This is Monkey D. Luffy. He's 19 years old, neurodivergent as hell, and, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he's gonna be king of the pirates. In One Piece’s 1,000+ ongoing manga and episodic anime odyssey, I’ve seen him overcome insurmountable odds liberating islands from fascist marines and imperialist oligarchs, and stomp out anyone who dare deride folks who fed him whenever his ship graced their shores. Although his ethos isn't a cypher to unravel, his basketball in a recent One Piece and Los Angeles Lakers collaboration clip is. Allow me to put my hands on the proverbial SportsCenter desk and give my take on Luffy’s b-ball skills and why he wouldn’t be in the Straw Hats’ starting five.
On February 28, One Piece and the Los Angeles Lakers released “a first-of-its-kind collaboration” during a game against the Clippers. The highlight of the event was a special anime featurette where Luffy donned the Lakers’ purple and gold jersey and played basketball. The thirty-second clip was sick as hell and has amassed 594,000 viewers on YouTube all losing their minds over how surreal it is watching Luffy balling for the Lakers.
But Luffy lacks fundamentals. Let's start with Luffy’s ball handling: Unsurprisingly, Luffy won the jump ball in his score-less handicap game against a group of nameless marines who’re auspiciously dressed in Dallas Mavericks jerseys. As we all know, Luffy ate the Gum-Gum fruit, allowing him to stretch his limbs to far greater reaches than Michael Jordan at the end of Space Jam, so having insane ups isn’t anything wild. What is wild is Luffy’s abysmal ball handling and security. Within moments of possessing the rock, it was swatted away with ease by a player flanking him at half court. Luffy doesn’t even make any movement toward the net before losing possession. That’s some embarrassing lack of full court awareness. What’s worse, the ball is about to go out of bounds within nine seconds of the game. Who let him cook?
Thankfully, Luffy locks the fuck in and puts his stringbean arms to use, clasping the ball with one hand, sliding through the Marine’s defense, laying up a shot off the glass, and dunking on his opps before cheesing at the courtside camera. Luffy’s dunk further emphasizes the aura from his score with a well-timed rafters sign hyping up the crowd, asking, “Who’s the king?” before he posterizes two marines. Although anime’s glorious king rose to the occasion, if this were a real basketball game, he wouldn’t be in the same area code of my Straw Hats starting five. I’d have kept him sat on the bench until the last quarter of the game to save the day like one of his battles.
Now, let’s talk about my starting five. For sports-averse readers, a starting five are players coaches put out on the court who display a high amplitude for scoring, an impenetrable defence, and seamless chemistry. If I were in charge of the Lakers x One Piece collab, I would've capitalized off the concept to further elevate the big-game feel of anime melding with sports beyond Luffy soloing an entire team. While the Straw Hats are short five players to constitute an NBA-regulated team, let’s pretend those rules don’t apply (given Luffy’s Gum-Gum powers were allowed) for the sake of building my fantasy anime basketball team.
My team needs a point guard who can pop off with laser beam shots from half court like it's nothing. No other player would fit this role better than the Straw Hats’ resident sniper, Usopp. Usopp never misses his target in the heat of battle, so his scoring ability coupled with his court presence and leadership makes him (or that Sniper King fellow) an ideal point guard to carry the game until we need to sub him out for Luffy.
As the senior officer of the Straw Hats crew with ample experience as a crew member on other ships and one of the seven warlords of the sea, Jinbe’s expertise and strategery overqualified him as my team’s shooting guard. What’s more, his fish-man karate would provide defensive versatility for our team on account of him moving enemies without touching them with blasts of air, and his armament haki would give him enough space and durability for his wide-ass frame to get open for open shots.
The next player on my starting five would be the devil child herself, Nico Robin. Having eaten the Flower-Flower fruit, a devil fruit that lets her sprout duplicates of her body on any surface within her range, Robin would be the center in my starting five. Her defensive presence would make for a wealth of scoring and rebound opportunities from virtually anywhere on the court, including off the enemy team’s body (which probably wouldn’t count as a foul).
And finally, my Straw Hat’s small and power forward would be Sanji and Zoro. Sanji’s whole deal as the Straw Hats’ versatile cook makes him perfect for adapting to whatever task spontaneously asked of him. What’s more, he’d be able to handle mid-range shots supporting our point guard or ball-handling all with his fucking feet. That’s sick as hell. As our power forward, Zoro would basically be asked to do the same tasks as Sanji, with the only difference being him being the most dependable player. Seeing as how he took on the brunt of Luffy’s pain, he’s the only man strong enough to fulfill the role. Although the two don’t get along as well as Draymond Green and Jordan Poole on a good day, when push comes to shove, the pair are the most in sync of the entire crew. As “the wing’s of the pirate king,” Sanji and Zoro come in clutch with rebounding off each other’s offensive and defensive attacks without communicating with one another.
What of the rest of the crew? Well, I’d have Nami serve as the coach since her role as the navigator basically makes her the closest thing to being the crew’s real captain. Her cheerleading and chastising would not only keep Zoro and Sanji (mostly Sanji) from butting heads, she’d also suss out the pattern of the enemy team’s plays and chart us towards victory. Chopper would be doctoring, naturally, with the option to sub in for Jinbe should he exhaust his armament haki in the first quarter of the game and need a breather. Hopefully his rumble balls won’t count as juicing up. Franky would also serve as a replacement for Robin or Sanji should they blow up in the first half of the game. Brook….can be our team’s Drake and cheer for us on the sidelines by singing or something. This isn’t because I don’t like the skeletal bard, I just think it’d be harder to justify his soul-swapping ghost ability on the enemy team as fair in this already ludacris rule breaking anime basketball game.
While Luffy is nice enough alone on the court, basketball is a team-based sport, so it’s weird the collab had him playing like LeBron James in the paint without his nakama by his side. If my Stephen A. Smith-esque analysis of Luffy’s skills and fantasy booking are anything to go on, the Straw Hats are a far cry from being as bad as the 2017-era Cleveland Cavaliers.
