Photo: Twitter/NBA2KLeague
We’re back with a review for the third episode of the NBA 2K League’s bi-weekly Twitch show, The Post Up. Check out the second review to situate yourself before diving into this week’s.
It’s tough to foster serious innovation while simultaneously trying to establish a consistent routine. The Post Up seems to have settled into the latter, forsaking the former for at least one episode. This week’s episode saw an appearance by league official Daniel Tsay, the return of Frank and Comp, a video call from Fab and Ricco and Pacers Gaming players LetsGetItRamo and Wolf featured on-set. Phil again hosted in place of Jeff. While Phil is good, we miss you, Jeff!
I thought Erin and Phil did a better job of just letting Frank and Comp have at it. The league players love the First Shake duo, and the league is happy to have them on. They’re entertaining, their chemistry is well established, and they’re well versed in the happenings of the league. The NBA 2K Lifestyle segment is also nice, with a good balance of life and league questions. Ramo and Wolf are a solid duo, but their real work will be conducted on the court. Perhaps we were spoiled by Compete’s showing last episode. More likely is that having just one player is easier, especially in the early episodes while Erin and co. are still figuring things out.
The ratings this week suffered after a great jump last week. Per TwitchTracker, the show peaked at only 574 concurrent viewers, fewer than half of its peak concurrent viewership in episode 1, let alone episode 2. The number of unique viewers also hit a new low: 1,331 for the episode, while the first iteration had over 2,000, at least. Hopefully this is just a nadir for the show, which didn’t seem to appear on the Twitch homepage. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it was overshadowed in hype-building by the real league news this week. Speaking of which…
Disappointingly, the league barely focused on the three logo reveals that emerged in the past week. Considering that the show was able to host new Hawks Talon GC GM/Head Coach Wesley Acuff last episode after the team unveiled its logo and named him to the position the day before, it seems like a lost opportunity. We can forego a few minutes of the scrimmage in order to see the logo reveal videos again (we got the Nets and T-Wolves), as well as have a little discussion about it; by extension, it’s better for new viewers, who might not have seen the original Twitter reveals. Topical content is always best, especially in the depths of the offseason when there’s comparatively little news to discuss. No one from Nets GC, T-Wolves Gaming, or Lakers Gaming made an appearance. Next episode, once the sheen has worn off, perhaps.
There’s also still stuff like this:
DirK on Twitter
THIS JUST HAPPENED ON THE NBA 2K STREAM I AM CRYING https://t.co/rxmUoztMGy
That’s just not professional. The league ran into issues with messages last week; this week, it was a problem with having other players’ audio cut into the show and basically make the show’s dialogue impossible to hear. For a live show, that’s tough to stomach, especially since it’s a problem easily fixed.
New shows struggle to make their mark. The league weekly streams went through a rough patch before steadily climbing in time for the playoffs. Once overall hype for the league builds, and the league settles on a way to market and disseminate it that isn’t overshadowed by team-focused news, then the show itself will post up, not down.