Unfortunately true. At one time the game was designed more for offline and couch H2H for basketball fans. Once solely online play became a reality, 2K basically switched their focus from the original community (mostly sports fans) to a community built around the online gamer demographic (i.e. people who enjoy CoD,Fortnite,etc.) that don't necessarily care too much about basketball but rather about "flexing on kids online". This was a business decision because they realized they could make more money on a full priced game+a microtransaction driven online economy than just selling copies of the game.