NBA The Run Review

Some years back, a few buddies and I started going to the park every Wednesday afternoon to shoot hoops. Five-on-five, first-to-11, 1s-and-2s; that way, we could take a break after each game, swap a couple of guys around to keep things fresh, play another, and repeat until it was either too dark to see the rim or people were all balled out. This is what NBA The Run feels like. There’s the burst of excitement I get the second I hit my first shot. There’s the novelty of having enough players to switch it up so things don’t become stale. And, unfortunately, there’s also the unavoidable exhaustion at the end; of having played too many games, shot too many threes, and alley’d too many oops until I need to take a complete break from it. Sure, I can go again next Wednesday, but until then, I’d rather be doing something else.

Thankfully, something NBA The Run lacks compared to my local court is that one guy who always throws elbows. Instead, it hosts a roster of 30+ NBA all-stars and five street legends full of hardwood pros who are all masters of their craft. Trying out different characters in these fast, 3v3 matches never got old because, much like in reality, each guy has certain things they’re better at than others: Victor Wembanyama is, as you’d expect, an alien who can shoot, dunk, and block with his Go Go Gadget arms. On the less-freakishly-tall side, there’s Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard, who can both throw it up from pretty much anywhere. And we can’t forget Ja Morant, who is a highlight dunker and daring shooter like no one else. That deep player roster keeps things exciting, and the championship I won with Devin Booker felt very different than the one I got as Nikola Jokic. (And no, I’m not just saying that as a desperate Suns fan.)

To top it off, NBA The Run doesn’t just capture each player’s likeness; it also accurately mimics their signature jump shot forms, which was a very pleasant surprise. I’ll be honest, having played a lot of the NBA Street series on the PSP and GameCube back in the day, I was half-expecting generic character movements and animations to be copied and pasted across all the different players. Instead, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Book’s silky smooth shot and even LaMelo Ball’s unorthodox release throughout each match.

All of these hardwood icons and their jumpers are playable within NBA The Run’s two main game modes: Knockout Squads and Knockout Solos. The former is a lot like The Park in NBA 2K, where each pro in your squad of three is controlled by a different player, and you have to work as a team. The latter, on the other hand, lets you control all three of them by yourself against another person doing the same. There’s also a third mode called Knockout Friends (tragically named, in my opinion, because you shouldn’t knock your friends out unless you want enemies), which is a promising private tournament format where you can invite up to 48 people to play for a championship, but I wasn’t able to test that out ahead of release.

Across all my runs, I gravitated more towards Knockout Squads because you just can’t replicate the wild highlights, the frequent taunting from both sides, and the pure joy of winning a championship with two random teammates. Sadly, there’s always a chance you get paired with someone who apparently doesn’t know how to pass the ball. But if that happens, and it does often, the short match times make it easy enough to just chalk it up as a loss and run it back without much frustration.

Side note: I am begging you to pass the ball, people. It’s one button on your controller. One key on your keyboard. It’s not that hard. Basketball is a team sport. There is no ‘I’ in team, “We, not me,” and all that jazz. Now, back to our regular programming.

Home (Court) Is Where the Heart Is

Look, I get that I can’t just ask Kevin Durant to replace that flying elbow guy in the real world, so how about we find a new court to play on instead? You know, one that doesn’t have multiple dead spots? NBA The Run has options for me here, too.

Take The Tenement, for example, a small piece of my home from the heart of Manila, Philippines, brought to the global stage. I’m a bit biased here, but it's my favorite of the seven in-game courts, not just as a nostalgic hit, but also because it so perfectly captures what basketball is: a spectacle that draws crowds, from the oldheads who can barely walk to the youngins who stand on their tiptoes just to watch. From that towering behemoth to the concrete jungle’s iconic Rucker Park, I appreciate the care and attention developer Play by Play Studios has put into building these courts, treating each one like the gathering and celebration of hoops that they are. And with every arena being a grand, near-accurate recreation of a real place, it turned the first few runs I went on into an exciting global tour where I may or may not have lost some matches because I was busy taking in the sights.

But, hold on. What do you mean we can’t just drive down to the Venice Beach court to play a few actual pick-up games? Fine, how about we switch things up with the scoring instead? Like, three points for dunks and one point for threes?

Although this would be a terrible idea that I would never suggest in real life because I can’t dunk, it’s the kind of unexpected option that makes NBA The Run tick. Different match types are selected pre-game through a roulette, and that keeps things interesting and unpredictable – be it Triple Threat, where threes are threes, and everything else is only worth a single point, or another option that turns the match into a first-to-7 contest where every basket, whether that’s a half-court shot or a flashy alley-oop, only counts as one. It’s like a box of tweets from Kevin Durant’s burner accounts; you never know what you’re going to get.

Take the dunks-count-as-threes mode as an example: if that gets chosen out of everything else, then a team that had picked Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, and Devin Booker to spam threes all game long would be out of luck against a more well-rounded one. Overall, the current match type rotation is a smart way of encouraging you to explore the roster instead of going all-in on a single strategy every time. Can you imagine how stale it would get if you played as Anthony Edwards your whole playthrough? Or if all the games you played were a first-to-21, 1s-and-2s contest? It’d be like voluntarily watching the Washington Wizards for a whole season.

Time to Hang it Up

Sadly, there are only so many Zion Williamson 360-windmills, Trae Young half-court heaves, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander flops I can stomach by my 22nd match at the Dongdan Sports Complex before things get old. (Well, that’s not all true; flopping isn’t actually a part of NBA The Run, but my overall point still stands.) After winning multiple championships through a lot of highly-contested matches and playing as all of the available characters across its two main game modes, that feeling I savored so much in my first, second, and even third championship run is long gone.

This must have been what Michael Jordan felt during his second retirement with the Chicago Bulls. I’m not comparing my accomplishments to his or anything (I got more than six championships, after all), but when you’ve won everything there is to win, what’s left? Playing for the love of the game only works when it loves you back, and now that both sides are spent, there’s little reason to stick around any longer. NBA The Run could pull me back in eventually if new content arrives in the coming weeks and months, just like MJ coming back to play for the Wizards – but at the moment, my legs are spent, my wrist is aching, and I cannot shoot, dunk, or ineffectively put my hand up any more than I already have.