Does a higher Power rating reliably win shove battles and force turnovers — or did the dev tuning flatten it so Power barely matters?
How to test: Pick a high-Power player and a low-Power player. Shove the same ball-handler from the same angle, once on a stand-still and once on a throw-in, and log how often the ball comes loose for each. Repeat while the target holds Protect Ball (LT/L2). Time the stamina cost of a shove. Clip both side by side and post the numbers.
A shove that knocks the ball loose is one of the cleanest turnovers in NBA The Run — no steal animation to whiff, just a bump at the right moment and the offense is suddenly chasing the ball. The open question is how much your Power rating actually decides that bump, because the developers have spent the whole beta-and-launch window tuning shoving down.
What the devs have already changed
Shoving has been nerfed repeatedly, and the direction is consistent — make it strategic, not spammy, and stop big-Power players from bullying everyone:
- “Slowed shover an additional 3% while shoving,” making chase-down shoves harder.
- “Increased shove energy cost, making shoves a more strategic decision.”
- “Lowered odds of a successful shove on throw-ins and while passes are in flight.”
- Refactored the success formula to benefit weaker characters and limit top-tier ones.
- “Further reduced Zone Point reward for successful shoves” — another of the beta-window nerfs.
- The June 25 patch left shove tuning alone (it only “polished shove recoil animation set,” a visual change) — but it did tune the input delays on Guard and Protect Ball, the shove’s counter, so date your clips pre- or post-patch.
That last refactor is the headline: the devs explicitly flattened the Power advantage on shoves. So the bars say one thing; the tuned game may say another.
The open question
Does Power still win a shove battle, or has the tuning compressed it to the point where a 2-Power guard bumps almost as well as a 5-Power big? And how much does the defender’s side — holding Protect Ball (LT/L2) — erase the attacker’s edge? This matters for how we weight Power in the rankings: if shoves are mostly flattened, raw Power is worth less than its bar suggests.
How to test it
Isolate Power, then isolate the counter:
- High vs low Power, same shove. Take a 5-Power player and a 2-Power player, shove the identical ball-handler from the identical angle, and log the loose-ball rate over many reps — standing still and on a throw-in.
- Add the counter. Repeat with the target holding Protect Ball (LT/L2) and see how much the success rate drops.
- Price it. Time the stamina a shove costs and how long it locks you out of the next explosive move.
- Respect the counter. Per the dev notes, a defender who whiffs a shove (or steal) while the ball-handler is mid-advanced-trick gets ankle-broken — so a missed gamble isn’t just wasted stamina, it can put you on the floor. Log how often the counter fires in your reps.
Clip the comparisons and drop your evidence in the Evidence Locker below. Tag your platform. Once enough corroborating findings stack up, we’ll move this from Testing to Confirmed — and feed the result back into the power score.
Evidence Locker
Sign in to contribute- No findings yet — run a test and post what you see.
Frequently asked
Q. Can you force a turnover by shoving in NBA The Run?
Yes — a successful shove can knock the ball loose for a live-ball turnover, which in a fast 3v3 is a real momentum swing. But shoves cost stamina, can be shrugged off by holding Protect Ball (LT/L2), and the developers have deliberately nerfed them, so they reward timing over spamming.
Q. Does the Power rating matter for shoving?
It should — Power governs physical battles — but the dev patch notes say the shove success formula was tuned to 'benefit weaker characters and limit top-tier ones,' so the gap between a high-Power and low-Power player may be smaller than the bars imply. Measuring that gap is exactly what this experiment is for.