Could have been a lot better.
I'm always attracted to sports game with any kind of good "Create a Player" mode, because that's the way I like to experience games. This one, at least from the outset, is amazing in that regard. From the outset, at least... Since this mode is all I've played, I'll say that my comments revolve solely around that.
Your options while creating your player are wide ranging, and pretty massive, and you have an absolute ton of room to grow, expand, etc. as you make your way through your career. You start off in the NBA summer league, and get a chance to prove yourself worthy (or not) of making it onto an actual NBA team. If you play well enough, you get invited into a training camp, during which the competition steps way up, or and if you're cut, or weren't invited to one in the first place, you're sent down to the D leagues, where you can grow your skills a bit, and eventually (hopefully) catch the eye of a team.
Sounds fun? It could be. Could.
First of all, "how well you play" is several things: strangely determined, inequitable, harsh. One thing it isn't is fair.
Basically you have 3 things that determine how well you play(ed) in a game:
-Individual Performance
-Team Grade/Rating
-Objectives
All three of these things are determined by your actions in the game, and in turn, determine how many skill points you will earn at its conclusion, which you can then in turn spend on more skill upgrades. However, there are major, major flaws with all three of these things.
Individual Performance - This is pretty much 100% determined by your shots/misses/assists, and how the same thing in reverse for your matchup. A shot can be worth 30-40 skill points, and missing one, depending on the situation, can be worth negative 5-30 points. However, while you can gain a bit for your matchup missing (Which is kind of cool, though pointless and asinine, unless you personally blocked their shot), you can lose a hell of a lot more for them making one in. And it's EVERY shot. Even shots that are 100% out of your control, like a team mate fouling your matchup, and them making their freethrows. Yes, you lose skill points in that situation. Wtf?
Team Grade - This seems to be the dominant factor in how well a team likes you, or is likely to want to have/keep you on their team. But unfortunately it's a very, very silly thing to keep track of. You do not gain team grade for making a shot, though can lose it for making a bad shot. However, you automatically lose it if your matchup makes a shot (Thankfully this isn't true for freethrows in this case). And this is one of the more normal things that happens. If a team mate, for whatever reason, decides to pass the ball to you while you're standing out of bounds, or behind the half court line after it's been crossed, and it ends up in a turn over, you lose team grade. If you are jamming on the X button to try to get the cut scene over with and end up 'calling for a pass', you lose team rating. Probably the most hideously stupid instance is losing it over a 'bad steal attempt'. Whatever the hell that means. I have, on several occasions, had points deducted for a so-called 'bad steal attempt' that actually ended in a steal. The game is also very fickle on shot placement, often rewarding you for 'good shot placement' for a shot, then docking you for 'bad shot placement' for the very same shot, in the very same situation, just minutes later. Happens a lot.
Objectives - These are almost, if not more silly than the team grade. Some of them are valid, like a shooting guard being asked to make X number of jump shots, layups, assists, or whatever, in a game. However, then you get into some more impractical ones like "Force your matchup to commit X number of fouls, turnovers, etc." Trust me, with the number of times you get immediately called for a reach-in foul, turnovers are best saved for good moments and can't be forced consistently, and making someone foul is a horrible risk, since that pretty much involves doing a layup when you know YOUR matchup is defending, almost certainly ending in a missed shot and a 'bad shot selection' deduction from your team grade. You'll also find some fun bugged ones like 'limit your matchup to 2 points" or limit them to a ridiculously low FG %, which are often completely out of your control.
All of the above would be tolerable, and the game more worthy of a 8 or a 9 if it weren't for the rest of the problems.
If you do even a couple minutes of web-surfing on google or youtube about this game's problems, you'll get quite an eyeful on just what's wrong with this game.
To put it in simple turns, your team mate's AI is completely inept compared to your opponent's, no matter what teams we're talking about; they almost never help you on defense, letting your matchup stroll right through a pack of them to score easy layup one right after the other, and yet they are masters on defense themselves, regardless of team, and always are ready to stop you in the paint.
You'll also find your player missing inordinate amounts of open shots, even if they have an extremely high skill rating at that range, and even if every release is perfect.
It's not unwinnable by any means, but it very quickly starts feeling like work, and isn't a whole lot of fun, which is a great tragedy, because it's really fun to grow a mediocre player into an NBA star. Unfortunately, it just isn't quite worth the effort with this game.