Ballers is, of course, only following the lead of EA’s NBA Street franchise, which itself is modeled on the “street” ball hyped in the ubiquitous ESPN And1 Tour. But where both And1 and NBA Street (to a lesser extent) get both the histrionics and humor of the carnivalesque and fundamentals-abandoning showmanship of street basketball, Ballers humorlessly goes through the motions, as detached and lifeless as Wilt Chamberlain’s 19,999th lay must have been.
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