around the new menu interfaces in NBA 2K17. The new substitution and time out menu’s can be confusing so hopefully our detailed guide will have you up to speed in no time.
On The Court Menus
First, we’re going to start with the On The Court Menus.
The first menu we will look at is the substitution screen. You can bring up this menu by hitting down on the d pad. From here, it goes clockwise from your point guard to your center, and with your right stick, you can aim at the section that player occupies. If you know the position of the player you’re subbing out, you really can knock this part out with your eyes closed.
From here, you’re allowed to sub in from a list of that position’s eligible players on your team. Now if you hit RB or R1 depending on your system, it moves you over to your preset lineups. If you’re down 3 points in crunch time, you can quickly select your best five 3 point shooters. Note that if you have five 90-rated 3 point shooting point guards, it won’t put all five of them in. Instead, the menu goes by position and the players that are eligible to play those specific positions.
Each preset shows how good your team is at that specific lineup with a rating underneath, so you can see Portland’s bench lineup is a lot worse than their starters. Speaking of which, the two presets that you will probably use the most are the starter and bench presets that sub in your entire starting lineup and bench.
There a preset for defense as well, and if you hit RB or R1 again, this preset will put your best free throw shooters in the game. This is helpful when you expect your opponent to foul.
On defense, if you hit LB or L1, you can select the icon of the player you want to change, and from here, you can switch whom he’s guarding on the fly. Now he won’t run over to cover somebody else mid play. Hitting RB or R1 lets you decide how close you want the defender to guard his matchup off and on the ball, and hitting left on the d pad activates how you want to set up your half court and full court defensive sets.
When on offense, if you hit LB or L1, it brings up the quick plays. This year you can call a pick and roll for a player that doesn’t even have the ball yet. Now if you hit one of your player’s icons while this screen is up, you can now run a quick play specifically for them, and if you hit RB or R1 after that, you will now be able to call a play designed for that player.
Timeout Menu
The Timeout Menu is a little confusing and overwhelming at first. This menu allows you to sub in players by moving your left stick over the player you want to sub out and hitting RT or R2 to choose whom you want to put in.
With the offense tab activated, hitting X or square opens up the offensive adjustment screen where you can decide how aggressive or conservative you want to play the boards, what kind of tempo you want to run, how fast you want your players to attack, and what players you want to run the offense through.
Backing out of this, hitting y or triangle opens up the kind of sets you want to run with your team. There are a lot of familiar ones are in here from past 2K titles. However, 2K17 has added new ones you should try out. You can select any of these with the right stick.
Hitting LB/L1 or RB/R1 switches you now to the defensive tab. From here, when you highlight a player the options that come up ask you how you want to defend the player he’s guarding.
By hitting RT or R2 twice, you can decide if you want to put somebody else on to the opponent, how close you want to defend them, what direction you want to play them, how you want to defend them on screens, in the post, as well as if and when you double team them.
Now backing out of that by hitting b or circle, hitting x or square opens up the defensive adjustment screen. This menu allows you to decide how hard you want your team to crash the defensive boards, whether you want your team to play cautiously or aggressively, if you want to play neutral, force all shots in the lane, or force every shot to come from the outside. The defensive adjustment screen allows you to customize your defensive philosophy.
We hope this video helped you get comfortable with the potentially overwhelming menus in NBA 2K17. For more 2K tips and tutorials, subscribe to our YouTube Channel here.