They would go to school. They would come home. They'd pop-in NBA 2K9 -- the 2009 edition of this NBA-based video game -- and NBA 2K MT would basketball online. Five-on-five virtual games. On the weekends, the same thing. Play all weekend. Rack up stats. Bucket after bucket. Sometimes they'd work 9 to 5. Come home, log in to NBA 2K and match. Day daily. Week after week. Weekend after weekend.
It turned out to be a competitive time using hundreds of thousands competing online. Shaka, whose speech was"YoungSparks92," saw someone climbing the ranks with him. "YoungKobe3." Both New Yorkers were connected together afterward. Little did they know that almost a decade later they'd be competing side by side for the Utah Jazz in a professional league for NBA 2K gamers.
See, in the time, it was all about positions. They climbed up the ladder. Shaka had the bragging rights always ahead of Lotty. When Lotty discovered both NBA 2K stars climbed up in the Exact Same neighborhood of Mount Vernon, New York. He knew he had to fight him. 1 match to pick bragging rights to the town and 2K. They went to different high schools, so it was not like they could join on their own.
Shaka wanted the chance to play Lotty one . He knew he was a much better player than him, even if they had been always neck-and-neck in the competitive rankings. He only needed the moment to establish it. They played a hard-fought game. Lotty picked the Los Angeles Lakers -- a group touting a prime Kobe Bryant -- and Shaka chose the Rockets, which had Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming at the time.
After that night, both opponents -- that had never met until that point -- ended up going into the movies. Fast forward more than a decade and both are still side by side, teaming together on Jazz Gaming, the Utah Jazz affiliate for its NBA 2K League. "When we discovered that we were out of the exact same area and we were both on top of Cheap MT 2K21 the world, such as, wow, that's mad we need to start hanging out and talking about the sport to kind of learn from each other," Shaka said. "And then we only became teammates then."