Missing players (Broy, Crawford, Jr Smith, Korver, Chandler...)

Can't find Brandon Roy, JJ Barea, Kyle Korver, Jr Smith, Tyson Chandler and Jamal Crawford anymore in the roster editor.
Are they completely out of the game?

Can't find Brandon Roy, JJ Barea, Kyle Korver, Jr Smith, Tyson Chandler and Jamal Crawford anymore in the roster editor.
Are they completely out of the game?

Are you playing on current gen or next gen?

Can't find Brandon Roy, JJ Barea, Kyle Korver, Jr Smith, Tyson Chandler and Jamal Crawford anymore in the roster editor.
Are they completely out of the game?

Are you playing on current gen or next gen?

PC, current gen bro. Are they still on the next gen version?

I believe this happens at times when players are transitioning into retirement, or have already announced retirement. All 4 of those names fall under those two categories.

However, you can exhale, those players faces are still in the files, so they will just need to be plugged in and made (Attributes, signatures, tendencies)

Here are Smith and Korver being shown in the Manifest

Thanks for the observation! Hopefully someone with the knowledge is able to investigate the other player's ID as well so we can assign/create them on our own with 2KTools when it gets released.

Thanks for the observation! Hopefully someone with the knowledge is able to investigate the other player's ID as well so we can assign/create them on our own with 2KTools when it gets released.

The ID's for 2K21 for all those guys are still in 2K22. The list for 2K21 is right here.

https://www.2kspecialist.net/2020/09/nba-2k21-cf-id-list.html

Yeah, this happens when players retire.

2K has licencing agreement with NBA and NBPA (Players Association).
NBPA is a labour union and AFAIK it represents all current NBA players.

However to my understaning when players retire they cease to be members of NBPA and therefore 2K loses rights to put them in the game.
Then 2K has to negotiate licence to use the players' likeness in the game (even if they were in previous games) with each retired player.

It could be that the player just gives the permission to use their likeness for free or some symbolic amount.
Or they could come to an agreement on monetary compensation.
Or they could deny being in the game at all.
Finally, they can not come to an agreement - like Charles Barkley, who said he'd be in the game as soon as 2K pledges 1 million USD to NBRPA (Retired Player Association, non-profit for old players with little salaries back then). He's not in the game (dream team is exception negotiated separately by Jay-Z), so you can guess if NBRPA got that money or not.

Until they come to an agreement they cannot legally put them in the new games and frankly them being in older games that are still sold might be a gray area (that nobody really cares about tbf).

That said, there's a decent chance these players will appear later on. J.R. Smith is known for playing 2K, so hell maybe he'll say they can put him in the game if they fix some bugs.

To add to that, there seems to be a condition where players can still appear in games for a year after their last NBA appearance/expiration of their contract. I'm not sure of the exact details there, but we have seen players still included in the Free Agent Pool despite no longer being active. However, it's usually just for the next game if so, and then they're removed, as per the licensing agreement.

Incidentally, it's the downside of including retro teams featuring active players. They aren't covered by the same agreement as already retired players, so they end up being removed after they're no longer covered by the licensing agreement that allows any and all active players to be included. Ironically, this leads to more prominent absences on newer teams than ones from two decades ago.

I'd assume 2K will be able to come to terms with some of those players fairly soon, and they'll be added again via roster updates. We've seen that happen with various players in recent years, including Steve Nash, Julius Erving, Chris Bosh, and Lamar Odom to name just a few.

I'm on PS5 and Brandon Roy and Pau Gasol are out of the game... '09 Blazers and '05 Grizzlies are totally useless now.

That definitely does defeat the purpose of including those teams. Hopefully 2K can renew agreements with Roy and Gasol, and add them in roster updates.

im dying for Gasol and roy, hope they get into the game soon