Suprisingly Good Despite what i read highly recommended!
The Good- The best addition to this game in my opinion is the NBA.com Interface of the Association mode. Last year, on the 2k8 version they added the SimCentral which i did enjoy because it allowed you to view players stats quickly and you could get a better feel of what was going on in the league around you without actually going through all of the boring menus in the game. Well in 2k9 it still has SimCentral if you prefer that or you could use the NBA.Com interface. This is simply simple and magnificent i dont know why they havent tried it before now. It works as if you were actually on NBA.com and it gives you updates everyday about game results, trades, injuries, power rankings, and more about the association that you are playing in. This allows you to not only be able to easily follow your team but for you to be able to get interested in all of the other stories going on around the league.
Another Good thing is the look of the game- 2k7 and 2k8 pretty much looked the same I really couldnt tell any difference. in 2k9 however (even though they are in the same format) the menus look a lot better and i can tell they did actually tweak the graphics a bit and it looks as close as you can get to a next-gen system without actually having one.
The new range meter is also a good additon- this helps a lot (especially if you are a beginner which i am not) in letting you know where exactly to try to get a shot off with all of the different players. Even though i watch NBA thoroughly i was surprised by some of these. For Example; i love the heat and on 2k8 i played with them a lot (even though they sucked) and i would shoot 3 or 4 threes with Dwayne Wade every game. After playing with the Heat on this game however, i found that you have a far better chance of kicking it out to other players to shoot threes instead of Wade.
Player Ambiton System- another great addition in Association mode this allows you to better know your players. It gives info on how loyal they are, how important they are, and what they think of you and your team.
Stats, Stats, Stats- this game allows you to view more stats then ever before in Association mode. There are players of the week, Rookies of the week and even new ratings such as Player efficiency ratings it is absolutely amazing how far this game goes in stats you could figure out every aspect of every player right down to a T.
The Bad- Game Openings are the same- the starts of every game are still the same in fact they took out some of the great things about the beginning really kind of ticks me off.
No Thunder- The Thunder are still the sonics on this game (however this is easily fixed just create a team called Oklahoma City Thunder with the thunder logo which is virtually the same as the real logo and draft all of the sonic players to it).
Too easy at times- the first day i bought this game i played on PRO level and was literally blowing away the opposing team. i was winning by 23 points at half time (this is easily fixed as well though. i just switched the level to Hall of Fame and by the end i only won by 6 points.
Still no slam dunk contest or 3-point shootout- main complaint I have, i know the next gen consoles have these features but if Live can do it for PS2 how come 2k cant.
overall this is a great game for a great price- if you are an NBA fanatic like me you will not be dissapointed.