So I actually used to work on NBA2K. NBA Live used to be considered the superior game. One year, they missed their deadline and had to delay the game. This caused all the basketball fans to buy NBA2K. They all decided it was better and NBA Live never regained their lead, which lead us to today. Visual Concepts is now very adamant about never delaying the game, which is why there is a yearly crunch, devs get paid overtime, and they avoid feature creep aggressively.

No, because there are plenty of other places to get coffee. The only competing franchise, NBA Live, stopped being made years ago. The irony is that NBA licensing isn’t exclusive, so feasibly another studio could come in to create competition, but it won’t happen.