ESPN NBA 2K5 is a 2004 basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and co-published by Sega and Global Star Software. It was released in September 2004 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox in North America, and February 2005 in Europe. The sixth installment in the NBA 2K series, it is the successor to ESPN NBA Basketball, and the predecessor to NBA 2K6. Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons is the cover athlete; this marks the first time in the series that a player other than Allen Iverson was featured as a cover athlete. It is the last NBA 2K game to be released by Sega before the company sold Visual Concepts to Take-Two Interactive, forming 2K Sports. It is also the third and last game to feature the ESPN branding on its front cover.

ESPN NBA Basketball is a 2003 basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by Sega. It is the fifth installment in the NBA 2K franchise and the successor to NBA 2K3. It was released in 2003 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Allen Iverson is the cover athlete of the game. ESPN NBA Basketball is the predecessor to ESPN NBA 2K5 in the NBA 2K series. It is the penultimate NBA 2K game before being sold by Sega company to form 2K Sports. It is also the first game to feature the ESPN logo full-time and the only game not to feature "2K" in its title, but was instead featured "2K4" on the cover art.