just really trying to get my 2K rating up," Whiteside said.

Later that night, Whiteside opened Twitter and slid into NBA 2K community manager Chris Manning's DMs. He had one more thing to say.

You see that triple-double? Whiteside wrote. My rating should go up.

Image via YouTube

Whiteside's comments were a prelude of sorts for the rapidly growing phenomenon of player ratings, the numbers driving the video game industry's most popular NBA franchise. Every NBA athlete's virtual counterpart has a rating, based on myriad individual attributes that dictate how said player performs. For common users of the game and players alike, those digits have become ingrained in NBA culture.

As 2K readies the release of NBA 2K18 in mid-September, the company has been methodically revealing player ratings for some of the biggestnames in the sport on Twitter, unveilings that have become as anticipated as who's next to perish on Game of Thrones. As debates over Kevin Durant's being a 96 or Gordon Hayward's earning an 88 fly every which way, it's all still a little surreal to the man behind the calculations.

"I got my degree in middle-childhood education," says Mike Stauffer, NBA 2K's player-ratings guru. "I was a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher. But I was always a passionate sports fan, and I've always been really into statistics. A hobby became a job."

That transition began in an unlikely place: the expiration of the NBA collective bargaining agreement. The NBA lockout ahead of the 2011-12 season not only chopped a handful of games off the regular-season schedule, but it prevented every