All actions without the ball, from the defense on the ball to offensive and defensive off the court, are run by our sports engine. This is the third year of its development. The NBA 2K21 sports team has been working tirelessly to bring the next generation of off-ball sports, and it looks and feels great. Here are some prominent upgrades:

Unique contextual motion assets for various basketball situations (Transition Stops, Leak Out, Guard Break, Anchor, Space Perimeter) bring an awareness to the look of the players on the floor and give them more life.
Improved pathing, cuts, and stops make defenders feel more grounded and fix a lot of the sliding from the previous generation.

Overall improvement to motion stability and response. In other words, we smoothed out the twitchiness and players can more accurately follow exactly what you're doing on the sticks.

Updated player-size detection logic and greater emphasis on player differentiation. Bigs move like bigs, and guards move like guards. This includes a lot of new animation content to support signature motion styles.

Left stick taps allow you to play quick steps which are really helpful when you need to make subtle adjustments to your defensive position.