- Houston Rockets center Steven Adams said at the team’s September 22 media day that GTA 6 will cause player performance to “plummet” throughout November.
- Adams claimed the impact would extend across professional sports — and even hit coaches.
- GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, less than two months away.
- Adams framed his comments as a joke, noting any performance dip from Vice City sessions would be temporary.
- The 13-year NBA veteran joined the Houston Rockets in 2024 and is currently recovering from season-ending left ankle surgery from January 2026.
- NBA 2K27 Season 3 is expected to feature a GTA 6 crossover timed around the game’s release.
- Even small businesses across the US are already feeling the GTA 6 effect, with companies like Burger Motorsports of California planning slower operations around launch day.
Every few years a game comes along that’s so big it stops being just a gaming conversation and starts bleeding into everything else — sports media days, workplace planning, economic forecasts. GTA 6 is doing all of that right now, and it hasn’t even launched yet. The latest person to weigh in? Houston Rockets center Steven Adams, who used his team’s media day to deliver what might be the most honest NBA prediction of the 2026 preseason.
What Steven Adams Actually Said
At the Houston Rockets’ media day session on September 22, Adams told reporters that he fully expects basketball performance across the league to take a hit once GTA 6 drops on November 19. The word he used was “plummet” — which is a strong word, but one that becomes completely reasonable when you remember what November looks like for anyone who gets their hands on a Rockstar open world on launch day.
Adams didn’t stop at players either. He suggested coaches would feel the effects too, which is honestly the funnier part of the comment. The image of NBA coaching staffs putting in late nights in Vice City instead of reviewing film is the kind of thing that sounds absurd until you remember that coaches are also just people who play video games.
He was quick to add that the whole thing was more of a joke than a serious warning, and that any performance struggles linked to GTA 6 would be temporary. Which is probably true. Nobody’s losing their starting job over a week of staying up until 3 AM in Vice City. Probably.
Why This Hits Different Coming From an NBA Player
Athletes talking about video games isn’t new — plenty of NBA players are open about their gaming habits, and Fortnite in particular has been a running subplot in sports media for years. But GTA 6 has a different gravitational pull to it, and Adams voicing what a lot of athletes are almost certainly thinking out loud at media day feels like a genuine cultural moment rather than a PR-approved talking point.
The timing of the comment is also worth noting. The Houston Rockets open their 2026-27 regular season at home on October 21 against the Dallas Mavericks. GTA 6 drops November 19. That means there are roughly four weeks of NBA basketball before the game arrives — and then whatever comes after that is, according to Adams, anyone’s guess.
For context on who Adams is: he’s now in his 13th NBA season, a veteran center who came over to Houston in 2024 after stints in Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Memphis. He averaged 8.6 rebounds per game in the 2025-26 season despite limited minutes, which is the kind of production that makes him a reliable locker room presence even when he’s not a featured piece of a team’s offensive scheme. In NBA 2K27 he carries a 74 overall rating with a 98 in offensive rebounds — numbers that reflect exactly the kind of physical, grind-it-out big man he’s always been.
He’s currently recovering from season-ending left ankle surgery he had in January 2026, so his return timeline for this season is still uncertain. Which, cynically, does give him a bit more free time for Vice City than some of his teammates.
GTA 6 Is Already Making Waves Before It Even Exists
The thing about Adams’ comments is that they’re jokes with a real foundation. GTA 6 is legitimately the most anticipated game of 2026, and the pre-launch effect it’s already having on the real world is genuinely unusual even by big-release standards.
PS5 Pro consoles are selling out rapidly off the back of GTA 6 hype, with buyers treating the PS5 Pro as the premium way to play the game at launch. Pre-orders are live on both PlayStation and Xbox storefronts. Rockstar’s promotional campaign is ramping up, and the cultural footprint of the release is already touching things well outside the gaming space.
Burger Motorsports, a California-based car company, publicly announced back in June that their daily operations would run slower than usual around November 19 because employees were expected to take time off to play GTA 6. A car company proactively building the Rockstar launch into their operational calendar months in advance is the kind of thing that tells you everything you need to know about how this release is being treated.
If small businesses are already planning around it, the idea that NBA players and coaches might be a little distracted in the days following November 19 is not exactly a stretch.
The NBA 2K27 and GTA 6 Connection
There’s also a direct in-game link between the two worlds Adams sits at the intersection of. Take-Two Interactive — the parent company behind both NBA 2K27 and GTA 6 through Rockstar Games — recently confirmed that NBA 2K27’s Season 3 will be themed around GTA 6. A specific release date for Season 3 hasn’t been pinned down yet, but given that Season 2 is expected to begin in October, the GTA 6 crossover season is likely to land around the same time as the game itself in November.
So even if you’re deep in an NBA 2K27 MyCareer run, GTA 6 is going to find its way into that game too. There’s no escaping it. Take-Two has essentially built a situation where their two biggest sports and gaming franchises are actively promoting each other in the same window — and the players and fans who sit at the overlap of both audiences are going to feel that pull from every direction at once.
November Is Going to Be Something
Look, Steven Adams said what everyone was already thinking and got a media day soundbite out of it. That’s good athlete media work. But the underlying point — that GTA 6 is going to hit differently than a normal game release — is completely legitimate.
November 19 is going to be a day. The days after it are going to be a period. Whether you’re an NBA player trying to get through a back-to-back, a coach trying to get your team to focus on defensive rotations, or a regular person trying to meet a work deadline — Vice City is going to be calling, and a lot of people are going to answer.
Adams at least had the self-awareness to say it out loud. The rest of the league is probably thinking exactly the same thing and just keeping it closer to the chest. Gaming culture crossing into the real world isn’t new — you see it in the way platform policy shifts like Discord’s updated age verification rollout become mainstream conversation, or the way celebrity gaming moments like Madison Beer joining Fortnite’s Icon Series hit entertainment headlines just as hard as sports ones. GTA 6 in November is just the biggest version of that crossover yet. And the NBA, apparently, is already building it into their expectations for the month.
