Five Titles Apiece, Zero Kings Crowned

Eleven seasons. Eleven redrafts. One rivalry that refused to end in anything but a tie.

There was never going to be a clean ending. Not for a rivalry built on a fresh redraft every single year, where loyalty to a jersey lasts exactly one season before the slate gets wiped and two brothers start over from zero. Eleven seasons of NBA 2K25, eleven different sets of teams, and when the dust finally settled, Phillip and Joe stood exactly where they started: deadlocked.

The Early Rounds

Phillip struck first. His Season 1 76ers rolled to a 9-1 playoff record behind Finals MVP K. Towns, while Joe's Spurs — an 11-3 regular season juggernaut — were bounced in the first round. Season 2 was more of the same: Phillip's Thunder went back-to-back on the personal ledger with a title behind LeBron James, even as Joe's Bulls turned in a perfect 14-0 regular season that meant nothing once the playoffs started.

Two seasons in, it looked lopsided. It wasn't going to stay that way.

Phillip Answers

Joe's redraft luck turned in Season 3, when his Clippers swept Phillip's Celtics in the Finals for his first ring. He didn't let up — a Season 4 Knicks sweep of Phillip's Rockets tied the count at two apiece, and a Season 5 Spurs championship, back-to-back Finals MVPs for K. Porzingis, pushed Joe in front 3-2. For a stretch, it looked like Joe's era.

Then Phillip's Season 6 Nuggets ran the table with a perfect 9-0 playoff run to even things at three, and his Season 7 Hawks matched that feat — another flawless 9-0 postseason — to put Phillip back in front 4-3. Two different redrafts, two different rosters, the same result: when Phillip got hot, nobody was beating him in a seven-game series.

The Stretch Run

Joe leveled it again in Season 8, beating Phillip's Lakers 3-1 in a Finals rematch of sorts, with Kevin Durant sweeping Season and Finals MVP. Season 9 pushed Joe back in front 5-4 — his Grizzlies took the title while Phillip's Heat, despite a perfect 14-0 regular season, were sent home in the first round. It was starting to feel like Joe's redrafts simply peaked at the right moment more often than Phillip's did.

Season 10 said otherwise. Phillip's Warriors matched the feat that had haunted two of Joe's title runs — a perfect 14-0 regular season — and this time closed it out, taking the championship and tying the all-time count at five apiece heading into the final season of the era.

No Winner, No Surrender

Season 11 had one job: crown a king. It didn't. Phillip's Bulls made it all the way to the Finals and lost. Joe's Spurs were eliminated in the second round. Neither brother closed it out, and after eleven seasons, hundreds of games, and two of the most competitive redraft rivalries imaginable, the NBA 2K25 era ended exactly the way it started: even.

Final tally: five championships for Phillip, five for Joe, and one season that gave the era no king at all. Eleven redrafts, eleven fresh starts, and the rivalry never let either brother pull away for good.