NBA The Run Review - If James Harden Was Video Game...
As many of you will undoubtedly be aware, I’m a bit of a basketball fan, and while I do love to play an NBA video game where I can, I’ve also been tiring of the unreasonably large MTX presence in the games over the last decade, and with each entry, it feels like it is getting worse. So when we’ve seen more arcadey takes on the game, such as NBA 2K Playgrounds, I’ve been excited for something different – but even that franchise, being another 2K title, is littered with excessive microtransactions. I just long for the purity of basketball gameplay, without the nickel and diming that has been so prevalent in the big games. So enter 2026 and enter NBA The Run, a non-2K title, one that doesn’t feature any MTX and promises pure street basketball, in the vein of the classics like NBA Street. Unfortunately, despite talking a big game and showing a lot of promise, when it really counts, NBA The Run delivers about as much as James Harden in a play-off game.
For the unfamiliar, James Harden is a very well-known NBA player. His ceiling as a player is about as high as anyone’s; he has skills that us mere mortals could only dream of having, and yet, he gets out what he puts in. Harden doesn’t put in the work and, unsurprisingly, doesn’t get the rewards either, and The Run is much the same. The Run talks a big game; it has all the tricks and plays really well, but it doesn’t have the depth required to be a success. NBA The Run is the James Harden Of Video Games, and it really saddens me to concede this fact.
NBA The Run is a 3v3 street basketball game infused with a range of arcadey NBA Street-styled elements. Unfortunately, that is all the game is. Players can engage in a range of knockout tournament brackets, either in 3v3 co-op play (Knockout Squads), Knockout Friends (3v3 matches in custom tournaments supporting up to 48 players), or Knockout Solos (1v1 matches where you control all three players on your team) – and that’s it. There’s one game mode with a few variants to accommodate the number of participating players. There’s not even a mode that allows you to play against bots, unless you enter a friend’s lobby with no friends and wait for the game to time you out and fill the roster with AI players. NBA The Run is unbelievably bare-bones, and while I appreciate that the developer had, before launch, expressed their intention to keep supporting the game, building upon it, and adding more, the launch slate offers up about as much as James Harden in Q4 of a hotly contested Game 5.
As a playing experience, the gameplay is excellent. The movement feels great, the shooting is well-weighted, and the players feel unique. Like in the real game of NBA basketball itself, Victor Wembanyama feels like a cheat code, and Steph Curry’s 3PT shooting is devastatingly precise, but if you can establish some custom rules to not play with those two, then matches are pretty well balanced. Stealing, sprinting and other offensive, defensive, and off-ball moves all function as you’d expect from a 2K title, and the arcadey elements are always a bit of fun, from the flamboyant dunks to perfectly timed shots catching fire and more. The game also looks great; the cartoony takes on iconic players still make them recognisable, but add a bit of goofy flair to the mix as well, and the commentary, while pretty repetitive, is very well done.
Unless NBA The Run receives a massive update with a large range of new options imminently, the game could unfortunately be one of those titles that fizzles out far too soon. There’s so much promise in the way the game looks and plays, but the team has forgotten to actually give the players enough to do while playing to encourage days, weeks, or months of play. If you’ve got a big crew coming over and want some NBA Jam/Street inspired fun, then this’ll be great as a one-off for a few hours, but then you’ll quickly finish the meal and will be left wanting more.
NBA The Run was reviewed on PS5 with a code kindly provided by the publisher.
