A high school recently attempted to replicate this CollegeHumor prank, in which an unsuspecting fool is tricked into believing he has successfully sunk a half-court shot while blindfolded. Unfortunately, the teacher they tried to prank actually sank the shot.

Today's fail brings us a slam dunk-turned-pratfall. So much for those NBA dreams.

Aaaaand, just that quick, TMZ has the sexxxy photos that Alex von Furstenberg's fiancee Ali Kay sent to washed-up basketball player Reggie Miller. Surely there's an innocent explanation? No?

Of course not (racist). You can trace Barack Obama's basketball style directly back to one man and one man only:

Good lord. New York Knicks center Eddy Curry was hit with a shady gay sexual harassment lawsuit earlier this month. And yesterday the mother of his child was murdered, in front of the child.

Ohmigod, in an NYC sports-related tabloid scandal even bigger than the Pedro Martinez cockfighting video—made better by the distinct possibility of being totally false—a New York Knick has been accused of being gay (for dudes!):

Mark "The Maverick, when it comes to blogs and also finance" Cuban is proclaiming his innocence, in detail! Cuban, the mouthy tech billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was charged with the world's least sophisticated insider trading scheme by the SEC earlier this week. He issued a rote statement the same day denying the charges, and lamented that he wished he could say more. Well now he's saying more! Cuban's basic defense: Yes, I sold a bunch of stock after the CEO of a company I partially owned told me confidential, nonpublic information that I knew would hurt the stock price. But I never agreed to keep the information confidential, so there! Then he says (through his lawyer) that the CEO of said company is full of shit because he can't even remember the conversation. They posted this excerpt of an interview with the CEO:

Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this! Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit. At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly. So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

Hard to believe our nation's star athletes have time to go to the gym and practice jumpshots or whatever, what with all their marketing strategy meetings and reality shows and plotting to invade China like the second coming of opium. Sports stars and their sponsors have known for years that China is the market of the future-"If only 1% of Chinese buy our sneakers, that's $300 million more in revenue blah blah..." just like every other business in the world. But the Olympics have whet athletes' appetites even more. They want to rule China. The question is, why is China letting them do it?

Racism in the world has been vanquished at last! The Olympic basketball team representing the United States of America-which fittingly embodied our post-racial society by fielding not a single white or Asian player (with good reason)-defeated the Spanish Olympic basketball team to take the gold medal early this morning. The Spanish team, you'll recall, got all that bad press for striking the "Slanty-eyed Chinaman" pose in a full-page ad. Despite Spain's protestations that the pose was all in good ching-chong-chow-fun, the world rallied behind the men from America, where basketball is an exercise in acceptance and multiculturalism. Let this be a lesson to the lesser countries of Earth: embrace the United States' gentle values, or face extermination. [Click through to see the fateful ad one last time]:

Here was the Spanish Olympic basketball team, minding its own business by posing for a full-page newspaper ad in the "Slanty-eyed Chinaman" pose, which, as all Spanish basketball players know, is funny and endearing. Then the scurrilous English-speaking media goes and writes a news story about it, twisting it into some sort of "racist" gesture. Despite the fact that Spanish athletes have many Chinamen friends! Spanish nationalist outrage has risen up at the foreign misinterpretations of this widely practiced gesture of eye-based friendship among Spanish athletic teams. So it's only fitting that the (English) reporter who broke the story has now had to write a groveling piece defending his decision to cover this Spanish leisure activity:

It was quite an embarrassment for the nation of Spain yesterday when an ad surfaced showing their entire national Olympic basketball team posing in the "Slanty-eyed Asian" position, pulling their eyelids back. We imagine the photo shoot was followed by several minutes of mimed karate moves and Enter The Dragon reenactments, only adding to the awkwardness. So the entire nation of China has been waiting expectantly for an apology. And today they got...outrage that anyone would think Spain is racist! Why, some of their closest friends are from China or somewhere like that!

The Olympics, we're told, is a delicate dance of geopolitical maneuvering dressed up as an athletic contest. In reality, it's the world's largest assembly of dumb jocks. All of whom are now in a position to cause international incidents! Spain and China may have poisoned their diplomatic relationship because the entire Spanish national basketball team thought it would be cute to make an ad for some courier company posing with the "Slanty-eyed Asian" gesture: fingers pulling the eyelids to make them slits. I imagine they were all saying "Ah, soooo" at the time and laughing uproariously. The full photo is bad enough that someone should have realized it was mistake:

Nike's new ad campaign for its Hyperdunk shoes features a series of pictures of basketball players getting dunked on in what's considered the worst way possible: the dunker dangling off the rim, his balls dangling in the face of the man being dunk-ee. They all have dynamic slogans like "That Ain't Right!" The company has been plastering them around NYC's most famous streetball meccas, like Harlem (home to The Rucker) and West 4th St. Their rollout coincides with a big foofaraw this week (which some critics say is stupid oversensitivity) over whether the ad industry is making blatantly homophobic ads. All of which raises the question: Are these Nike ads a new low in homophobic advertising? Or do the gays just not understand basketball?

Because it's a lazy Friday before a long weekend, it's time to talk a bit about sports. But this is important! The Knicks, to everyone's chagrin, drew only the sixth pick in the upcoming NBA draft. Had they landed the first pick, they would have been assured of getting Derrick Rose, the best player in the nation and a great point guard, which is what the team needs. Now, draft projections say they may end up picking OJ Mayo, the USC guard and former high school phenom. Who could also be good! Why is this important? Now that supervillain Isaiah Thomas has been fired as Knicks coach, the city needs to heal again. This draft will set the tone for the team's resurrection. Even if you don't like sports, you must wish fervently for a strong Knicks squad, for the sake of NYC's honor—we cannot afford for our city to be trashed by middle American teams. It's bad for everyone here, and everyone who runs America is here, so it's bad for America. Below, a highlight video of Derrick Rose (maybe they can trade up for him!) and one of OJ May (did you know he had such a sweet jumpshot? I didn't.). THIS IS IMPORTANT.

So, have there been any updates in the prolonged daily rollout of salacious details about "Preston," the mystery professional athlete who allegedly had a fling with Terrance Dean, former closeted MTV producer and author of the upcoming book on the gay side of hip hop? Well yes there has been an update! Though we must say, he's really trickling this story out slowly. Today, Preston—who we now know is a pro basketball player—reveals his down-low status, and then takes Terrance home to meet his mom:

Terrance Dean, the former MTV producer who's about to release his hotly-anticipated-by-us book on the gay secrets of hip hop, has provided a few more details on "Preston," the mystery pro athlete who Dean says he had a fling with at an island resort. So all of you who guessed football players, baseball players, or Mike Tyson: wrong!:

Barack Obama had himself a little pickup game with the University of North Carolina basketball team, and the media was there to videotape the proceedings for our judgment! Overall he looks pretty good for an old guy. Although I don't support wearing sweatpants instead of shorts. He has a decent handle, fair passing game, and he even took it to the hole once, with the UNC players being nice enough not to swat his layup attempt away. He could definitely take Hillary out in a 1-on-1 game, and I will be voting for him for just that reason. Video of his skills, after the jump.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend, humanitarian, and LA Times blogger, turns 61 today. And he's not just sitting back quietly writing children's history books and skyhooking $100 bills into the garbage can; he's asking for a little birthday love from his readers! You are instructed to "send a detailed note to Kareem's manager if you can help make his birthday wishes come true." I would think he could take care of the "tropical vacation" out of his own pocket, but maybe not? After the jump, his wish list, and how YOU can help.

Greedy professional athletes these days are making it harder and harder for their layabout friends to sponge money off them and land them in jail. TREND ALERT. It seems that athletic superstars and journeymen alike are getting their entourages more organized, incorporating them into real businesses and paying their hangers-on set salaries rather than just giving them unchecked credit cards and free cars [WSJ]. And then there's the NFL cornerback who pays his helpers on a per-task basis, like when "he gave one of his freelancers $5 to fetch him a Snickers bar." So it's still an evolving sphere of economics. One of the players cited is Mike Bibby, a slightly above-average NBA point guard who has organized his friends into "Team Dime" (he's #10!). That's nice and everything, but probably not worth the permanent tattoos, which send the lifelong message: "I was a member of an entourage for a slightly above-average NBA player":