What if our Solar System was a basketball team?
If you like basketball and talking about basketball, you’ve certainly been involved in some conversation about who the best player in the world is at any given time. And in those conversations, one theoretical concept inevitably comes up: if Martians landed on Earth and challenged us to a basketball game, which player would be our first call?
It’s a great question, even if it is completely unrealistic and weird. Let’s make it even more unrealstic and weirder. Forget what a basketball player from Mars would look like; what would Mars look like as a basketball player?
So here’s what’s going to happen:
I’m going to go through the planets in our solar system and scientifically deduce playfully imagine what each planet would be like as a basketball player.
I will be creating a team consisting of 5 starters and 4 bench players. Because Pluto is on the team. If you don't like it, feel free to visit this website: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/about/email-goddard.html and let NASA know. Let's begin.
Starters
Point Guard - Mercury
This makes sense for a lot of reasons. For one, Mercury is the smallest planet and point guards are usually the smallest players on the team. Mercury was also the messenger to the gods and if you’re a messenger, you distribute a lot of stuff and so you can be called a distributor just like how point guards are distributors of the ball.
Mercury has all of the speed you want out of a point guard. It orbits the Sun at 105,947 miles per hour, easily the fastest of any other planet in the solar system, and I feel like that equates to like a 4.18s 40-yard dash. That lateral quickness easily compensates for Mercury’s size when it comes to defense.
When Mercury was in high school, it stripped a planet from another solar system on three straight possessions and got that other planet thrown out of the game for screaming extrasolar expletives at the referee.
Mercury’s biggest flaw is how goddamn streaky it is. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it’s temperatures vary wildly from one side to the other. On the side pointed at the sun, temperatures rise to 840 degrees Fahrenheit, while it’s other side drops to -290 degrees Fahrenheit. Mercury will have some weeks, even months, where it goes absolutely lights-out and can’t miss, putting up 52-13-4, every single game.
People will write articles and blog posts with titles like “Mercury has finally figured it out” and “Forget the sky, the stars are the limit for Mercury”. And then it’ll completely freeze up for the next few weeks, missing even the easiest layups, bricking both free throws, and throwing the ball out of bounds every possession like it’s a 2K character being controlled by your mom.
Shooting Guard - Neptune
Neptune is the shooting guard because I say so and this is my fever dream. Neptune is way the hell out there in our solar system, so it’s developed a sort of weird vibe about it. It doesn’t really fraternize with any of the other planets and no one knows what it does do in its free time.
Does it drink? Maybe, but if it does, it probably goes into a bar at like 8 o’clock on a Tuesday and sits in a booth in the corner, not talking to anyone, not watching anything on the television, just staring straight ahead like it’s having flashbacks of Space-’Nam.
Or maybe it does do cool shit and it’s just that no one knows about it. Maybe it goes to Malaysia during the off-season and does DMT with celebrities and flies around in wing suits and all kinds of other righteous shit. No one knows.
What they do know is that on the court, Neptune fuckin’ glides. Neptune is home to supersonic winds that tear through the atmosphere at over 500 mph. Neptune is also the Roman god of water, and those two things combined make Neptune’s grace profound. Imagine if Barry Sanders’ elusiveness in the open field had a baby with Charlize Theron’s dress from the Oscars on Sunday. Now make that baby a planet, make it a basketball player, and name it after the ROMAN GOD OF WATER. That’s how graceful Neptune is on the basketball court.
Maybe it eats coconut shells. Maybe it has Sunday brunch with Fortune 500 CEO’s. It doesn’t matter. A basketball in Neptune’s hand is a thing of beauty.
Small Forward - Earth
Because of course it is. This one’s easy. Astronomers talk about how Earth-like planets can only develop in what they call “Goldilocks Zones”, which means that they only develop as planets when they aren’t too big or too small and aren’t too hot or too cold. That’s Earth and that makes Earth the perfect swingman. Earth can play either forward position, can handle at guard, can post up, shoot, pass, the whole kit and caboodle.
Earth also has the perfect personality for keeping the team together. It brings life to the team that it otherwise wouldn’t have. It can wrangle in the hot-heads and talk up the role players. Earth is the do-it-all glue guy for the team.
Power Forward - Saturn
Saturn’s the second biggest planet in the solar system. Power forward is traditionally the second biggest player in the starting lineup and can switch to center without much loss of production. So that’s how we get Saturn as our power forward.
What’s Saturn like as a player?
One word. F-L-A-S-H-Y. Saturn is the planet with the rings around it!! It’s literally always blinged-out! Saturn is so flashy, it has diamond-encrusted contact lenses.
It’s a little unusual for a power forward to be the Deion Sanders of a team, but Saturn makes it look easy. Strong, athletic, and a knack for the spectacular make Saturn a highlight machine. Saturn can turn over both shoulders in the post, is a true triple-threat, and has a vertical leap that has yet to be accurately measured.
There are YouTube videos of the top 100 Saturn plays, each with several million views and comments like “My roommate in college played with with Saturn and he said that Saturn dunked on a planet so hard that the planet started crying and gave up basketball to become an accountant”.
Saturn is a media darling and has had three best-selling books written about its exploits. “Put a Ring on It: the Story of a Champion”, “Glitz & Glamor” and its autobiography, “My Time to Shine: How a Gas Giant with a Primarily Iron-Nickel Core with a Metallic Hydrogen Exo-layer Came to be an Icon”.
Center - Jupiter
What were you expecting? Venus to be the starting center? Get real. Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets in our solar system combined. It’s also named after - uh - the fucking KING OF THE GODS. Jupiter is the team captain and the team’s star player.
Jupiter rips basketball courts apart with the same air of ease as Neptune, but in a manner that replaces Neptune’s nonchalant grace with unbridled intensity. Other planets bounce off of Jupiter as it gallops up and down the court like a dad playing tackle football with his toddler. Jupiter plays like you took Shaq, gave him David Robinson’s physique, made him 11-feet tall, and put an unstable RBMK reactor in the chest.
Because of Jupiter’s predisposition to rule, it often thinks about getting into politics after its playing career is over. Many political pundits scoff at its electability after a scandal involving performance-enhancing substances.
Jupiter would bring its own Gatorade bottles to games and wouldn’t allow anyone else to drink out of them. Jupiter always seems to get really amped up after it drinks from the gatorade bottles though, so one time after a game while Jupiter was getting taped up, Mercury, Saturn, and the team’s beat writer stole one of the bottles and looked inside.
It was filled with molten lava and the blood of human sacrifices.
Reserves
6th Man - Mars
Mars is going to be our sixth man and plays at the power forward position. That’s interesting because Mars is quite a bit smaller than Earth (our small forward) and yet Mars is playing an even larger position. Why? Because Mars is a goddamn animal.
Mars is named after the god of war, which should be all you need to know about its mindset. Mars is a dog. Every loose ball, Mars is going for it. Every fast break, Mars is taking a charge. Put backs, offense rebounds, flagrant fouls, Mars lives for the fight. Think Ben Wallace crossed with Dennis Rodman crossed with Bill Laimbeer with an upside-down trapezoidal afro (because afros are awesome and this is space so it’s kind of weird).
Mars isn’t a starter because it’s really only available for like 60% of the team’s games due to suspensions, and in the games it does play in, you really can’t expect to play Mars for a full half without wracking up at least four fouls and quick technical.
Mars drives a dark green 1998 Chevrolet Silverado with over 400,000 miles on it and a switchblade in the glovebox everywhere it goes. On the way to games, award shows, picking the kids up from school, doesn’t matter. Mars drives that truck and wears his own cologne, Rust, which smells like bourbon, tobacco and iron.
Reserve Guard - Venus
Oof. Venus. Talk about a headcase.
Venus is roughly the same size as Earth but gets a lot of production by playing as an oversized guard because Venus can hit just about every shot it wants on offense. It’s the hottest planet in the solar system, even hotter than Mercury. Anywhere on the court is within Venus’ range. And the thing about Venus is that it doesn’t cool off like Mercury. It’s always hot. So why isn’t a starter?
Because Venus is toxic.
Venus is so hot because of a runaway greenhouse effect. The air is full of sulfuric acid clouds that completely insulate heat and make it completely unlivable. As a basketball player, Venus is a certified, genuine, AVN-award winning asshole.
Venus can’t be in the starting lineup because Venus can’t be expected to stay in a game for more than like four minutes at a time. Venus makes every shot and proceeds to insult every single player of the opposing team in ways that completely cross every line you can think of.
Sick family member? Venus’ll talk shit about it. Financial trouble? Venus’ll remind you about it. Deep-seated trauma that you aren’t even sure you know about but is absolutely a part of your psychological makeup and something that, if targeted, would be considered a “weakness” by individuals without a conscience? Venus not only knows about it, but Venus will post on social media and tell everyone about it two hours before tipoff (Venus has been banned from Twitter several times).
The worst of it is, though, that Venus doesn’t just limit its toxicity to the other team. If Venus is in the game and a teammate even touches the ball, Venus brings up the time freshman year of high school when everyone was working on a test and that planet had some gastrointestinal discomfort so it carefully tried to eek out a teeny tiny little silent gas but instead ended up ripping planet-ass in front of the whole class.
If a teammate shoots the ball while Venus is on the court, Venus calls a hitman.
Reserve Forward - Uranus
Poor Uranus :( Uranus is a forward because I needed another forward to make this team make sense (I have no idea why the hell I give a shit about making this team make sense at this point) and I can do whatever I want.
We can’t ignore the obvious - it has that goddamn name. And yeah, people will say that the correct way to say it is “Urine-Us” but c’mon. It’s “Your-Anus”.
Uranus tried to correct people ever since middle school, but nobody cared. They teased Uranus about it all the way through draft night and even to this day. Anytime Uranus checks into a game, the crowd always chants “YOUR AN ANUS” *clap clap clapclapclap*.
Uranus is also a considered a weirdo because of things it can’t control. It’s a gas giant with clouds of hydrogen sulfide, which is the same compound that gives rotten eggs their smell. Uranus smells like rotten eggs. The jokes write themselves. Uranus also rotates east to west, unlike most planets, and its rotation is at almost a complete 90 degree to its equator. Things were really rough for Uranus growing up.
But you know what? Uranus persevered. And Uranus made the team because despite all of it, the smell, the name, the weird orientation: Uranus was a damn fine basketball player. Nobody can guard Uranus. Uranus has respectable shot, but it thrives at as a slash-and-kick maestro. Uranus is superb at drawing fouls and you’ll often hear the opposing planets talking about how they just can’t seem to stay away from Uranus.
Plus, all of that mockery actually helped Uranus develop quite the following and had an impact on its sense of humor. Uranus loves to bust balls and hang out with the guys. And you know what they say: when Uranus gets hot - watch out.
Bench Warmer - Pluto
Damn, dude. They really did Pluto like that. I’m still not over it, honestly. And I know a bunch of other people aren’t either. If you google the planets in the solar system, Pluto is invariably one of the results despite that fact that it’s “not a planet”. They ought to just make it an honorary planet since people will always make a big stink about Pluto. Or maybe they shouldn’t since the next generation probably doesn’t give a shit and once we die nobody will give a shit about Pluto.
Whatever. I care.
Pluto used to get minutes when the team needed to ice the game because Pluto was a stone-cold killer in the clutch. They called it an icy dwarf not because Pluto couldn’t hit shots, but because Pluto was completely unfazed in crunch time.
The smallest player on the team, Pluto was unfortunately too undersized to get regular minutes as part of the rotation, but Pluto always knew that it was a vital part of the team and had earned the respect of its peers. If only it knew.
Pluto’s cult following as the short, plucky underdog who checked into 4th quarters to seal deals eventually angered Jupiter, who wanted those shots for itself. Hubris had clouded Jupiter’s mind, and so it demanded that the Sun cut Pluto’s playing time.
The Sun acquiesced and now Pluto rides the pine, wistfully remembering the days it was a real part of the team and not just a marketing gimmick to sell jerseys and tickets. Things are rough for Pluto.
So there you have it. That’s our solar system as a basketball team. It’s got a lot of personalities, but the Sun keeps them pretty much in check and knows how to harness all of that potential. God help Alpha Centauri if they ever decide to come try this squad.