What hooked me was the create-a-player career mode. Most sports games you have franchise mode where you pick a team and you try to take that team to the finals/super bowl/etc and in-game play as whoever has the ball, and between games play the part of GM making trades and whatnot. In the NBA2k games you can create an avatar who then goes through the draft, gets signed by a team based on how well you did in the rookie showcase, and only play the parts of the game where your avatar is actually on court. You won't always be 'the guy with the ball' so there's an equal reliance on learning offense and defense. You can be traded and all that good stuff too, but it's not really your decision since you aren't the GM. It's like role-playing in a way (and, actually, you do get XP and can level up a bunch of stats to fill out your roll on the team better, now that I think about it) and is fairly unique. I don't play a ton of sports games but I haven't seen anything like it in any other series.