Hands-On Preview: NBA The Run is Throwing it Back to the NBA Street Days

If you were a sports fan and a gamer in the early 2000s, then the catalog of games created by EA Sports BIG surely means something important to you. As a huge fan of basketball myself, the amount of hours I personally poured into NBA Street and Vol. 2 would certainly be shocking if my GameCube had a way to track my playtime back then.

Of course, it feels like this period of sports titles has since come and gone, as the world has moved more towards simulation-focused experiences that are designed to keep you in the game for enormous chunks of time and persuade you to continually invest. In the process, we've lost something important.

At their core, the NBA Street games were about the culture, flash, and style of streetball. They were very much time capsules of the era, and many of us dearly miss those days. Enter, NBA The Run, a new streetball title dropping into the scene imminently. If you're a fan of the old days, this one is going to be special for you, just like it already feels for me.

Taking it Back

During a Discord presentation showcase and hands-on demo of the game last week, I got to learn a ton of exciting info about NBA The Run. First and foremost, the game's Creative Director is Mike Young, who spent over 20 years at EA Sports working on every single NBA Street game, as well as other BIG titles and Madden. This is a pedigree that should immediately make your ears perk up if you're a die-hard Street fan like me.

While larger sports titles are crafted by teams of hundreds of people, Mike Young and the NBA The Run squad at Play By Play Studios are a group of 18 in total. Clearly, you can imagine that this is a title coming from a place of love and passion for not only the games that have come before, but just basketball in general. They know there's room for a game like this in the current sports market, and I could not agree more.

What's here will sound familiar, and in all the best ways. NBA The Run is 3v3 streetball, full of insane dunks, slick dribble moves, and hyper-exaggerated skillsets for each included NBA player, making them all feel distinct and exciting to test out. My favorite in my time with the game was Anthony Edwards, whose electric play in the real NBA translates incredibly well to the world of The Run.

Bobbito Garcia, the absolutely iconic emcee from the Street games, is back as well, and he's already recorded over 3,000 lines to serve as the hyped-up narration you know and love from the old days. We can be sure that his quips in The Run will become just as iconic this time around as well, giving us dozens more things we can all now shout out as we hoop IRL too.

Clearly, NBA The Run knows what we want here. In fact, the excitement in our Discord chat as each new detail about this game was dropped felt palpable. No microtransactions, no pay-to-win systems, no lootboxes. NBA The Run is just classic, exciting, arcade-style streetball, just like so many of us have wanted for decades at this point.

There are already over 30 pro players in the game, including those you'd obviously expect: LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, and all the other perennial all-stars from the league. As a Pacers fan, I was personally elated to see Tyrese Haliburton make the cut as well (Indy will be back next year). Fans will also be able to vote for the next players added to the game, so start thinking about who you want to see. Famous real-life courts like Rucker Park are here as well, which is obviously amazing too.

The Gameplay

So, NBA The Run looks the part of what you're longing for, but does the format and actual gameplay translate? Based on my hour-or-so playing the game, it's not one-to-one with Street, but I'd also argue that's okay. We don't literally want the exact same game again, right? In actual feel, The Run reminded me most of a hybrid of Street mixed with NBA Jam, leaning a little heavier into arcade-style even more.

On defense (at the expense of your stamina bar), you can shove opponents to the ground to gain control of the ball, much like Jam. There aren't Game Breakers either, instead replaced with a player getting "In the Zone," which amplifies their best attributes for a set period of time, much like being "On Fire" in Jam. Dribble moves (performed with the right stick) aren't quite as showy as they are in Street, but are still fun to pull off and to create the separation you need from the defense to get a shot off.

All in all, while the spirit and DNA of Street is clearly alive and well in The Run, it does also feel like its own thing. But that thing is still incredibly fun, and also has a deceptive depth once you get into it all that will elevate it far beyond the extreme simplicity of something like Jam. I'm genuinely excited to get back in ASAP and keep improving my game.

I (and many others in the Discord chat) did have one gameplay gripe: dunk takeoff felt like it was tuned too close to the basket. Thankfully, the dev team took our feedback and reported back to us today that this has been adjusted/improved. It's really nice to see that the team will obviously be taking player opinions into extreme consideration, because they've already made changes we were looking for.

The Run is set up in a knockout tournament format, and you have a few different ways to experience this. There are Solo, Squads, and Friends modes. In Solo, you control all three players on your team. Squads, you'll control one player. Friends is a customizable tourney with up to 48 players. This is all handled online with matchmaking, but there's also the option to play alone against bots for those that don't always want to play with/against real people either.

If you win the first round of your tournament, you move on to the next until a champion team is decided. Lose, and you'll get to immediately hop back into matchmaking and get right back in the action, so you can keep things moving and keep having fun. Games will also be switched up by a wheel of scoring/style modifiers, like dunks counting for extra points in certain matches, everything besides threes counting as one point, etc.

Get Ready to Throw Down

Personally, I was genuinely bummed when my demo of the game was over. I felt like I was just scratching the surface of The Run, and I had so many players I still wanted to test out to find my personal favorites. Thankfully, the team shared some more exciting news with us: NBA The Run is coming very soon and is planned to release in June 2026.

It'll launch on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, and also is fully cross-play enabled, making it a breeze to link up with your preferred squad regardless of platform.

There will also be a playtest via Steam on May 1, so if you want to go hands-on early with the game as well and see what you think, make sure you sign up for the session (via this link).

As a lifelong fan of NBA Street, I can't wait for NBA The Run. I'll see you on the court, and I'll be ready to dunk on your head.