The 2K video game franchise recently made a big announcement that Kyrie Irving would be on the cover of NBA 2K18, wearing the Cleveland Cavaliers’ redesigned jersey.
Introducing this year's #NBA2K18 cover athlete @KyrieIrving in his new @cavs uniform! #2KFirstLook pic.twitter.com/WUE9uasQGA
— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 7, 2017
Unfortunately, that was a short-lived honeymoon between video game, player, and franchise, as Irving was traded to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday.
Cleveland and Boston have agreement on deal to send Kyrie Irving to the Celtics for Isaiah Thomas package to Cavs, sources tell The Vertical
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) August 22, 2017
Celtics are sending Thomas, Crowder, Ante Zizic and Brooklyn's 2018 first-round pick for Kyrie Irving, league sources tell The Vertical. https://t.co/gdaT9UjVGl
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) August 22, 2017
Awkward. Folks on Twitter took notice of this quickly, and the official NBA2K account even sent out a “Whoops” tweet:
https://twitter.com/NBA2K/status/900141690119258112
https://twitter.com/insidethehall/status/900141990368735234
https://twitter.com/WatchJRoss/status/900144868005224448
Fans of the video game pitched in with their own edits of the cover:
https://twitter.com/YTry_/status/900141751662505984
— SP (@sp_3521) August 22, 2017
https://twitter.com/Cakh5050/status/900141984492519428
new cover? pic.twitter.com/KERpln4hiU
— 🥀 (@lalife___) August 22, 2017
And as plenty of others have pointed out, there seems to be some sort of NBA 2K cover curse.
when y'all put a player on the cover, it pretty much increases the chances of him ending up elsewhere lol pic.twitter.com/MO3zEJ18JT
— Jasmine (@JasmineLWatkins) August 22, 2017
Speaking of sports video game cover curses, another video game with a notorious cover “curse” is the EA Sports Madden NFL franchise. In 2009, the Madden franchise had a similar cover issue to the current NBA 2K18 situation.
You may not be able to point out the problem here at first, but when EA Sports first announced that Brett Favre was going to be on the cover of Madden 2009, Favre had retired as a Green Bay Packer.
Unfortunately for EA Sports, they didn’t expect Favre to announce he was un-retiring to sign with the New York Jets. That led to this:
But not everyone had the cover with Favre in a Jets jersey. If you bought the game after EA started to make them with Favre in a Jets jersey, then you had the correct cover. However, EA didn’t have time to change the cover art before the game was released, and as a result, plenty of people bought Madden 2009 with Favre in a Packers jersey. Those with a Packers cover could then download a new Favre Jets cover through EA Sports, if they cared that much:
“Where’s the first place fans can see Brett Favre in his New York Jets uniform and playing with his new Jets teammates? Madden NFL 09, available now from EA SPORTS.”
“Download new Madden NFL 09 packaging today, print it out, and have fun playing the game.”
Will 2K have to do something similar? NBA 2K18 isn’t set to hit shelves until September 19th, but they don’t wait to box the game until then, so it’s probably close.
