That’s particularly true after Michael Jordan’s perplexing and self-aggrandizing Hall of Fame induction speech last month. For more than a dozen rambling, pomp-filled minutes, Jordan reminded all in attendance of just how awesome his was at basketball. It was bizarre, but at least it eventually ended, and faded from memory.

But for Tim Crossley, a clerk at Central Grocery, Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech feels like it just happened yesterday. Because it did. To him.“It was crazy,” Crossley recalled from the break room. “First of all, just seeing Michael Jordan in here was amazing. And I was thrilled to check him out. But then he started talking about how great he was at basketball, and asked me if I liked his rings. He said it had to be pretty hard to be me, compared to him.”

Crossley said Jordan instructed him, shot by shot, on how he managed to dominate the ’90s. “You might be able to win one MVP, kid,” Crossley recalls Jordan saying. “But you won’t win five.”

The disheartening exchanged went on much longer than it took for Crossley to scan Jordan’s two items: shaving cream, and a package of disposable lady’s razors.

“And at some point, he wasn’t really explaining why it would be hard to follow in his footsteps anymore,” Crossley went on. “He was just kind of, you know, telling me repeatedly how crappy my life is relative to his. And I get that. Before I came in to work today I had to dislodge a Teddy Graham from my slightly overweight mother’s lower back. No one is disputing you, Michael.”

Concluding that “it was a mistake for you to check out those people in front of” him, Jordan finally left after ostentatiously paying with a $1,000 bill. Crossley, who could not make change for the unnecessarily large unit of currency, sprinted out of the store in a vain effort to keep the money.

“He may be in his late ’40s, but the guy caught me pretty quickly,” Crossley said. “He palmed my head. Asked me if Magic could do that. He only let go because I peed a little bit.”

(Chicago, IL) – The Chicago Bulls are languishing through a painful first half of the season, struggling to stay within striking distance of .500.  The Bulls simply don’t have the talent to compete this year, and some commentators openly wonder whether the team dug itself a hole with some of the moves they’ve made over the past year.

One such deal sent inside man Big Ben Wallace to the Cleveland Cavaliers in February. And the Bulls, folliclularly speaking, have never been the same.

That’s right, the Bulls are missing hair.

Big man Drew Gooden has aptly replaced Wallace’s production in points and rebounds, but when it comes to Wallace’s gigantic hair, no Bull has stepped up.

“We’re scuffling right now,” Derrick Rose said. “We’re scoring enough, making all the right passes. But our serious lack of powerful hair is hampering our ability to do the things we need to do to win. And we’re trying everything. I even canceled my Brazilian wax last week.”

But one Bull is trying his best to step up and replace Ben Wallace’s massive and man afro. Drew Gooden says he’ll do what it takes to help his team. But one has only to glance at Gooden to realize that he is bald.

“I knew I had to replace Big Ben Wallace,” Gooden said. “He was the big man in the middle, and that’s now me. So everything that Ben did – the big hair, the Barbie doll collection, and toenail thing – I had to do it, too. And frankly, I knew I couldn’t grow a fro on my head. I’m so bald, I look like a really tan Mr. Clean.”

“So I did the next best thing. I started growing the fullest, bushiest, stinkiest man beard the world has ever seen.”

So far, Gooden’s effort has been unsuccessful in rejuvenating the Bulls, and some teammates question the wisdom of Gooden’s move.

“I’m not saying he looks bad, I just think he looks kind of ridiculous,” one anonymous teammate said. “I mean, he looks like a bald Gandalf the Grey. Well, or Gandalf the Black. Ooh. Um, was that not ok?”

“He says he’s not going to cut it until we win a championship. Well, fine. But how is he going to play when that thing is down to the floor? Sure, if he trips on it, it’ll be a good laugh. But I want to win, damnit.”

(Chicago, IL) – The sports world’s history is full of baffling injury stories, from the silly to the downright unbelievable. Be it slipping in the shower, breaking ribs while sneezing, cracking a collarbone while loading deer meat, or suffering a man sprain when the hooker flinches, we’ve all been there.

But now the bizarre injury bug has bit the Chicago Bulls. In fact, he took a big bite out of young star Derrick Rose‘s forearm.

When Rose showed up to practice on Tuesday with 10 stitches and bloody gauze covering his forearm, teammates and the media wondered just what had happened. Rose offered a story that raised more than a few eyebrows.

Rose claimed that he cut his arm while eating apple slices in bed.

When that explanation was met with understandable incredulity, Rose expanded on his embarrassing confession.

“Ok, so yes, I stabbed myself, and it was mostly an accident,” Rose said. “It’s just that, after I heard about my hero Plaxico Burress accidentally shooting himself in the leg, I decided to do it, too.”

“Just look at all the attention he got from it. He went from being an occasionally troublesome scamp to a full-on, front page drama scoop. I thought it was great, and I wanted to show my support, and do a little something like that myself.”

Even if we are to accept that unbelievable explanation, why a knife? Why the arm?

“Well, I would have done it like Plax, but I tried to get a gun, and they were all saying this stuff about a three-day waiting period,” Rose explained. “I knew I just didn’t have that kind of time.”

“I had to at least make sure it was as close to what Plax did as I could. So I had to make myself look like a total jackass, you know, a totally brainless moron. And the best I could do was a really big knife.”

“So I tried to do it just like Plax. I put the knife in my sweatpants waistband, and then tried to stumble to make it fall down my leg. But before it did, I got to thinking. It could slide down right by my [private parts]. I can’t be losing my [man stuff] just to emulate Plax. So I rushed to grab the knife out of my pants, and in my haste, I sliced my arm.”

But what’s next for Rose? How far will he take his modeling after Burress?

“Well, I hear that he’s gonna be going to prison for a while on this. But I’ll do whatever it takes to be just like Plax. Whatever happens to him in prison, I’m going to make sure happens to me, too.”

“Now, I don’t know much about prison, but I just hope he accidentally bangs like 500 super hot prison chicks.”

(Dallas, TX) – On Monday, prospective Chicago Cubs owner and current Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was charged by SEC officials with insider trading. Cuban, a noted investor and businessman, admits that he traded on material, nonpublic information, but denies that he owed any duty to protect that information. Blah, blah. That part is boring.

Far more interesting is how Cuban reacted in a post-investigation press conference when asked what he thought about the SEC officials.

“I’m sorry,” Cuban said. “But they have got to get their head out of their ass.”

When pressed further by reporters, Cuban let loose a tirade.

“I have never, in all my years as an investor, seen such piss-poor officiating. I’m not going to directly question their motives, but they’ve been investigating for two years, why charge me now? It’s ridiculous. Blind, hippo poop would make for a better SEC official than these guys.”

“The calls were just ridiculous. Risking an insider trading foul to save $750 thousand? I am worth billions, people. Billions of dollars. Wait, let me check the market. Ok, billion dollars, singular. Wait. Hundreds of millions. Ok, wait. Millions. Ok, whatever, it’s still a lot.”

Upon hearing the public criticism of its officials, the SEC was swift in slapping Cuban down with a fine of an undisclosed amount.

“We cannot have our investors criticizing the officials,” SEC Commissioner David Sternberg said. “Our officials work hard, and try to call things as they see them. Mark Cuban was out of line.”

Cuban, for his part, is not one to shy away from criticizing officials. In fact, he loves criticizing three-letter acronym officials – NBA officials, SEC officials, NRA officials, PTO officials.

He says after all of this, he’s ready to step it up to four-letter acronym officials.

“I’ve had a bone to pick with PETA, GLAD, and MADD for a long time. I think I’m ready to start busting their officials’ chops. What are they gonna do? Get a drunk, male dog to crash a car into me and have sex with me?”

(New York, NY) – The 2008 NBA Draft went off last night without a hitch, and many teams dramatically improved their overall situation with draft-day deals. But the storyline dominating the draft was the emergence of young stars as the players every team was targeting. A record 12 freshman were drafted, and it was the first time ever that freshman went 1-2-3 in the draft – though freshman Greg Oden and Kevin Durant went 1-2 last year.

The first freshman selected was Memphis point guard, Derrick Rose, who went to the Bulls with the first overall selection. Clearly interested in “going young” in the draft, the Bulls then set their sites on an even younger target: a zygote.

The zygote, a union of two haploid cells – an ovum from Cheryl Miller and a sperm cell from Magic Johnson – into a single diploid cell, had declared for the draft just one week earlier. Before that, the zygote said, it was weighing offers from West Virginia, Kansas State, and USC to play college ball.

Assuming the Bulls and the zygote can get around the NBA rule that prohibits entrants who are not at least one year out of high school, it still begs the question: why draft a single cell when there are actual people still available?

“You hear a lot about teams drafting for potential, and that’s all we’re doing,” Bulls GM John Paxson said after the draft. “We know this zygote is probably not going to contribute next year, and maybe not even in the next two years. But we feel strongly that eventually, he’ll step it up. Well, assuming it’s a he.”

“People want to say, but John, how is the zygote going to play ball? The zygote doesn’t have legs. It doesn’t have arms. It doesn’t even have hands. Well you know what? Maybe it doesn’t have legs or arms or hands. But it has a whole lot of heart.”

“Oh, wait, it doesn’t have a heart? Well, wait a couple weeks.”

(Boston, MA) – The Boston Celtics and their dynamic trio of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen had the NBA’s best record this season. It showed in the postseason, as they marched through the playoffs, concluding with a 4-2 series win over the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals – complete with a 131-92 thrashing in game 6.

Many thought it was a fitting end to the NBA playoffs. But league commissioner David Stern announced shortly after the championship was clinched that the playoffs would go on.

“This was a great series, and congratulations to the Boston Celtics on their victory,” Stern said, reading from a press release. “But we want our fans to know that this does not mark the end of the NBA Playoffs. We know how ravenous our fans are for NBA Playoff action, and there’s just no way that the two months the playoffs last long enough. We don’t want them to fret – the NBA Playoffs will continue!”

The NBA Playoffs began in earnest in mid-April, some nine or ten weeks ago. Some would say that’s plenty of time to complete a league’s playoffs – indeed some would say that’s ridiculously long, boring and stupid overkill.

“We will be having a third place series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Detroit Pistons,” Stern continued, “which will take place from June 28th through July 31st. We also plan to have a ‘Miss Congeniality’ series between the Miami Heat and Seattle Supersonics, which we will play – with exclusive coverage on the ABC family of networds, did we mention that? – between August 13th and October 3rd.”

“Finally, we’re going to have a one-on-one playoffs between LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. We realize nobody really gives a shit about anyone else on their teams, so we’ll just cut out the middlemen. The series will take place following the Congeniality series, and will last until one of them is dead. We realize this may cut into the NBA preseason, but it certainly won’t cut into revenue streams.”

In case it isn’t painfully obvious, the Brickyard is a PARODY news publication, intended for humor, so accounts and quotes are FICTIONAL. Mercifully, the NBA Playoffs ARE over. No one should construe this fake article as being fact. Additionally, any similarity between this and other publications is entirely coincidental. Don’t sue. We don’t have money anyway.

(Boston, MA) – The NBA Finals are in full swing as two titans of basketball lore do battle: the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. But perhaps the biggest news is coming from ABC’s coverage of the series, not from the series, itself.

Former Los Angeles Laker point guard turned ABC commentator, Ervin “Magic” Johnson made controversial comments after Game One last Thursday that seemed to somehow compare the Boston Celtics basketball team to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, otherwise known as AIDS.

“I have faced many inglorious opponents in my life,” Johnson said. “But the two most difficult, by far, have been the Boston Celtics and AIDS.”

Johnson was diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the precursor to AIDS, in 1991.

“Sure, AIDS can bring pulmonary infections, neurological disorders and tumors,” Johnson continued. “But the Celtics could bring Larry Bird, Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale. In my mind, there’s just no comparison. The Celtics were the toughest opponent.”

Johnson’s ABC colleague sat in stunned silence, and before anyone could change the subject, he continued.

“Heck, I’m not even sure I have AIDS anymore. I must have licked it. But see, just look out there on the court tonight. The Celtics keep coming back. That just proves that they are the toughest enemy I have ever faced.”

“But I do want to take this opportunity to say something. I’m not saying AIDS has not been a fierce opponent. It has, and it’s dangerous. Learn from my mistake, kids. No matter what your name is, there is no such thing as a magic johnson. You can still get the HIV and AIDS.”

In case it isn’t painfully obvious, the Brickyard is a PARODY news publication, intended for humor, so accounts and quotes are FICTIONAL. Yeah, this is one of those where we feel compelled to say THIS IS REEEEALLY FICTIONAL. No one should construe this fake article as being fact. Additionally, any similarity between this and other publications is entirely coincidental. Don’t sue. We don’t have money anyway.

(Boston, MA) – The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and the big matchup that everyone wants to see is finally taking place. The Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Boston Celtics. Lebron James versus the Celtic Three – Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen.

But is it really fair?

No, not because the Celtics were so dominant this year, and no, not because the Cavs limped into the playoffs. But instead, because according to leading media sources, the series is Lebron James versus the Celtics big three players.

To be sure, Lebron is a great, great player. Maybe the best in the league, and maybe even eventually the best in the history of the game. But is it really fair to ask him to single-handedly take on a three-man team? Fans certainly don’t think so.

“No, I don’t think it’s fair. Boston gets to play with three players, and Cleveland only gets one?” Cleveland resident Allen Gelding said shortly after the Cavs Game One loss on Tuesday. “I’m pretty familiar with the makeup of the teams, because I watch Sportscenter regularly. Cleveland has Lebron, and Boston has Garnett, Pierce and Allen. I think it’s weird to play with fewer than five guys, but if you’re gonna do it, it should at least be even between teams.”

“Is it actually a three versus 1 series, or is that just the way they are promoting it?” a passerby asked Allen as he further pontificated on the series.

“Look, lady. I think I would know if there were other players on Cleveland or Boston. I’m an ESPN junkie,” Allen snapped back. “It’s Lebron versus the Celtic Three. That’s all Stephen A. Smith, my favorite, talks about on his show. If I can’t trust him, who can I trust?”

(In case it isn’t painfully obvious, the Brickyard is a PARODY news publication, so accounts and quotes are FICTIONAL. There are actually other players on each team, it’s just that nobody cares. No one should construe this fake article as being fact. Additionally, any similarity between this and other publications is entirely coincidental. Don’t sue. We don’t have money anyway.)

An uncomfortable pallor flooded over reporters as they struggled to come up with an appropriate follow-up question. The source of discomfort was likely a 2003 accusation by a young woman in Colorado that Bryant had sexually assaulted her. As if unaware of the possible dual nature of his comments, Bryant continued unfettered.

“The whole series was a brief, but exciting affair. I don’t know that I feel good about how we probably made them feel, but it sure felt good to us. To go to Colorado, get in and get out unmolested, left me feeling pretty satisfied about the whole thing.”

The uncomfortable scene was reminiscent of several that had preceded it where the sports world and the legal world meet. Shortly before Super Bowl XXXV, a game in which he was named the MVP, Baltimore Raven linebacker Ray Lewis called a press conference to discuss his excitement and intentions for the big game. In an unfortunately worded opening statement, Lewis excitedly stated that he was “going to get the New York Giants this weekend,” and needless elaborated that “no seriously, I am going to get you. Probably with a knife. I am going to tackle you, and then stab you.”

Last year while his dog fighting ring trial was ongoing, Michael Vick was seen eating several hot dogs at an Atlanta Braves game, and noting “these are the best dogs I’ve eaten in at least a year or two.”

And at a charity golf outing in 2006, former New York Knicks announcer Marv Albert remarked that a particularly difficult hole “really jumped up and bit [him] in the ass.”

(In case it isn’t painfully obvious, the Brickyard is a PARODY news publication, so accounts and quotes are FICTIONAL. Kobe said no such thing, and neither did the other guys (though the Lakers really did put it to the Nuggets… don’t they have Carmelo Anthony AND Allen Iverson?). No one should construe this fake article as being fact. Additionally, any similarity between this and other publications is entirely coincidental. Don’t sue. We don’t have money anyway.)

Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough was the recent recipient of a hard foul in a game against the mighty UNC Asheville team last week. Desiring payback, Psycho T ate 5’10″ Asheville PG Marty Sanderson, simply saying “When it’s game time, it’s pain time.”

Hansbrough later coughed up the sneakers to give to charity. Even cannibals have a heart sometimes.

(Article by Koz.)