The consistent greatness of LeBron James is something NBA fans won’t truly appreciate until long after he’s gone. For the past 17 years, he’s been one of the best players in basketball, never missing any time due to injury and developing into a model human being off the court.
One of the few constants between the start of LeBron’s career and now is the NBA 2K game franchise. They first released a game in 1999, and have made it a yearly tradition ever since. The game has obviously changed significantly over that timespan, and the NBA guys over at sportsinsider.com put together a graphic that demonstrates just how much it’s changed from their 2003-04 release to this year, using the face of the most iconic player of the generation that loves 2K the most.
We wrote about something similar with Tom Brady and Madden, but that was a bit different because Brady always had pads on. This graphic fully demonstrates the evolution of how 2K constructed their players, and the variation is great as a result. Everything from shoulder width to facial construction to veins in the neck have been gradually altered for the ultimate goal of extreme realism.
It also highlights how consistent LeBron’s facial hair game has been. How different would the world be if he decided to rock a handlebar mustache one year instead of his classic beard look? We’ll never know.
