They'd go to school. They'd come home. They had pop-in NBA 2K9 -- the 2009 variant of this NBA-based video sport -- and could basketball online. Five-on-five digital games. On the weekends, the same thing. Play all weekend. Rack up stats. Bucket after bucket. Come home, log into NBA 2K21 MT and match. Day after day.
Browne (who goes by"Shaka") and Martin (who goes by"Lotty") climbed the global rankings of the NBA 2K9 online community. It was a competitive time with hundreds of thousands competing on the web. Shaka, whose handle was"YoungSparks92," watched someone climbing the ranks with him. "YoungKobe3." The two New Yorkers were linked together then. Little did they know that almost a decade after they would be competing side by side for the Utah Jazz in a professional league for NBA 2K players.
See, in the moment, it was all about rankings. They climbed the ladder up. They jockeyed for position. Shaka had the bragging rights always ahead of Lotty. When Lotty found out both NBA 2K stars climbed up in the same area of Mount Vernon, New York. He knew he had to battle him. 1 match to pick bragging rights for the town and 2K. They went to different high schools, therefore it was not like they could link up on their own. But they had mutual friends, so the match was put up.
Shaka wanted the chance to play Lotty one on one. He always knew he was a better player than him, even if they had been constantly neck-and-neck in the competitive rankings. He simply needed the moment to establish it. They played a hard-fought game. Lotty picked the Los Angeles Lakers -- a team touting a prime Kobe Bryant -- and Shaka chose the Rockets, which had Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming at the time.
After that night, both competitors -- who had never met until that point -- ended up going to the movies. Fast forward over 10 years and the two are still side by side, teaming together on Jazz Gaming, the Utah Jazz affiliate for the NBA 2K League. "When we found out that we were out of precisely the exact same neighborhood and we were on top of the world, such as, wow, that is mad we will need to start hanging out and talking about Buy MT NBA 2K21 the sport to sort of learn from each other," Shaka explained. "And we only became teammates after that."