Rob recalled how people in our line of work pumped FIFA 10 as overall game-of-the-year timber - which is now an utterly rare thing - when it was FIFA 11 that should have gotten such consideration. It was clear that Visual Concepts considers FIFA more of their competitor than anything else EA Sports was doing or not doing with basketball. In addition to loving and playing a lot of basketball, Rob plays and loves soccer. Rob Jones, the senior producer for NBA 2K, and I discussed FIFA's rise about three years ago, when he flew to my home to show me NBA 2K12. What you forget, though, is that FIFA didn't really get its footing until around 2008, where 2K's basketball game never broke stride coming from the old Xbox and PS2 generation, and really poured it on right as games for the PS3 and Xbox 360 hit their peak of quality. That's some strong stuff, though, when you consider the world-class presence of FIFA, whose fans must again feel like an American who doesn't get soccer is digging for reasons it can't be the best. It sounds ass-backwards, but it really does work as a tribute, and I agree with Jon's thoughts that NBA 2K on the last console generation is the best multi-year run any sports video game has had. Owen: It says a lot that the NBA 2K series is so comprehensively good it can realistically simulate something as stupefyingly bad as Jon Bois' unwatchable league set 20 years into the future. What follows is a series of letters in which they recall the venerable franchise's recent glory, and gaze hopefully into its future. Here at Polygon, sports fans Owen Good and Samit Sarkar decided to use the occasion to look back on the NBA 2K series in their own way. It may signal the death of the NBA as we know it. Today, you can check out the season finale of NBA Y2K on SB Nation. SB Nation: The slow, miserable death of basketball in NBA Y2K.

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