So, does anyone remember when Spike Lee was heavily involved in the MyCareer mode of NBA 2K16? Called “Livin’ Da Dream: A Spike Lee Joint”, this rather ambitious story mode is more than just another tried-and-true narrative of starting from the bottom and working your way to the top. It’ll be about family and loyalty, to take care of the great loves you have in your life… and also make horrific amounts of money throwing balls into hoops. Like, seriously, getting money is a pretty big factor in the story. It’s a celebration and everyone is happy to get richer and richer.
As someone who can barely play basketball in a videogame, much less in real life, I just wanted to talk about the weirdest story mode in a yearly-released sports game I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.
Spoilers for a nine-year-old game.
The trouble starts at the character creation screen (literally the first thing you do when you fire up the game). Now, you can create any male character you want, but I would recommend making a character that has a darker shade of skin. Apparently, no one on the writing team ever thought anyone playing the game would make their rising star any ethnicity other than African-American. You can’t really ignore it, because they are explicitly related by blood to their twin sister and parents, and their appearance doesn’t adjust to match your player. If you decide to play as any other ethnicity, it makes every cutscene super awkward, and the paler you are, the weirder it gets.
Please do not make a white character.
While you do have a name you can input, everyone will be referring to you by your nickname (or I think your real name): Frequency Vibrations or “Freq” for short. I can see why someone would find that cool and stylish, but it’s really, really dumb too. No wonder it was made fun of as soon as it was discovered that it would be your player character’s name.
Anyways, after all that is said and done, you’ll be going through the motions of getting into a good college, getting drafted into one of the best basketball teams in America, and slowly making your way to be one of the great basketball legends. However, at the end of the day, how you perform in the game doesn’t matter to the story: you could play the most lukewarm b-ball in history, or even be benched for entire games, and you’ll still be treated like the second coming of Michael Jordan. It’s actually kind of funny and sad at the same time.
Freq and his family (and Vic)
Spike Lee himself shows up throughout the narrative, getting interviews from the various characters in the story. Now, it’s one thing to do it in a documentary or similar film, it’s another to do it in a basketball game with fictional characters, even managing to drive one of them to stop the interview with his hard-hitting questions, and play it completely straight. Not even the most pretentious game directors do that — Hideo Kojima doesn’t even do that! Also, at some point, you just… get a girlfriend. There’s no buildup to it or even a mention of her before. She just shows up and her character model does not do her actress justice.
Spike Lee, you hack.
However, I think the most memorable thing about Livin’ Da Dream is Victor Van Lier, your main character’s childhood best friend. The minute Freq signs onto a big basketball team and gets famous, he abuses the fact that he’s the protagonist’s friend. He throws parties, gets into trouble, and has your player character bail him out (from jail for a quarter of a million). Vic is constantly manipulating Freq into letting him do this stuff, keeping him around, and being the most selfish person in the story. He reaches into some shockingly dark places to get what he wants. He tries to use his dead parents to manipulate Freq into giving him an intro into a record label… after he tried to get with his girlfriend! And even has the gall to blackmail Freq after he forgives him for all that!
The team owner, very reasonably, tells Freq to cut ties with him publicly. After all, associating with someone who causes so much trouble both professionally and personally isn’t a good image to have for a rising superstar. That being said, from the way the scene is shot and from the acting, it’s very apparent that the “right thing” to do is to keep Vic around, because Vic is family to Freq and he really, really cares about them, sharing his wealth and ensuring they’re all taken care of.
Vic is the worst and his hat is dumb.
But the real kicker is what happens to Vic in the ending: he dies. He gets himself into an accident (with your car because of the aforementioned blackmail, by the way) after getting into a car chase. While this is portrayed as a tragedy, I can’t help but feel like he deserved it; he never really did anything to elicit a genuinely sad response to his death. In all likelihood, he caused that car chase and crash himself, and it is a miracle no one else got hurt.
And finally, Vic at the very end comes back as a ghost and gives a SEVEN-MINUTE MONOLOGUE explaining his entire backstory and motivations about why he did everything he did, talking about appreciating how much love and care Freq and his family gave him while his own flesh and blood left him with nothing. It’s supposed to make him seem more sympathetic, but to me it feels like the opposite — it makes him worse! Despite everything and all the love he was shown, he still abused Freq’s caring nature for his own personal gain. He genuinely didn’t deserve having that spotlight in the ending.
His past does not excuse his present.
Despite its problems, it’s actually a pretty enjoyable story mode, even if it’s just to see how corny and self-indulgent it can be. There are a few really good moments throughout MyCareer, such as the car ride scene with Vic. Just seeing Freq lay into him after putting up with everything he’s put him through is cathartic to see.
Spike Lee is a good director and can make some great films… but this isn’t a film, it’s a videogame that didn’t take into account even the most minute of choices with a story that’s written more to stroke his own ego than anything else. I still wonder what he was trying to do with Vic, because there is nothing redeeming about him other than “he’s family”. I think the lesson here is that you shouldn’t let anyone, even family, step all over you and that you should let them face their consequences, or else they might end up worse than before.
Yeah, we’re livin’ the dream, alright…
Still… I’ve seen plenty of people actually feel sad about his death. I mean, I get it. You can’t help but care about someone, no matter what they do. You’ve known them your whole life, and them dying will still affect you. Regardless of how flawed they may be, you still share a connection that isn’t easily broken. It’s still baffling to me, but there’s likely a Vic in someone’s life. Maybe even Spike Lee has a Vic. I encourage you to experience this story at least once because you need to understand what Livin’ Da Dream is all about.
