A 'Gaming' laptop's specs are going to depend on:

• What game(s) do you want to play? 
• How pretty do you want the game to look? and 
• How well do you want the game to run?

A budget max of $2000 will get you an entry-level gaming laptop. Generally, you get more bang for your buck with a PC as the laptop has power, heat, size, and weight limitations.
If you want to play AAA new releases, a new game console such as Playstation 5/ Xbox X/S are going to give you a better gaming experience when compared to a gaming laptop under $2k.

Alternatively, cloud gaming services such as https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ can let you play AAA games on your laptop, desktop, Mac, TV, Android device, iPhone, or iPad without investing in a gaming machine. 

The question comes back to 

• What game(s) do you want to play? 
• How pretty do you want the game to look? and 
• How well do you want the game to run?
• Do you have to have a laptop, or could it be something else?

Gaming laptops are pretty much always a compromise in SOME way. It's just whether you can live with the compromises at that price point.

To answer the question, it depends entirely on what games you want to play on the laptop. 

I think $2000 is an entry level gaming laptop which there's some huge trade-offs.

Its like having a laptop with substandard capabilities for both gaming and general workstation whereas you can also use that $2000 budget and aim towards something better in the general use space that is also quite capable of gaming (Ryzen 860M, Intel Arc etc..).

It just depends on the games you want to play and performance tier you want but with $2000 the expectations need to be quite low even if its 2nd hand which I'd avoid if its a gaming laptop.

Sometimes a console is better value for money for gaming but obviously you can't use it as a portable workstation.

I wouldn’t recommend gaming laptops to people, the majority of them overheat and need knowledge on how to manage power and thermal constraints.

For $2000 you would get at most RTX4050 level graphics card which is not very much. A PS5/Xbox SX would perform better. A desktop would also fair better as you could get RTX4060 level graphics card at that budget.