NBA 2K League’s midseason tournament is headed to Sin City.
The Turn, the second tournament of the league’s 2019 season, will be hosted at the HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas from May 9 to 11, marking the first time that the league will hold games outside of the NBA 2K League Studio in New York.
The Turn will be a 20-game, single-elimination tournament played over the course of three days and will feature all 21 of the league’s teams — beginning with five play-in games that will lead to a 16-team, single-elimination tournament. The seeding for the tournament will be determined by the regular season record for each team in the four weeks of regular season play that precede the tournament.
The Turn will also have a prize pool of US$180,000, with the winners taking home US$90,720 — over half of the pot, with the remainder being awarded to the second to eighth place teams (second place US$29,760; third and fourth place US$15,360 each; fifth-eighth place US$7,200 each). The winning team will also be receiving one of the league’s coveted seasonal championship banners, with the goal of collecting all three banners from the league’s midseason tournaments to form the “Banner Chain”.
“The atmosphere in the NBA 2K League Studio during games is electric,” said Brendan Donohue, NBA 2K League managing director in a statement.
“We are thrilled to bring the best NBA 2K players in the world and that studio experience to our fans in Las Vegas.”
For this year’s The Turn, the NBA 2K League will also be implementing an “archetype ban” concept for the first time in order to “create excitement and compelling action”. Archetypes are a NBA 2K League feature exclusive to the NBA 2K League build of the game — they are a preset combination of attributes and skills that players can choose, with five different archetypes per position.
Similar to the pick and ban/drafting phases for other esports titles such as Dota 2 or League of Legends, each team will determine one archetype that cannot be used in the game by either team prior to every game of the tournament.
The designated home team will make its selection first, followed by the designated away team, after which both teams submit the rosters they will be fielding for the match. The archetype bans will presumably add another layer of strategy to NBA 2K League play, as well as force teams to utilize more players from their rosters that specialize in different archetypes to get around certain ones being banned.
Blazer5 Gaming will be looking to recapture the Turn’s championship banner this year, having won the first iteration of the tournament in the league’s inaugural season.
