That's how it was initially described. Nba Jam as a RPG.
We consider it a party-based RPG. You know how different RPGs have different battle systems? Whether it's the weird action/strategy hybrid of Valkyria or like a quasi-real-time Grandia thing or phased real-time like Baldur's Gate or whatever else. There's no hard rule for what an RPG's battle system is.
Ours happens to play out like a head-to-head mystical combat game. Some have likened it to classic action sports games (from NES Hockey to NBA Jam and many others) and we're cool with that though at the center of the game is the campaign with its big (for us anyway) cast of characters and so on. There's also the Versus Mode if you just want the pure action portion, too.
Anyway! Thank-you to folks in this thread for the support...! This has turned out to be the biggest game we've ever made and we're almost there with it, and excited to see what everyone will think of it.