Wesley Matthews confronted a 2K Sports employee about his ‘NBA 2K18’ rating at Harrison Barnes’ wedding

If you haven’t noticed, the NBA 2K video game series is extremely popular. The digital marketing manager at 2K Sports, Ronnie Singh, knows that more than most I’d imagine.

He’s become the social media face of the series and boy, do NBA players love getting up in his grill about how they’re rated in the game. I mean, seriously.

Now, it’s all in good fun, which was what Wesley Matthews was doing at Harrison Barnes’ wedding earlier this summer. Since Singh has become friendly with NBA players all sliding into his DMs and such, he got an invite. It was there, from Alex Kennedy’s dive into the series ratings on Hoops Hype tells, Wes decided to bring up his 83 rating in this season’s game to Singh himself.

“I was at Harrison Barnes’ wedding and a major point of contention was Wesley’s rating,” Singh said. “He found out that he was an 83 overall and he got pretty upset about it. He kept talking to Rick Carlisle about it. Well, Rick was the MC of Harrison’s reception. It got to the point that during the reception, in front of about 40 NBA players, Rick gets on the mic and says, ‘Ronnie, we have to address this rating thing right now. You need to come up here.’

“So during the reception, I’m up there in front of these 40 NBA players explaining why the ratings are the way they are and how they’re determined. And I’m thinking, ‘This guy is in the middle of celebrating his wedding!’ Harrison’s wife was probably like, ‘I’m going to murder Ronnie after this reception.’ (laughs) They’re both amazing people – just a great couple – but I just kept thinking, ‘This is not the proper place for this!’ But Rick orchestrated it, so unfortunately I had to participate.”

From here, some thoughts:

• Wesley Matthews refuses to ever not believe he is the best basketball player he can be. It’s inspiring and I can see why the Mavericks love having him in the locker room. Last season Matthews continually said he believed in himself when his shot was cold and never let the team get complacent despite a losing season. I mean, 83 isn’t even that bad of a rating! At first glance, it’s higher than I would have thought after Matthews’ last two seasons in Dallas.
• Rick Carlisle being the MC at Barnes’ wedding is absolutely amazing and deserves its own bigger story to follow up on all the questions: was he also the DJ? Did he make Barnes shoot free throws after the first dance? Did he do a Jim Carrey impression? Did he call out any of his players not at the wedding for a lack of effort? I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING.
• Hot take alert: the NBA 2K series is good, but it’s only highly lauded because EA Sports completely gave up with NBA Live. Live was way better than 2K during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era and the 2004, 2005 and 2006 versions of the game were some of the best basketball games ever made. I still play 2K now, but I’ve grown to loathe how unnatural and animation-locked the game feels, taking control out of your hands because the game is locked into an overly long layup or jump shot animation.

Read the rest of the piece for a fun look at how these player ratings get concocted and never forget that Rick Carlisle was the MC to Harrison Barnes’ wedding.