While I consider myself a sports fan, I’m really not that much of a basketball fan. In fact, if I put basketball in a group with the major American sports – football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, and hockey – and I’d put it just after drag racing and just before cricket.

I actually used to get a hard time about that all the time from my dad. You see, I went to an ACC school, and he was amazed by the fact that I had no interest in going to see ACC basketball games. I went to all the football games, and even soccer games – I mean, hey, I had a Spanish suitemate who was on the soccer team – heck, I even went to track events and swim meets. But I only really ever went to women’s games, mostly because the band needed an extra drummer there, and on holiday vacations we got per diem for going to them.

So when we got NBA 2K7 it was one of those kind of “Well, SeanMike is one of our resident sports fans,” and I volunteered to take it, though I couldn’t tell you the difference between a point guard and a center if my life depended on it. Because, honestly, the only NBA I typically watch comes in two circumstances:

• When my company gives me tickets to the luxury box, in which case, I tend to watch the games through a bit of a blur…
• Or when it’s the finals. And they’re on TV. And there’s no good baseball on.

The first thing that NBA 2K7 does is ask you for your favorite team. Right then I was hit with a quandary. I mean, I don’t really have a favorite team. When I was a kid, I rooted for the Bulls, but then again that was back in the Michael Jordan days, and I rooted for them, the Chicago Bears, and any other Chicago team, because honestly, I didn’t know any better. After about a year of that, I went back to rooting for what the rest of my family rooted for, which was Pittsburgh, but for some reason, there was no professional basketball team in Pittsburgh.

And NO ABSOLUTELY NOT WOULD WE ROOT FOR A TEAM FROM PHILLY. I rooted for WVU basketball (obviously later for UVA), but even after moving to northern Virginia it was a rough decision for me to say, sure, I’ll go with Les Bull-ay. (My poor way of mimicking Tony Kornheiser’s way of say “Les Bullets” in a French accent, since that was their name that they changed to the Wizards because “Bullets” was too violent. Everybody knows that the whole reason DC had a bad crime rate was that the poor misunderstood youth thought it was okay thanks to the name of the basketball team.)

My company lets me use the luxury box occasionally for Buzxards…errr…Blizzards….errr…Wizards games occasionally, so I chose them. Besides, Gilbert Arenas is a character.

So from there you have some choices of game mode. You better choose wisely; the menus are fairly counter-intuitive, and a lot of the frustration I had with the game was trying to make my way around them.

You have several modes of game play. They consist of:
24/7 Next
The Association
Season
Street
Tournament
Practice
Situation

I’ll try to go over each of them in order, at least, as well as I can. First, a caveat:

I really, really stunk at this game. I mean, in basketball games in general. But seriously – I feel like you really should know at least the basics of the sport before playing this, because it’s not going to teach you. You don’t play Madden without knowing you can’t cross the scrimmage line then try to pass the ball – I did similar fouls all the time in this game. I needed a helmet when playing this game to avoid brain damage from hitting myself in the head with the controller.

24/7 Next: This is story mode, and to be honest, about the best tutorial mode the game has to offer. You start off in first person as a kid playing ball with your friends. You see Shaq, and end up in a free throw contest against him. If you beat him, you end up in tournaments to prove your way up to the NBA.

In the meantime you’re dealing with your annoying as hell friends, and your subpar ball skills. (Though given how “great” my friends were, it mostly just meant that much more time playing the same games over and over and over and over again.) You’ll run through various drills and the such, trying to gain reputation, which can be really frustrating if you keep screwing up (like I do). And also if you try to save the game – it literally took me almost five minutes to figure out how to get out of the save game menu.

You even get to pick how your character looks. Just a note, though – and seriously, I’m not being racist here, but you can only be African-American. Thus, my attempts to create the Irish-American sensation Spicy McHaggis just made about the ugliest character you can imagine.

The Association lets you play a bit of David Stern – you form up the entire league, you get to trade and what have you, and you play through, hoping to make it to the playoffs and win the championship.

Season is just that; instead of playing over multiple seasons, like the Association is supposed to recreate, you play just one season. Much like a “Quick Start” game only plays one single game.

“The Street” lets you play some street ball – not over the top action, like some street games, but instead 2 on 2 through 5 on 5, half court or full court action. Street rules will get you through at least the beginning of 24/7, so here’s a place to work on them.

Tournament is just that – a tournament – almost the party game version of NBA 2K7. Once I get some friends, then get some friends who like video games, then get some friends who like video games and the NBA, I could see this being popular. You might have a head start on me in that regard though.

Practice and situation are interesting. As far as I can tell, Practice is, well, shooting some shots. Given how the controls work for shots in this game, it’d be good of you to try this before playing. Situation lets you set up certain, well, situations in the game, and practice how to deal with them.

Which kind of leads to controls. I’m going to be completely clear with all y’all out there in cyber-land – the controls are COMPLICATED.

No more complicated, however, than most sports games – but the plethora of buttons and sticks on modern controllers means you can do more than ever before, and NBA 2K7 takes advantage of everything you can imagine. Intentional fouls – aggressive play – coaching changes – it’s all there.

And it’s all completely overwhelming if you’re a first time player, especially if you’re an NBA newbie like myself. The 24/7 mode helps in that, kind of eases you into it a bit, but still, in the end, you gotta just play and play and play to learn them all. This isn’t a first person shooter,, where you can get away with just the “fire” and “reload” buttons.

Shooting is the biggest area you’ll see this. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to shoot. For most players, if they stick with one or two teams, that will make them very good with those teams. For newbies, or players who switch teams a lot, you’ll find it very frustrating, especially given that the isometric shooting will differ from player to player based off their shooting style.

The graphics in the game are pretty darn good. You’re not going to hear me complain about how an individual player’s moves, or face, doesn’t look quite right, because I don’t know them well enough to tell. I can say that it’ll let you make a really goofy looking guy in the 24/7 mode, and that the talking and animation don’t always sync up. Mostly, the biggest thing that got me about the animation is when someone is talking in a cut scene, it doesn’t look like they’re really talking, especially if it’s an NBA player – their mouths just barely move.

The audio is also pretty good, including the announcers and soundtrack, though really if they’re going to do talking friends, who are talking to NBA players and you, then they should have you and the NBA players talking back. Otherwise, in my opinion, it just feels awkward, and detracts from the verisimilitude.

Some of the loading sequences can get quite long, too, and as I mentioned before, the menus are rather counter-intuitive.

There are a couple of other parts I feel compelled to mention. You not only have the fatigue of players, which can go across games – you also have to watch your team chemistry. I thought that was a really cool addition.

Still, this is a darn amazing basketball game. If you are at all a fan of the NBA, you need to go out and buy yourself a copy of this game – and if you don’t own an Xbox 360, get a 360 and this game. If anything, it’ll make you at least as cool as me, and you can’t be an NBA fan if you’re not at least as cool as me (which is not a high mark to pass).