The Chicago Bulls won yesterday's draft lottery with only a 1.7% chance to take home the top pick. The Miami Heat, who had the worst record and a 25% chance at the top spot, ended up second and the Timberwolves third. It's a big win for the Bulls, a poor team from Chicago who's spent most of its existence after Michael Jordan working at a wood processing plant. "Well, things haven't been too good for us lately," said GM John Paxson. "Money has been real tough to come by here. We stopped being able to play basketball games and have had to put the boys to work in the factory. But hopefully this lottery win is going to turn some things around. I'm just so excited, I may buy us all a team car to ride around in, instead of having to take the bus."

Paxson vowed that having all the lottery winnings will not change who his team is. "We're still going to be the same old post-Jordan Bulls, I promise you that. No amount of good players is going to turn us into a championship contender, that's for sure. We're going to still perenially underachieve despite being in a weak conference." Old relatives who haven't talked to the team in years are now coming out of the woodwork to get reacquainted. Uncle Scottie Pippen gave Paxson a call yesterday to talk about the good old times, and to tell him about his gambling and heroin addictions he could use some monetary help with.

The Chicago players are also ecstatic to get the chance to play with some of the outstanding college talent. "I hear they have some of the best players in the world in the college system," said Kirk Hinrich. "It's going to be an honor to share the floor with some of them. Hopefully they can show us a thing or two about how this game is played at the highest levels."

There is trouble in Miami today as a story broke that late last night a fight erupted between the Miami Heat and team President Pat Riley. Apparently the Miami Heat had positioned themselves well with the trade of Shaq to be well under the NBA salary cap for next season. But Riley was angry to come home and find that the Heat had spent the rest of their cap money on alcohol and draft lottery tickets, leaving them with nothing to sign free agents with. Police were called to team headquarters where they found Riley with several bruises on his hands, and the Heat crying in a corner of the office with a few cuts and bruises of their own. The Heat say they just fell down the stairs, but the police took Riley into custody anyway.

Riley gave an angry tirade as he was drug away by Miami officers. "You just couldn't resist spending my money could you?! We had the best chance to win the draft lottery already, we didn't need anymore tickets! And what the hell is this booze you bought? Bud Light with Lime? We're not the ####valiers here!"

The Miami Heat say they were in the NBA convenience store when they realized they had a few extra dollars to spend. They decided to pick up a few drinks and some draft lottery scratch off cards in hopes of winning big. "We got some really fun games," said the Heat. "One where you have to scratch off 3 dead cats and you can win an O.J. Mayo. Another where you have to match #### fruit with sticks of dynamite and you can get Tyler Hansbrough. They looked like so much fun, we were going to play them together with Riley. But he just kept...watching us fall down the stairs."

TSC stood by as they scratched off one of the cards and tried their luck. "Oh! Oh! We got 2 dead cats and...a horse pleasuring itself! That means we get a free card! Oh man, this was so worth it! It's too bad Pat couldn't have been here to share in this great win for the franchise."

Like O.J. Mayo, Tyler Hansborough, and Michael Beasly, yet another player has declared himself eligible for the upcoming 2008 NBA Draft. But this time it's Washington Wizards point guard Gilbert Arenas. The move has stunned basketball GMs around the league as they scramble to update their draft boards to accomodate the superstar. This is the first time an active player has re-entered the draft while currently playing.

Arenas is a 7th year player out of Arizona, and will be by far the oldest in this year's draft. But, a player of his caliber demands consideration by every team, as he has consistently put up 20+ points when healthy with the Wizards. He was originally drafted in 2001 by Golden State. "It's been 7 years, I think I've fulfilled my commitment to the league when they drafted me the first time," said Arenas. "It's time to be drafted again. It was fun, and I think it's the only way I can finally escape these damn Wizards. We just can't beat Lebron. I need out, hopefully a Western Conference team can pick me up or something."

The NCAA has announced that due to the struggling U.S. economy and the continued fall of profits, there will be no free throws in this year's Final Four. "We just can't afford to give these shots away anymore, it's costing us too much money," said NCAA chairman Mike Sutter. "Especially at the end of the game, sometimes they will foul each other over and over again. That's costing us a fortune! So we're going to be charging $7 dollars per throw, which is still less than a beer at the concession stand, so I feel it's reasonable."

"There will be a cashier on the side of the court who will take payment should a player get fouled. He accepts cash, credit, or money order. Please don't write a check. We can take it, but it's going to hold up the game quite a bit. Late in the game, if we have a lot of shots left to give we may even do some specials like a buy one get one type of deal. This is when you poorer players want to try and get fouled, it's going to save you a lot of money. Also, I don't want to give anything away, but check your Sunday paper for a special coupon that may give you 10% off all foul shots. It's going to take people awhile to get used to the change, but I think it's going to go over fine."

While several of the teams are upset at the change, Memphis is actually fine with the decision. "We weren't going to make many of those anyway," said head coach John Calipari.

For the first time in all his years working at the offices of Biotechno Industries, Rich Wise has won his March Madness pool. Wise has been tormented over the years due to failing to put together a winning bracket despite watching as much college basketball as he can get his hands on. For the past 2 years the title even went to Amanda Martin, the secretary who picked the Gators because "they could probably eat everything else".

But this year Rich came across a website that promised top secret information on the tournament. What they did was take the numbers 1-16 and assign them to each team in a region based upon their strength. It spelled out who would win, and who would lose. Rich paid the site $500 for a link to their database, another website called ncaa.com. Using the site he viewed their seeding system and put together a winning bracket. With Davidson making a deep run, things looked bad for the man from accounts receivable. But the way the Final Four shook out, he is now $60 dollar richer.

Was it worth it after paying so much for the covert information to win so little? "I think it was. When I asked Amanda what she thought about my winning the bracket pool this year, and she answered 'Huh? I didn't even remember filling that out.' I knew she was steamed. It's good to be on top. Maybe I'll enter a few online tournaments next year, with this information it's going to be hard to be stopped."