Which NBA player is each Supreme Court justice?

Please note that the views of outside contributors do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff, especially when it comes to the NBA.

For court fans, October is the sweetest month. That’s true whether you like lacing up wingtips for a pretrial conference or high tops for a pickup basketball game. At the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, the 2025-26 term already has begun. Meanwhile, two high-octane games just opened the National Basketball Association regular season on Tuesday, Oct. 21, including one with the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder (they beat the Houston Rockets in double overtime).

In the lighthearted spirit of Zach Shemtob’s article “What heavy metal band is each Supreme Court justice?,” I celebrate this month by offering my views on which NBA player is each justice. Comparison factors include ability, temperament, and role. My analysis is idiosyncratic and may seem arbitrary but, rest assured, it is not capricious. In that spirit, let’s match each justice to his or her NBA counterpart.        

Supreme Court pundits have noted that Chief Justice John Roberts just completed his 20th term since former President George W. Bush appointed him to the position. Two decades is nothing to sneeze at, especially in the hothouse that judicial politics has become. But I must point out that by the fall of 2005, as then-Judge Roberts was preparing to take the oath to become chief justice, LeBron James already had completed his second season (and in fact finished sixth in MVP voting that year). King James is still playing, just like Chief Justice Roberts is still presiding. 

Along with duration of service, there are other striking similarities between James and Roberts. To start with the obvious: both are phenomenally skilled at what they do. James certainly is in basketball’s Greatest of All Time (GOAT) discussion (though I believe Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the GOAT). With his incisive yet elegant writing and questioning, Roberts may be the most formidable lawyer on the court. And as the Supreme Court has shifted rightward, Roberts has been described as an influential, if not transformative, chief justice in the same way that we talk about Earl Warren. Whether you support or oppose the direction of the court under Roberts’ leadership, you have to consider him in the GOAT discussion of chief justices.      

Furthermore, James has been described as a Swiss Army knife because of his versatile skill set. Roberts too embraces versatility in his jurisprudence. He has acknowledged the need to be flexible – to employ different approaches as necessary – as chief justice. Accordingly, sometimes he has avoided partisan rulings (such as by providing the fifth vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate in 2012) and other times he has arguably championed them (such as by writing the court’s opinion in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which began dismantling the Voting Rights Act). Sometimes Roberts writes narrowly, as in the abortion cases, and other times he writes broadly, as in the presidential immunity decision. All hail the King; all hail the Chief.      

If Roberts is LeBron, who is his rival? In my view, Justice Elena Kagan is the chief’s most formidable adversary – an eloquent and forceful writer with substantial experience in the federal government. When Kagan squares off with Roberts on the separation of powers issues at the heart of so many of the court’s current cases, she gives as good as she gets. For someone who teaches administrative law and grew up in the 1980s watching the Lakers play the Celtics, Roberts versus Kagan is just as exciting as Bird versus Magic. I’m serious.    

LeBron has played so long he has accumulated rivals – plural. Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry come to mind. Kagan is no Kobe; she favors diplomacy over the Mamba mentality. As to KD and Steph, either could fit. Both are supremely skilled and graceful. Like them, Kagan makes it look easy with her clear yet precise prose and gracious yet probing questions at oral argument. But I’ll go with Curry because I can’t see Kagan using a burner account to snipe at her critics.

While we’re on the left side of the court, let’s cover Kagan’s teammates – sorry, colleagues – Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Both are passionate and continue to ball out despite the six votes often arrayed against them. For me, Sotomayor evokes Jimmy Butler, who twice willed the Miami Heat into the NBA finals. (Butler now plays for the Golden State Warriors.) Similarly, with her fiery dissents decrying the court’s misuse of the emergency docket since President Donald Trump returned to office this year, Jackson reminds me of Russell Westbrook. Russ is one of my favorite players. Though he’s at the end of his career and Jackson has just started, I believe the comparison is apt because, like him, Jackson is leaving it all out there to argue vehemently against the court greenlighting Trump’s expansion of presidential power and his teardown of the administrative state.

When we swing our focus to the right side of the court, we have two veterans and three relative newcomers. Justice Clarence Thomas is the only current member of the court to have been appointed in the 20th century (by former President George H.W. Bush, in 1991). That kind of longevity brings to mind Robert Parish, who played for 21 seasons and displayed remarkable consistency throughout. In addition, Parish was quiet and reserved – qualities that Thomas has shown throughout much of his tenure on the court. Since the pandemic, Thomas has asked questions at oral argument. Before that, however, he could be a veritable sphinx, once going 10 years without asking a question from the bench.

The other vet on the right side of the court is Justice Samuel Alito. At One First Street, NE, there are two kinds of trash talking. One is authorized and occurs in the pages of the U.S. Reports. As we’ve seen, the rhetoric can get heated in dissent and replies thereto. The other form of trash talking is more performative than verbal and takes place outside the court’s published writings. Alito occasionally engages in the latter, rolling his eyes or shaking his head when he disagrees with another justice’s opinion or the answers given by an attorney at oral argument. That’s not the same as Kevin Garnett saying to Charlie Villanueva that he was “cancerous” to his team, but the parameters of trash talking are different at the marble palace. I believe Alito is this court’s “Big Ticket”; eyerolling aside, it’s a hall of fame comparison.         

We now turn to the justices appointed by Trump during the first term of his presidency. About Justice Neil Gorsuch, Shemtob wrote, “Not only does he speak his mind, loudly and passionately, but he is unwilling to compromise his textualist principles even if they lead in some fairly unexpected directions.” That kind of self-confidence brings to mind Draymond Green, though there is a bullying quality to Green’s game that throws off the comparison. Reaching back into the NBA archive, I came up with Rick Barry, a small forward who could pass for the ages and did not hesitate to criticize his teammates for not playing up to his high standards. In a similar vein, Gorsuch has rebuked lower court judges for defying Supreme Court decisions.

Next on the bench we have Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who played junior varsity basketball at Yale and wrote about the varsity team for the “Yale Daily News.” I generally think of Kavanaugh as one of three – one of three justices appointed by Trump, and one of three justices in the center of the current court. Regarding the latter point, Roberts and Barrett are the other members of the center bloc. Though a big three is now out of fashion under current NBA salary rules, the trio of Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett effectively decide the court’s decisions in its most divided (and often most consequential) cases. 

I’ve already cast Roberts as LeBron. Following that lead, Kavanaugh reminds me of Kevin Love. Along with James and Kyrie Irving, Love helped the Cleveland Cavaliers win the title in 2016. Love is the consummate teammate who genuinely tries to relate to fans. In some of the court’s most important recent cases, Kavanaugh has written brief concurring opinions acknowledging the controversy attendant to the issue – abortion, the Second Amendment right to bear arms, universal injunctions – and putting the court’s decision in perspective or providing guidance on how to implement its ruling. Kavanaugh’s efforts to address the concerns of the court’s critics align with Love’s engagement with the public.          

As to Barrett, she is known for her penetrating legal analysis and low-wattage personality. (I‘m just the messenger here; Barrett described herself as a “one jalapeño gal.”) It’s too soon to be definitive, but Barrett could be another Tim Duncan by the time she hangs up her robe in retirement. Duncan was known for his understated personality, mastery of fundamentals, and relentless consistency. Barrett has displayed all these qualities in her tenure as a justice. If she continues to do so over an extended period of time, Barrett ultimately may be the Supreme Court’s “Big Fundamental.” For now, the more appropriate comparison for Barrett is Chris Bosh, who resembled Duncan in temperament and skills and, along with James and Dwyane Wade, was a member of the big three in Miami. 

The NBA season begins in October and ends in mid-to-late June. Similarly, the Supreme Court term begins in October and almost always ends by June 30. By then, I’ll be ready to name my pro basketball and Supreme Court justice all-star teams.