Now they're teaming up with the Jazz

They would go to school. They would come home. They had pop-in NBA 2K21 MT Coins -- the 2009 variant of this NBA-based video sport -- and could basketball online. Five-on-five digital games. On the weekends, same thing. Perform all weekend. Bucket after bucket. Sometimes they would work 9 to 5. Come home, log into NBA 2K and match. Again and again. Day daily. Week after week.

It was a competitive time using countless thousands competing online. Shaka, whose speech has been"YoungSparks92," watched somebody climbing the ranks with him. "YoungKobe3." The two New Yorkers were linked together afterward. Little did they know that nearly a decade after they'd be teammates, competing side by side for the Utah Jazz at a professional league for NBA 2K players.

See, at the moment, it was about positions. They climbed the ladder up. They jockeyed for position. Shaka had the bragging rights always ahead of Lotty. So when Lotty discovered both NBA 2K stars climbed up in the same neighborhood of Mount Vernon, New York. He knew he had to fight him. 1 game to decide bragging rights to town and 2K. They went to different high schools, so it was not like they could link up by themselves.

Shaka wanted the opportunity to play with Lotty one on one. He knew he was a much better player than him, even if they had been always neck-and-neck in the competitive positions. He just wanted the moment to prove it. They played a hard-fought game.

After that night, both opponents -- who had never met until there -- ended up going to the movies. "When we found out that we were out of the exact same area and we're onCheap MT NBA 2K21 top of the planet, like, wow, that's mad we need to begin hanging out and talking about the game to sort of learn from each other," Shaka said. "And we only became teammates then."