NBA The Run Review
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Developer: Play by Play Studios
Reviewed on PS5
The first hour with NBA The Run made me want to delete it.
Controls felt clunky. Player movement dragged. The gameplay looked like a mess I didn’t have the patience for. As a lifelong sports game fan, I gave it the benefit of the doubt anyway — one more game, one more game, one more game.
Twenty, maybe thirty games in, everything clicked.
The Turnaround
Suddenly I was pulling up from near midcourt with Curry. Swatting shots into the second row with Wembanyama. Throwing down highlight dunks with Cavaliers-era LeBron. The clunk I’d fought through an hour earlier had turned into a rhythm I couldn’t put down.
I was hooked. Genuinely addicted to the loop, improving with every tournament I played.
That’s the trap of this game — and I mean that as both a compliment and a warning. I can find fun in almost any game. Fun doesn’t mean great. And “fun, not great” is exactly where NBA The Run lives.
One Mode Carrying the Whole Game
This is an okay basketball game. Just okay.
There’s really one thing to do here: a single-elimination bracket where you fight through the field online and need four straight wins to be crowned champion. To its credit, the mode doesn’t sit still. Every matchup rolls a random ruleset — standard scoring one game, threes-only the next, dunks-only after that. It’s a smart trick that keeps the grind from feeling like the exact same grind twice in a row.
But strip away that one clever wrinkle, and there’s not much else here. Redeemable rewards — dunks, celebrations, jerseys, player cards — bolted onto some basic stat tracking. Online 3v3 exists too, though I had more fun running all three players myself than trusting randoms to finish the job. This is a game with one real mode wearing a few different outfits, and that’s a tough sell once the novelty wears off.
Where It Falls Apart
The flaws never go away. Controls never fully smooth out, no matter how many hours you sink in. Blocking and dunking lean so hard on lock-on mechanics that skill starts to feel optional rather than earned.
Worse, the game has a habit of making its own logic incomprehensible. Shots that should fall don’t. Shots that shouldn’t fall do. In a casual tournament that’s an eye-roll. In a close game with a championship on the line, it’s the kind of moment that makes you want to throw the controller — not because you lost, but because you’re not sure you understand why.
The Verdict
A hundred-plus games in, I’ve made my peace with all of it — but peace isn’t the same as forgiveness.
NBA The Run isn’t a bad game. It’s not a great one either. The loop is fast and satisfying enough to keep pulling me back for a tournament here, a tournament there, even knowing exactly what’s going to frustrate me before I load in. It never once climbs into the conversation with the genre’s best, and it’s not trying to.
If you’re not a basketball fan, skip it — there’s nothing here that changes your mind. But if you’re an NBA fan looking for a quick, casual online fix, there’s a real chance you walk away having had more fun than you expected to. Just don’t expect every shot that goes up to make sense on the way down.
