Chiquita Evans during the NBA 2K League draft on Mar. 5, 2019 in Brooklyn, New York at the Barclays Center. (Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images)
There still aren’t any female avatars in the NBA 2K video game franchise, but there is now one woman in the NBA 2K League. Warriors Gaming selected Chiquita Evans in the fourth round of Tuesday’s second-year NBA 2K League Draft, making her the league’s first female player.
Evans will be controlling a male virtual character this upcoming season. A new NBA 2K has been released every year since 1999. The latest edition of the franchise, NBA 2K19, still does not offer the option to play as WNBA players, or the ability to create female avatars—unlike its major competitor, EA Sports’ NBA Live Series. Evans is confident her path will encourage other women to fight for a spot in the league, though, and according to Brendan Donohue, managing director of the NBA 2K League, the game already has plans to add female avatars soon.
“I honestly feel that me being drafted would be an inspiration to a lot of women,” Evans said before Tuesday’s draft at Barclays Center. “If you see someone that’s like you, then you’re gonna be more prone to be involved. I believe that four or five years from now, [the NBA 2K League] will definitely be different.”
Evans has encountered sexism along her path to the league. The 30-year-old Chicago native first started playing NBA 2K in 2009, but only began using a headset in 2014 when she became more serious about gaming. Headsets enable video game players to talk to each other during live gameplay.
“Anytime I might meet a guy online, I’m told to go in the kitchen where I belong. Or because I’m playing the game, [they say] I’m gay. They use offensive words, it happens a lot,” she said.
Evans was one of two women who qualified for this year’s NBA 2K League draft. The other draft-eligible woman was Brianna Novin, but she was not selected on Tuesday. Only 74 prospects had their names called out of a total pool of 198 players. (In 2018, 102 players were selected, but though the league has expanded, many of last years gamers will return.)
To become draft eligible, players must first qualify for the league’s online combine, which evaluated 7,000 players this past December. After last year’s draft lacked even one female candidate, the league set out to find out why. It conducted a study that found male players were less likely to pass the ball to their female teammates after identifying them as women through the sound of their voices.
“I had a lot of people when I talk on the mic, because when I play I like to communicate with my teammates,” Evans told the NBA 2K League in a video interview. “So I get on the mic and I’m like ‘I’m open! I’m open! I’m open!’ and they go ‘It’s a girl?’ and I get iced out the whole game.”
The league organized focus groups of top female players to help identify and understand the problem. It also changed the approach it had used to evaluate potential players. “As a result during this year’s tryout process, we wanted to analyze how good someone is when they had the ball in their hands,” Donohue said. “What they could control, how effective were they when the ball was in their hands.”
Evans played basketball in high school, and played collegiately on scholarship at Kentucky State University. She had dreams of joining the WNBA that were disrupted by an MCL tear. But now she’ll make from $33,000 to $37,000 per season as one of the NBA 2K League’s 126 pro players.
“She has the basketball I.Q.,” said Kimanni Ingram, a draft-eligible player who was not selected Tuesday. “Most people would be like, ‘I’m playing with a girl. She’s not going to know what to do.’ She knows what she’s doing. You can tell.”
