If Queen Elizabeth II played basketball: small forward, rated 75

Queen Elizabeth II as a basketball player: scouting report

Queen Elizabeth II reigned for seventy years, longer than any British monarch before her, and the quality that carried her through all of it was consistency. That is the small forward she would be: the defender who stays in front of her player on the first possession and the hundredth. Her basketball IQ tops her card and her defense is next, so she reads actions early, switches without fuss and is very rarely caught out of position.

During the Second World War she trained as a driver and mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and that practical streak shows up in the unglamorous parts of her game. She was a lifelong horsewoman who kept riding into old age, and she brings the same balance and timing to the boards, where her rebounding grades out nearly level with her defense. Her shooting and passing are tidy and even, never flashy; she makes the simple play and keeps the ball moving to whoever has the advantage.

Athleticism is where her card dips most. She is not going to run the floor with younger wings or finish above the rim, so she plays a positional game built on angles and anticipation. She held weekly audiences with fifteen prime ministers across her reign, which is a long way of saying she knows how to work alongside whoever is running the offense. Her rebounding and defense let her slide to power forward or center at a small cost, so she is a useful frontcourt piece in the middle rounds. Pair her with a scoring guard and trust her with the other team's best wing.

Plays like A steady defensive forward who never takes a possession off

Put Queen Elizabeth II in your lineup

8 rolls, a starting five and a bench, 82 games. Can you go 82-0? Free, no account.