During the training mission at the start of the game, once you walk outside the Ramsey Recruitment Center on Earth, there is a grey ramp to the right of where you exit that can be climbed on. Sitting at the top of the ramp is a basketball that you can pick up and keep in your inventory. This basketball is unique among other items in the game in that it bounces and rolls realistically when dropped, except on moving platforms where it instantly sticks to the ground. However, there is a specific use for it later in the game when you are on-board the Recreation Deck, the fifth deck of the Von Braun starship. When you enter the Athletic Sector of the ship, you can find a basketball court with a broken hoop and one intact hanging hoop, as well as the first Rumbler in the game. Dropping the basketball through the working hoop from the second floor of the court will cause an email transmission to be sent to Soldier, accompanied by a series of monkey sound effects and mechanical noises. This email was written by A. Bananas, a squirrel monkey wearing a deerstalker cap and a monocle, and comes with a picture of a banana as an attachment. The content of the email is an offer to form an alliance with the other squirrel monkeys on the ship:


Opening the email to hear the voice recording of it will reveal A. Banana's speech is normal monkey chatter, but the software of Soldier's cyber rig can apparently translate it into the English language through unknown means.