NBA 2K18's MyTeam: Week 17

Well, 2K has done it again. New Moments challenges (along with an awesome diamond card) are here for another fan favorite player: Allen Iverson.

Plus, some other guys that are pretty cool as well. But I don’t think these challenges were executed as elegantly as the Kobe-centric ones from a couple weeks back.

With Kobe, the first challenge could be tackled with any player, and it rewarded you with a ruby Kobe card that could then be utilized for the second challenge. That was awesome. This time, you need to come pre-equipped with your own Hassan Whiteside and Iverson cards to even attempt the challenges. But if you (like myself) don’t currently have one, you’re kind of screwed.

The prices of both of those players skyrocketed over the weekend, so I am going to wait until closer to the end of the week to see if maybe things normalize. It looks like the challenges will be up until Friday, but the Iverson diamond card was unfrotunately only available through Tuesday. Sadness. However, at least the prices in the auction house aren’t as insane as Kobe’s were, so at least there’s that. In addition, the surge to pull Iverson in throwback packs brought along another mini-market crash — not as grand of a dip as the Kobe Christmas crash, but I was still able to pick up a bunch of emerald, gold and ruby historic cards for next to nothing.

Last week I mused (as one does, I think, while inside a musecage) about selling my diamond Kobe card.

Once the Iverson challenge went live, it seemed to reason that diamond Kobes were no longer available in throwback packs. The amount of cards available through the auction house decreased as well. Supply and demand tells us that perhaps now would be a good time to sell, because in a couple of weeks there will be a diamond Rick Barry (weekly challenges) and a Clyde Drexler (Super Max) available, at which point the Kobe diamond might not be so highly coveted.

Well, I did it. And I got 400K for my troubles (minus the 10% 2K auction house tax, so actually 360K).

The first thing I did was marvel at the insane amount of MT I had. Never in my personal history of NBA 2K MyTeam had I possessed that much cash. It’s kind of daunting to find yourself suddenly so wealthy. There’s a strange responsibility that surfaces — to protect and maintain it. But, I’m an idiot. I went shopping.

The second thing I did was buy an amethyst Kobe to replace my diamond. He was only going for 40K, and has a lot of the same stats at the diamond (like driving and contact dunk, for example), so I figured that was a reasonable trade off. Now down to 320K MT.

Then I went after historic sapphires, like that overpriced Ricky Rubio I complained about last week. Now, I didn’t (thankfully) pay 53K for him, but I did drop 30,000 MT, which still made me feel gross. But at least the Stephon Marbury reward card has been a fantastic addition to my lineup; he is rated 94 in the defensive system proficiency, and is now my backup point guard behind Jo Jo White (rest in peace).

Long story short, I burned through the rest of my MT pretty quickly and am still am missing quite a few cards. Is Robert Horry a thorn in anyone else’s side right now?

…And this is even after the crash. He was going for over 100K a few weeks ago, which is silly considering we basically got this card for free last year. Ah well, the quest for my diamond Dirk continues.

To try and bolster my MT reserves until the next auction house crash, I’m learning to embrace the monotony of schedule challenges. Yes, the return on (time) investment is pretty low, but once you get to the higher-tier challenges, you can make two or three thousand MT per game. Plus, it’s an excuse to use some of the new cards I’ve purchased, so I’m enjoying the grind to a certain extent.

The problem, though, is that when you get to the top of a team’s schedule, there is an inevitable game where you can only use three gold cards, and the rest of your team has to be silvers. I was just trying to finish the Bucks’ schedule recently, and I had to beat the freaking Golden State Warriors, on Superstar, using my gold and silver lineup. It was crazy difficult.

But, I learned something new that helped:

Apparently duo cards don’t count. As in, the game let me play with that lineup even though there are three emeralds. And if you haven’t used Carmelo and Porzingis together with their duo stat boosts, give it a shot because they are awesome.

Melo scored the majority of my points and came up huge in the clutch, while Porzingis and his 7-foot-4 frame were a beast on defense. I finally got that win and am no longer scared of gold-and-silver-only games within the schedule challenges.

And now I’m closer to this ruby Andre Iguodala. Yippie?

Getting the opportunity to play with a diamond Kobe or Iverson (or even Hassan Whiteside) is great, but the flip side is that basically every card I’ve busted my a** for over these last few months (and continue to grind for, like amethyst historic rewards) become more pointless by the day.

Kobe gets it.