A New Age Monstars Squad Built to Destroy

Space Jam, the inexplicably timeless story of Michael Jordan joining the Tune Squad to keep the Looney Tunes free from eternal slavery on Moron Mountain, has somehow never released its hold on us. It’s been 20 years since the highest-grossing basketball film of all time debuted in theaters, and not an NBA season has gone by without whispers or rumors of a sequel. There's even a "Space Jam" colorway of the Jordan XXXIs dropping on Saturday. LeBron James is the logical successor to His Airness (though Jordan himself prefers Blake Griffin), but picking new Monstars from the current crop of NBA players is always the best part of Space Jam 2 speculation.

Devising your own Monstar roster is recession proof. It’s the one aspect of Space Jam that’s unequivocally still worth arguing about, seeing as the Looney Tunes, R. Kelly power ballads (see: “I Believe I Can Fly”), and Newman are no longer as prominent as they were in the ’90s. The Monstars, though, are still an intricate riddle to unravel, mostly because the original Monstars team was transparently and unforgivably flawed. The Nerdlucks, the little aliens from Moron Mountain who possess the "magical" power to steal the skills of literally any basketball player on the planet, somehow wasted two roster spots on height-based novelty acts in Muggsy Bogues and Shawn Bradley. Larry Johnson is at least justifiable, seeing as he posted some of the best numbers of his career (20.5 points, 8.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists) in 1995-96 when the film was shot. Even so, it’s still surprising given the level of talent that went untapped by these little, weird space carnival creatures.

Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing were all-world talents, and like most folks operating in the ’90s era, had their dreams crushed by Michael Jordan. But they were future Hall of Famers and members of the 1992 Dream Team, thus forming a dominant tandem. Of course, guys like Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Shawn Kemp were also available at the time. Even young guns like Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, or Rasheed Wallace would have been awesome to see. But no, the Nerdlucks didn’t have a clue what they were doing. Every villain has a fateful flaw, and theirs was not conducting a proper scouting report.

After much deliberation, here is a new and improved Monstars roster, built to destroy LeBron James and the Tune Squad once and for all.

Illustrations via Christopher Mineses

Animations via Magda Baez and Chop $uey Cheen

Previous Incarnation: Muggsy Bogues

Muggsy Bogues was the charming, token short guy on the original Monstars squad. In choosing to swipe the talent of the shortest player in NBA history, the Nerdlucks passed up on all-star point guards like Tim and Penny Hardaway, Gary Payton, and even Mark Jackson. Nawt didn’t score a single point in the final showdown, but unlike his useless friend Blanko, he did dish out six dimes and register four steals. Let’s just say Chris Paul is an upgrade over Muggsy Bogues, sort of like the way a Lamborghini is an upgrade over a minivan.

The Monstars were arrogant and all too confident they could smash their way to victory with brute force alone. They didn’t even run plays. Their strategy was stepping on the Looney Tunes and chucking alley-oops left and right. Chris Paul will immediately give the Monstars the best floor general of the past 10 years. He’ll find every seam, crack, and weakness in a defense anchored by sieves like the rambling Yosemite Sam and unhinged Tasmanian Devil. Muggsy’s Nawt was a witty dope, with adequate handles, but he lacked any real creativity. His impact on the game was negligible. However, Chris Paul’s Nawt is a killer—a very methodical one at that. He’ll be the architect behind an attack featuring a futuristic motion offense, Byzantine screens, sinister pick-and-roll action, and threes launched with heinous abandon. It’s difficult to imagine the Monstars losing with CP3 running the offense and serving as the first line of defense.

Previous Incarnation: Patrick Ewing

Bang is the second leading scorer from the original Monstar squad. He’s a big, green brute that growls abuse, breathes fire, and takes a backseat only to Pound as the most formidable beast from the 1996 team. In yet another indication of how much the game has changed since the hand-checking, war-like hoop game of the ’90s, 7-foot-tall Patrick Ewing’s successor is at the other end of the positional spectrum. That is to say, he’s a point guard.

But as we're all probably aware, Russell Westbrook is not exactly your average PG, or for that matter, your average human being. He’s a raging bull in a china shop, and he has the tendency to relentlessly smite his enemies with no remorse. As Bang, Westbrook won’t defer to his fellow Monstars. The new Bang will break the Tune Squad’s defense with unremitting stampedes to the hoop, putting the fear of a Cartoon God into both Wiley Coyote and Roadrunner. The Tune Squad will attempt to double and then triple team him, but to no avail, as Bang is underrated at finding the open man. Memories of falling short to Jordan and the Tunes in 1996, melded with Westbrook’s unique skillset and rage, will make Bang an invaluable, if not chaotic, member of the Monstars redux. Unfortunately, Bang will live up to his name and literally bang heads with the other members of the Monstar squad, and be susceptible to injury given that his reckless abandon style of playing will be on the court for 40 minutes (they play two 20-minute halves).

Picture this scenario: Bang blows a transition slam—something he never does—because Pepé Le Pew sprays cartoon skunk stink all over him. This will be the part of the film that families earnestly discuss over holiday dinners for years to come. It will become iconic.

Previous Incarnation: Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley’s Pound was the unofficial focal point of the original Monstars offense. Or rather, since their offense amounted to little more than animated anarchy, Pound was at least the guy who most efficiently hogged the ball and dropped the most points on the Tune Squad.

Carmelo Anthony, with his myriad offensive weapons, will step into the role of selfish chucker with ease. Like Barkley’s Pound, Carmelo will enter this game against LeBron and the Tune Squad looking to strike back at a peer, who has so thoroughly outclassed and outperformed him over the course of their NBA careers. Carmelo is now an aging veteran who knows the elusive quest for a championship realistically ended years ago. This will inspire the bottled-up rage he feels about being surpassed by James to explode to the surface, and as Pound, he’ll make LeBron suffer the same fate as MJ, squishing him into a basketball and dunking him hard through the hoop. This will of course be a distraction, and the other Monstars will yell at him a bit, but Pound does what he wants. Pound is the boss. Pound is a nihilist with only one mission left in this world, and that’s to beat LeBron James. “We did not come to pay homage,” Pound/Carmelo says during an inspiring halftime speech caught by ESPN cameras, “We’ve come to dethrone the king.”

A hot-mic later picks up Nawt and Bupkus talking about what a “try-hard” and “fail-case” Pound is. When the footage is played on the jumbotron during a critical possession late, Pound feels betrayed by both his friends and fate itself. He sheds a single tear that streaks down his cheek and falls onto his Jordan XXXIs.

Previous Incarnation: Larry Johnson

Another upgrade for the Monstars. Blake Griffin has prospered as an athletic and fluid beast, posterizing fools on the regs. What separates Griffin from some of his Monstars teammates is that he’s a willing passer. He’s also an underrated playmaker and has expanded his range to be a danger basically anywhere on the floor. Not to mention, he’s played with Chris Paul (whose talents will be transferred to Nawt) for more than five years, so you can surmise that a chemistry will be there in some form.

Larry Johnson could go full NBA Jam with the best of them, but Griffin’s version of Bupkus will be a far more versatile and impactful player. And don’t overlook Blake’s stone cold charisma. While Carmelo rarely changes his expression, and both Paul and Westbrook are too single-minded to smile, Blake as Bupkus will bring some much needed humanity and personality to a Monstars squad long-derided as monstrous and perhaps a little evil.

So yes, he’ll launch jumpers, dunk on Bugs Bunny’s head, hit the open man, lead the break, and swat shots away from the hoop like he means them harm, but it’ll be his strange magnetism and relatable goofiness that really earns him the honors of the Monstars’ MVP. If not MVP, then ultimate “glue guy.”

Previous Incarnation: Shawn Bradley

Blanko, the dopey blue Monstar who stole his talents from Shawn Bradley and whose cadence resembled that of a California surfer dude, laid a goose egg in his encounter with MJ and the OG Tune Squad. He failed to score a single point, dish out a single assist, pull down a single rebound, or even block a shot. Given his size, that’s just inexcusable. Blanko might as well have just stayed on Moron Mountain.

So the role of Blanko, the blue beanpole who contributed nothing, should go to a player that will actually make an impact, but perhaps not one with any amount of flash or excessive personality. There are more quality big men in the league now than we’ve seen in years. Yes, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Kristaps Porzingis would all be great, but what this squad really needs is a capable scorer; a cerebral individual whose game doesn’t involve much flash, and someone who’s willing to sacrifice putting up big numbers for fitting nicely into a system. LaMarcus Aldridge is the perfect candidate.

The Aldridge Blanko will post-up when he feels like it, but mostly, will take open mid-range jumpers off of beautiful dishes from Chris Paul’s Nawt. When his shots find the bottom of the net, he’ll nod serenely, and then laconically jog back on defense, even though in the Space Jam universe, defense is mostly just about surrounding your opponent and then crushing them.

This team, while perhaps not perfectly balanced in the strictest and most limited terms, surely has more than enough skill and firepower to completely dismantle, discombobulate, and defeat LeBron James and the Looney Tunes.

If we’re imagining Space Jam 2 as the second film in a trilogy, it seems likely that the Monstars will prevail, as they should. LeBron is great, but he just can’t count on his teammates and will likely have to play a lot of one-on-five. Also, the referee, Marvin the Martian, is definitely not unbiased to his fellow space creatures (or is at least too scared to blow his whistle), as we learned from the ’96 film. When Space Jam 3 comes out twenty years later, the Tune Squad will look for redemption. And we’ll spend those intervening years coming up with new lists of Monstars because that’s what we do. We never stop.

So what does the continual interest with Space Jam say about us as a species? Maybe we’re just eager to see if Lola and Bugs wound up together, or find out what Bill Murray’s role will be in the sequel. Can you imagine if the Monstars learned how to shoot three-pointers?

Hopefully, we get a Space Jam 2 sooner rather than later.