Whoops is right. Last night, Kyrie Irving finally got his wish and was traded away from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Boston Celtics for a pretty nice return. Unfortunately for 2K and their upcoming yearly release, NBA 2K18, the deal threw a bit of a monkey wrench into their plans as Irving is the game's cover athlete and sports his Cavaliers jersey.
Here's the cover as it is now:
Madden had a similar issue when it released its '09 iteration, which featured Brett Favre on the cover. That was the year that he retired and came back to play for the New York Jets all in the same year, and the standard cover still had him in his Packers jersey. Some retailers had pseudo-covers of Favre with his Jets jersey that you could slip in over the original one, and given that the trade has happened so close to the game's release, that may be what'll happen with NBA 2K18.
The NBA 2K Twitter account posted their reaction to the trade:
Whoops https://t.co/dwja1rN0dL
— NBA 2K 2K18 (@NBA2K) August 22, 2017
ESPN released a mock-up of what Irving might look like in his Celtics jersey as well:
The Celtics open the 2017-18 season in Cleveland. pic.twitter.com/R4VvJ67NO9
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 22, 2017
NBA 2K18 releases on September 19th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.