Houston Rockets center Steven Adams says fans should brace for a drop-off in performance across major American sports leagues next November, and he’s blaming a video game.
“Look at the NFL, look at all the leagues, and watch them plummet. Just for the month of November, performance is gonna go down,” Adams told reporters this week.
The culprit is Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar Games’ long-awaited sequel, scheduled for release on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Adams believes players across every league will be distracted trying to finish the game’s story mode, and he doesn’t expect the effect to spare coaches and staff either.
“[Efforts in sports will be] horrendous,” Adams said.
He does expect the slump to be short-lived. “It should come back up, though. Most of the boys will get it done. Hopefully they finish the game [in a month],” he said.
There’s reason to take the prediction seriously, even if it sounds like a joke. It has been 13 years since Grand Theft Auto V, and Rockstar has spent more than a decade building the sequel. The game is set in the fictional state of Leonida, modeled on Florida, and includes a modern version of Vice City, based on Miami. The story follows two criminals, Jason and Lucia, who get pulled into a wide-reaching conspiracy.
Rockstar North co-head Rob Nelson reportedly said his own playthrough, including optional side content with narrative consequences, took about 80 hours. Other estimates put the main story alone at 45 to 50 hours, compared with roughly 32 hours for GTA V.
One estimate suggests 1.5 million Americans could skip work altogether to play the game at launch. Given numbers like that, it’s not hard to believe a handful of professional athletes might lose some focus too.
The game has been delayed multiple times before, so the November 2026 date isn’t locked in stone. But if Adams is right, and if a player like Kyler Murray looks a step slow that month, now you’ll know why.
