SALT LAKE CITY -- Shaka Browne and NBA 2K21 MT Lytel Martin had exactly the same routine growing up. They'd go to school. They'd come home. They had pop-in NBA 2K9 -- the 2009 edition of the NBA-based video sport -- and would basketball online. Five-on-five digital games. On the weekends, the same thing. Perform all weekend. Bucket after bucket. Sometimes they'd work 9 to 5. Come home, log into NBA 2K and match. Day after day.

Browne (who goes by"Shaka") and Martin (who goes by"Lotty") increased the global rankings of the NBA 2K9 online community. It turned out to be a competitive period with countless thousands competing on the web. Shaka, whose handle has been"YoungSparks92," watched someone climbing the rankings with him. "YoungKobe3." The two New Yorkers were linked together then. Little did they realize that almost a decade after they'd be teammates, competing side by side for the Utah Jazz in a professional league for NBA 2K gamers.

See, at the moment, it was about positions. They climbed the ladder up. They jockeyed for position. Shaka had the bragging rights always ahead of Lotty. So when Lotty discovered the two NBA 2K stars climbed up in the same neighborhood of Mount Vernon, New York. He knew he needed to battle him. 1 game to decide bragging rights for the town and 2K. They went to different high schools, so it wasn't like they could join by themselves. However they had mutual friends, so the game was put up.

Shaka wanted the chance to play with Lotty one on one. He knew he was a much better player than him, even if they were always neck-and-neck in the competitive positions. He simply wanted the moment to prove it. They played with a hard-fought game. Lotty picked the Los Angeles Lakers -- a team touting a prime Kobe Bryant -- and Shaka picked the Rockets, which had Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming in the time. The match was close, but Shaka won by 10 or so.

Later that night, both competitors -- who had never met until that point -- ended up going to the movies. Fast forward more than a decade and both are still side by side, teaming together on Jazz Gaming, the Utah Jazz affiliate to its NBA 2K League. "When we discovered that we were from precisely the same neighborhood and we're on Buy MT NBA 2K21 top of the planet, like, wow, that is mad we will need to begin hanging out and talking about the game to sort of learn from each other," Shaka said. "And we only became teammates then."