Last good NBA 2K worth playing?

[Fangu]

Hello. I wanna play a basketball game. I've only played NBA Live 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and i think NBA 2K10. I only care about single player my player career or playing career as a team. I dont care about all that online crap. The main requirement is that the game must have no lootboxes, microtransactions, paywalls and similar stuff. What was the last NBA 2K that has no forced monetization? In where you can just buy the game and enjoy it without slowed down process where you feel forced to spend more?

[hmcl]

You only do microtransactions if you want, 2K19

[Doctor Brick]

well ... if you care about the online, 2k16 was by far the best, if you just play offline, this one is ok, but they got rid of a lot of gameplays and systems so i would say 2k18 for being more complete but this one for the gameplay and the Cpu ability to change the gamestyle vs you. Still needs improvement but now Cpu is a bit smarter.
About monetization, well... it can help to grow quicker but nothing that you can't achieve playing. I'ts a bit slower than other 2k titles... but is not really hard to reach 90 playing career easily.

[Cyklope]

NBA 2K series last only 2 years. After this, many options are disabled. So, if you want to play 2K16 there'll be many features in My Career or My Team unavailable.

Therefore the best NBA 2K today is NBA 2K19. Plus it's really a good opus. You won't avoid microtransactions though but you don't need to 'use' your real wallet (it's only virtual currency).

[Disharmonic]

Well you can play the MyLeague(Managing a franchise) mode without touching any virtual currency. MyCareer(Player Careermode) requires a bit of patience to build up your character. For MyCareer i'd advise to keep the difficulty low until your player gets better and gradually increase it. This will allow your character to have an impact even though his skills are not there yet. Worst part is grinding the badges really

[Pacman.€.5ev3n]

They are the same.