NBA THE RUN Review: The Arcade Basketball Revival Is Here

A couple of months ago, we covered how some NBA fans are keeping NBA Street alive, a true testament to the staying power of street basketball in home entertainment. A few weeks after that article went live, we were invited by Play By Play to try out NBA THE RUN, their version of street basketball with an officially licensed roster that promises to rival the mainstream NBA 2K gameplay with an arcade approach.

We had fun playing the preview version of the game, and so we had high expectations heading into the game. Thankfully, NBA THE RUN didn't disappoint, although there is definitely room for improvement to truly claim the title of Streetball GOAT. Read our full review to find out what we liked about the game, and what it will take to bring it to the next level.

Arcade Streetball is back in fashion

NBA THE RUN is a fast-paced 3v3 online streetball game from Play by Play Studios, a team led by EA Sports veterans, with announcing duties handled by streetball royalty DJ Bobbito Garcia. While this is the studio's debut title, the pedigree is there, and it shows in how the game was produced and developed.

For those that are not familiar, the pitch for NBA THE RUN is this: take your favorite NBA stars to iconic streetball courts around the world, run four-round Knockout Tournaments, win games with wild rules, and chase the Run the World trophy. There is a stacked 38-man roster, 5 of which are original characters, and each character feels different enough to play to make choosing which three ballers to court matter more than you think it would.

Gameplay is fluid, fast, and tight. We played on PC via Steam with a controller for this review. The controls feel responsive, making both offensive flow and defensive reads land cleanly. Alley-oops, crossovers, contested layups, blocks, everything connects with the kind of snap you want from arcade basketball. Play by Play has clearly studied what made the NBA Street series feel good and rebuilt those instincts from the ground up.

If you're coming off NBA 2K or other simulation-based sports games, and this is your first time playing an arcade sports game, then you might feel a bit strange. There's a huge difference between these two styles of gameplay, and learning to shoot and play defense might take some time. But once you get the hang of it, you'll get to enjoy the more laid-back approach and less technical flow of the game.

The rollback netcode implementation also needs its own shoutout. It's great to see this technique used in a non-fighting game, and it's great to see it work the way it does in NBA THE RUN. It is one of the best I have experienced in a competitive online sports game, and I think Visual Concepts should learn a thing or two here. Long story short, playing NBA THE RUN online is much more enjoyable compared to NBA 2K, and that's great for a game that completely relies on online matchmaking to survive.

The roster at launch is generous. 32 NBA players plus streetball legends are available right out of the gate, and the studio has confirmed more are coming before the 2026-27 season. Kyrie Irving will be joining this roster when the game launches today, which brings the total of NBA players to 33, not to include the rookie versions of a few players available to those who purchase the Deluxe Edition of the game. There is enough variety here that finding a player who fits your style is genuinely fun, and rebuilding a squad mid-tournament feels meaningful. Even the rookie variants have a different playstyle from their current NBA counterparts, reflecting their growth or changes in their game as they got older. The fact that all NBA players are unlocked right from the get-go unlocks a lot of goodwill from the community, and making the Streetball Legends the unlockables is the right move.

Pick Up, Play, Wind Down

What surprised me most about NBA THE RUN is how well it functions as a wind-down game. Most competitive online sports titles demand sustained focus and long sessions to feel rewarding. THE RUN does the opposite. Matches are short, matchmaking wait times are quick, and Knockout Solos lets you control your full team of three without needing to coordinate with anyone. You can fire up a tournament after work, run a few rounds, and log off.

The variety in match rules and modifiers across tournament rounds also keeps things fresh. You're rarely running back-to-back identical games, and the alternate rule sets force you to adapt on the fly. The catch is there's no straightforward "play a normal game with no special rules" option, which feels like an oversight for players who want to scrim or warm up without the chaos.

For busy professionals, parents, or players who just want a basketball fix without committing to a three-hour MyCareer grind, this is the design philosophy you have been asking for. The four-round Knockout Tournament structure also gives every match real stakes; you're either advancing or you're out, which keeps the tension high even when the session is brief.

Some players might see this as a negative, though. The game doesn't have a persistent seasonal ranking for players to grind and raise as they play. The game has a persistent rank level that tracks how long you've been playing the game, but it doesn't represent how well you've been playing the game. If you're playing sweaty, then you'll have to settle for counting your NBA THE RUN trophy count instead of seeing your rank go from bronze to diamond.

Streetball Goes Worldwide

One thing I appreciate about NBA THE RUN's design is its acknowledgment of the universality of street basketball. While the NBA is confined geographically in North America, the street courts of the game go around the world. At launch, there is a total of 11 different courts, 4 of which are located outside of the US of A. You have a court in the Mecca of Basketball, New York, but also in Beijing, Manila, Venice, and Toronto.

For Filipino players, The Tenement Court is a moment. Seeing a Manila streetball court rendered with the kind of care and atmosphere usually reserved for Venice Beach is genuinely meaningful, and the vibe of the court captures something authentic about Philippine basketball culture. It's not just a skin, it feels like a place. Hopefully, Play by Play continues expanding international representation as the roster of courts grows, because this is the kind of detail that turns a good game into a beloved one for the communities it features.

In the Zone, On Repeat

The In the Zone system is one of NBA THE RUN's signature mechanics, and it works exactly the way a comeback or closing mechanic should. Build up your meter through good play, activate it at the right moment, and suddenly you have a tool that can close out blowout games quickly or pull off a clutch run when you're down late. It rewards good performance without feeling cheap. For tight games, it adds a strategic layer to when you push and when you conserve, activating your player's ITZ skill at just the right moment to push the advantage and close out the game.

There are a few ITZ skills to go around, with players having one ITZ skill available to them. NBA THE RUN's design philosophy for the players is to caricaturize them - make them really good for what they're good at. The ITZ is the icing on the cake - it turns your player into a monster that is the best in the world in what they're good at. For example, when I play as Wemby, you can block shots at its peak, sometimes bordering on goaltending (which, Play by Play tells us, has been tweaked to be less OP at launch). I could still miss some blocks here and there, but if I turn on Wemby's ITZ "Paint Patrol," no shot ever comes near the basket anymore, as if Wemby had magnet hands.

ITZ is balanced by making it hard to fill if you're just spamming moves. Each player has his own ITZ meter that fills up as you do on-court stuff like doing crossovers, shooting shots, playing good defense, or dunking the ball. But the meter fills more slowly if you just do the same shot over and over again. So, Steph Curry will need to mix things up if he wants to activate his "Deep Threat" ITZ, maybe making a dunk here or there or stealing the ball, instead of just shooting threes. This makes gameplay feel more deliberate and less mechanical, discouraging spamming the same moves, which is exactly what makes online matchups stale and boring.

The commentary from DJ Bobbito Garcia is, as expected, the kind of streetball energy this game needed. His voice carries the same authority and authenticity that anchored the NBA Street series, and it grounds the game's whole identity. If there's one feature I'd love to see down the line, it would be unlockable alternate commentators to keep things fresh across hundreds of matches. After a few days with the game, DJ Bobbito's voice melded with the background noise at some point. So, it wasn't like his commentary became stale or repetitively annoying as it would in an NBA 2K or WWE 2K commentary, but his voice eventually became invisible. Another voice would help keep things fresh.

No Monetization = Community Wins

Play By Play deserves recognition for how they decided to monetize NBA THE RUN. There are zero microtransactions. At launch, at least, as we've seen other online games sneakily introducing microtransactions when a game has finally launched, when our reviews are already out (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft.)

Play By Play has complete confidence in their product that they're selling the game at $29.99, with a $39.99 Deluxe Edition for those who want the Rookie versions of Curry, Doncic, SGA, Durant, and Luka unlocked from the start. I would have preferred if the game were free-to-play, which would have given the game maximum reach at launch and would have had an undying community. But a company has to earn their money back somehow, and resiting the urge to add microtransactions and asking for an upfront, one-time buy-in price instead is a much preferrable option.

The in-game currency, CRED, is earned exclusively through playing matches and is used to buy cosmetic items like alternate jerseys, dunk animations, badges, and banners. The battle pass and rank system are present but non-intrusive; they exist as a progression tracker, earning you rewards as you play more of the game, and are not treadmills designed to pry your wallet open.

In a market where the biggest licensed basketball game on the planet has spent the last several years escalating its monetization aggression, asking you to fork out cash for more and more money for fewer and fewer content, and still asks for more money for in-game currency, NBA THE RUN's $29.99 price tag with no predatory storefront feels almost radical. This is how arcade sports games used to work, and it's how they should still work.

Bringing Streetball to the next level

For all that NBA THE RUN does well, there are absences I can't help but notice. Like what we mentioned a few paragraphs above, there is no dedicated ranked mode at launch, which means competitive players looking for a true ladder grind don't have one to climb yet. There is no tutorial or onboarding experience, which is a strange omission for a game with this much mechanical depth. New players are essentially dropped into the deep end and expected to figure things out on their own in the provided shootaround mode.

In-game communication is also minimal, which makes Knockout Squads with random teammates significantly harder than it should be. Calling for screens, signaling cuts, or coordinating defensive switches requires either a pre-built squad or external voice chat, and even basic ping options or an emote wheel would dramatically improve the solo-queue experience.

Ball tracking on offense can also feel inconsistent. The ball gets swatted away more often than the animations suggest it should, and there are moments where the ball appears to teleport into a defender's hands rather than transitioning through a clean steal animation. It's a polish issue rather than a structural one, but it's noticeable, and if it happens often enough, could get frustrating.

And while the dunk animations you can unlock are genuinely cool, being limited to one equipped dunk at a time feels restrictive. Letting players load out a small set of dunks that trigger contextually would add meaningful expression without breaking balance. A couple of tricks could also make the game feel even more arcade-y, stringing combos mid-air like how you would in a Tony Hawk game could be an amazing addition down the line, but I can see how its implementation could get in the way of the flow of the game.

If Play by Play is taking notes, here's my wishlist. A 1v1 mode for players who want to test their handle without team chemistry. A HORSE mode for the pure fun of trick shots and dunk contests. A solo story mode or seasonal narrative thread along the lines of what Marvel Rivals, VALORANT and Dota 2 have done, even a thin storyline would give the streetball world some texture and identity beyond the courts themselves, which I think would also help elevate the Streetball Legends they created specifically for this game. Court customization options for nets, rings, backboards, and floors would also be welcome additions and new unlockables. The ability to save and clip your own highlights, rather than only being shown the winning play, would also help make this game noisier on socials as players get to share their coolest plays on social media with just one click of a button.

None of these is a dealbreaker. All of them would push the game from great to GOAT.

Verdict

NBA THE RUN is the arcade basketball game I've been hoping someone would make for years, and Play by Play Studios delivered it with the kind of care and player-first design philosophy that's increasingly rare in this space. Coming from a childhood of NBA Ballers and NBA Street, NBA THE RUN fills a void that I have had in my heart for a long time now.

The gameplay is fluid, the netcode is clean, the roster is generous, the monetization is fair, and the design respects your time. The absences - no ranked mode, no tutorial, no in-game comms - are real, but they in no way take any fun away from what NBA THE RUN already is.

If you've been waiting for a true NBA Street successor, your wait is over. THE RUN isn't just a love letter to the genre; it's a declaration that arcade basketball still has a place in 2026.

Score: 8.5/10

Editor's Note: GameDaily received review codes for NBA THE RUN on PC for this review.

Copyright The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 11:00 AM.