Pacers beat Suns in 2K: McConnell will make you pay if you leave him open

Brian Bowen II and Frank Kaminsky faced off in NBA 2K20 on Monday night, simulating the matchup between the Pacers and Suns that would have been played.

No basketball for the foreseeable future for the Indiana Pacers or the rest of the NBA. Or so we thought.

While we won’t see live-action basketball for quite some time, the Pacers and Suns came together to give us something to hold us over on Monday night since we didn’t have the game that was supposed to be played between the two clubs to enjoy.

Brian Bowen II, the rookie guard that has appeared in five games for the Pacers, beat Frank Kaminsky and the Suns in 2K on Twitch on Monday night 93-87. While it was quite a ways away from the intense simulation we ran earlier in the day, the Pacers did still come out on top. A win is a win.

One of the funniest moments was Frank Kaminsky trying to play isolation ball… with his own character.

Later in the game, Kaminsky sagged way off T.J. McConnell, forcing Bowen to bite at the dare.

“That’s how you gonna disrespect him?” Bowen asked Kaminsky rhetorically before loading up from beyond the arc.

McConnell in real life isn’t a sharpshooter, but he does nail over 35 percent of his 3-pointers deemed to be “wide open” by Second Spectrum.

It’s fun to see these guys play, but even cooler to see Bowen getting excited over his teammates and their success, even if it is digital. I mean, we didn’t envision the most exciting thing of our week being Bowen shouting “take it coast to coast big dog!” on Twitch instead of at a live game, but here we are.

Look, this situation is a huge bummer. Not having games to tune into on a nightly basis from any sport in the midst of a pandemic really allows stress and anxiety to settle in. But these moments throughout the suspension have been really nice to see. The omnipresent social media lifestyle we’re all immersed in allows us to remain connected to players even when they aren’t playing games.

By the way, we reject the reality of this simulation from 2K’s official account:

Thanks to Kaminsky and Bowen for putting a show on for us on Monday night! Let’s hope for more Twitch streams like this in the future.