“Watch them plummet, mate.” The line belongs to Steven Adams, the New Zealand center of the Houston Rockets, delivered to reporters at the team's media day on September 22, 2026, as the Rockets opened training camp. The warning was about November.

What he said

The fullest version, which appears nearly identical at Complex, Yahoo Sports and Bro Bible, is: “You guys should anticipate November. The performance of the league, league-wide, GTA is dropping. So have a look at the NFL, a look at all the leagues, and watch them plummet, mate. Just for the month of November, performance is gonna go down.” vgtimes, which picked up the story from Dexerto, adds the bit about the people who do not play: coaches and scouts in November “are just gonna be terrible”.

The tone is a joke, and the English-language sources treat it that way: Complex and Yahoo both say Adams joked. He even sets the curse's expiry date: per Yahoo, he expects most people to have finished the game by December, with the league back to normal.

Who is making the prophecy

Not to spoil the fun, but the résumé helps measure the weight of the forecast. Adams is in his third season with Houston and, per Bro Bible, in his 13th NBA year at 33. Complex notes that ankle surgery in February ended last season early; he played 32 games, averaging 5.8 points, 8.6 rebounds and 1.5 assists. This is not a star speaking from the podium. He is a rotation veteran, the kind who tends to be candid with the press precisely because nobody expects him to trend.

Yahoo records that Adams acknowledged many of the league's stars are serious gamers. His theory only works because athletes really do play.

What the calendar says

Complex places the release about a month into the NBA regular season and in the middle of the NFL schedule. It also adds a hint that the joke was not born in a vacuum: Patriots quarterback Drake Maye reportedly said he might wait for a bye week before playing. We did not open the original source of that remark; it reaches us through Complex.

The same Complex piece cites roughly 5.28 million pre-orders since June 25. The figure appears without a clear origin, and Rockstar has published no number on the pages we read, so treat it with caution. Bro Bible, for its part, notes that the second trailer racked up 475 million views in 24 hours, which we also did not verify ourselves.

Where the sources disagree

Three small differences deserve a note:

  • The date. Complex, Bro Bible and vgtimes put media day on September 22; Yahoo Sports writes 23. We went with 22, the date given by three outlets, and assume Yahoo counted from its publication date.
  • The verb. vgtimes's headline uses “drop” (“watch them drop”), but the direct transcript at Complex, Yahoo and Bro Bible is “plummet”. The gap looks like a translation chain: vgtimes is a Russian site republishing what it read at Dexerto.
  • The tone. vgtimes frames the remark as a “threat to the league and the NFL”. Anyone who read the whole quote saw a locker-room joke.

Our own math on “the month of November”

Our reading, with no scientific pretension: Adams says “November”, but November 19 is a Thursday, and the first 18 days of the month pass before the game exists. That leaves 12 days, from the 19th to the 30th, for the damage. Even counting the digital preload, which opens on the 12th, the game is only playable on the 19th, so the first two weeks of the month fall outside the math.

If anyone's performance dips, then, it will be in the final stretch of November. And the exact hour each player starts depends on the staggered time-zone release, which applies to American and Brazilian players alike.

What does not exist

In the sources we read, there is no study, statistic or league data on the effect of video game launches on athlete performance. We also found no reaction from any Brazilian player or NBA club to the comment. Adams is the only voice, and Complex is the reference text. If a league or team weighs in, the story shifts from curiosity to news.

Our own view is simple: the forecast is great and probably harmless. What it measures is the size of the expectation around the game, and that, as we showed when the game confirmed its official November 19 date, does not need any athlete to exist.