These NBA 2K athletes grew up together

They would go to school. They'd come home. They had pop-in NBA 2K21 MT -- the 2009 variant of this NBA-based video game -- and could ball online. Five-on-five virtual games. On the weekends, the same thing. Play all weekend. Rack up stats. Bucket after bucket. Come home, log into NBA 2K and match. Day after day. Weekend after weekend.

Browne (who goes by"Shaka") and Martin (who goes by"Lotty") climbed the global rankings of the NBA 2K9 online community. It turned out to be a competitive time using hundreds of thousands competing on the web. Shaka, whose handle has been"YoungSparks92," watched someone climbing the ranks with him. Both New Yorkers were connected together then.

See, in the moment, it was about positions. They climbed up the ladder. They jockeyed for position. Shaka had the bragging rights always ahead of Lotty. So when Lotty found out both NBA 2K stars climbed up in the same neighborhood of Mount Vernon, New York. He knew he needed to battle him. One match to pick bragging rights for the town and 2K. They went to different high schools, therefore it wasn't like they could join on their own.

Shaka wanted the chance to play with Lotty one . He knew he was a much better player than himeven though they were constantly neck-and-neck in the competitive positions. He just wanted the moment to establish it. They played with a hard-fought game.

Later that night, both competitors -- who had never met until there -- ended up going to the movies. "When we discovered that we were out of the same neighborhood and Cheap NBA 2K MT Coins we were on top of the world, such as, wow, that's mad we will need to begin hanging out and talking about the game to sort of learn from each other," Shaka explained. "And we just became teammates then."