My only gripe with NBA Jam was that it was a bit unrealistic considering it was supposed to be a sports game.
Despite being a bit unrealistic NBA Jam was pure fun to play. It had all the teams and their top players present in the selection screen (teams & players at the time). The AI and graphics were decent. The gameplay however, made up for most of the shortcomings. You could do all sorts of dunks and even break the backboard. At half time and the end of the match you could check out your stats which was a nice way to see if you picked up the pace for the end game.
Overall NBA Jam was a fun basketball game. It's just that you had to get used to elbows flying, shoving & pushing and dunking from some lengthy distances. However if you're the one dishing that stuff out it's all good.