With college basketball's March Madness stealing the hearts and souls of hoops fans throughout the nation, the NBA launched a new promotional campaign today aimed at catching the runoff of fans experiencing post-madness withdrawal.
The campaign, "We're Not as Exciting as College Basketball, but We're Here Until June," goes by the acronym WNECBWHUJ, and is a direct response to the disintegration of the league's television ratings and general interest to the public over the past month.
While nearly the entire nation watched this weekend's exciting Elite 8 action, which featured three gripping games going into overtime, nearly the entire nation of the Vatican could account for the number that watched the NBA "action" instead.
"Our inability to overtake the college game is frightening," said NBA commissioner David Stern at a press conference today, held somewhere in a dark room, which only one reporter attended, after being kidnapped from his house while watching the Illinois-Arizona game he TiVo'ed last weekend.
Stern continued: "We have to end it. [WNECBWHUJ is just the first step. Next, we distribute leaflets to high school guidance counselors all across the country encouraging children to try out for the NBA after graduation, and more importantly, to rid themselves of college eligibility by hiring an agent. Then, we hire Ron Artest to beat up Coach K, Dick Vitale and the Syracuse Orange mascot, and victory is ours!"
Stern's plan marks a direct reversal from the league's insistence that most of its players play college basketball before jumping to the pros. But with so many players starting to suck as soon as they leave college, league officials would rather not have their patrons realize how the NBA game degenerates many from college greats to YMCA greats.
"What the consumer doesn't know can't hurt us," said NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik, as he blindfolded a reporter and took him from the press conference to a taxi cab bound for an unknown destination. "We had it wrong for a while. We thought college could be our minor leagues. But hey, we can't beat them. I mean, look at that Illinois-Arizona game, that was awesome! You'd never see that in the NBA."
Granik added, "You know what they say. If you can't beat them, separate yourself as far as possible so any comparison becomes horribly inexact and utterly futile."
The NCAA, as it is by everything else under the sun, was unimpressed and disgusted by the NBA's new plan. After the announcement, several NCAA officials asked other NCAA officials - who in turn met with yet some more NCAA officials - who they could suspend from post season play as a response to the NBA's irresponsible conduct.
"UNLV sounds like a good choice," said one official, according to another official.
Within minutes, UNLV basketball was suspended from postseason play until 2015. The NCAA also issued a short, but vivid written response, signed by newly appointed NCAA spokesman Larry Eustachy, whose experience in campus life while coaching basketball at Iowa State gives merit to claims that the college life is the best life:
"If you saw any of the pictures that were published of me at that frat party in Missouri, you will know why the majority of hormone-charged basketball players across the country will choose college ball over the NBA," the statement reads. "Here I am, a middle-aged, graying, pudgy guy in a suit, and the blondes were just fawning over me. Look at those pics.
"If you're 18 and ripped, and you see that a geezer like me can still get cute sorority play, the wet dreams alone are enough to make you fend off the pros for four years"
