Elderly secretary’s confusion lands Lopez brothers at top of WNBA draft boards

PALO ALTO, CA — An elderly secretary’s confusion could cost Stanford’s “Twin Towers” – Brook and Robin Lopez – millions of dollars.

After declaring for the draft and signing with an agent, the twins sent their paperwork into the NBA offices, where it was received by longtime secretary Shirley McPhail. McPhail reviewed their application, and – assuming that Brook and Robin were two women – entered them into the list of available players for the upcoming WNBA draft.

“I guess I should have been more thorough in my research. I sincerely apologize to those boys,” said the shaken secretary. “But can you really blame me? My daughter’s name is Robin, and my neighbor’s ex-wife was named Brook. In fact, the only male Robin I can think of is Batman’s assistant, and I’ve never known a guy named Brook.”

Somehow the mistake went unnoticed until Los Angeles Sparks G.M. Penny Toler began examining a list of available players for the April 9 draft.

“I’m not going to lie, when I first saw their names on the list, I got a little moist,” Toler admitted. “We’ve got the first pick, and I was already envisioning how good Brook would look in our violet, lemon and turquoise uniforms. Unfortunately, I let my ethical side get the best of me, and I alerted Dave [NBA Commissioner David Stern] to the error.”

Stern was grateful to Toler, and relieved that the blunder was caught in time.

“This is pretty embarrassing, especially since this is the second year in a row that Mrs. McPhail has let something like this happen,” Stern said, apparently referring to a confusing photo of Joakim Noah that left the 72-year old secretary perplexed last season. “Obviously, I’m going to have a talk with her, and we may consider reassigning her next year. I’m just glad we figured this out when we did, because if they had been drafted by a WNBA squad it would have been too late to do anything. “

SSNN caught up with Brook Lopez earlier in the day to gauge his feelings on the nearly disastrous clerical error.

“You know, Robin and I have been dealing with this bullshit all our lives, and I would have thought that the Sweet Sixteen run would have alerted people to the fact that we are, indeed, men. But I guess not,” a disgusted Brook responded. “Even though I would have been the first selection in their draft, and I’m sure Robin would have gone somewhere in the top ten, it still pisses us off. I mean, what are WNBA players making these days? Ten, twenty grand a year?”

In a related story, the agent for Frenchmen Alexis Ajinca, a possible lottery pick in the 2009 NBA draft, has been preemptively sending emails to the NBA offices with copies of Alexis’s medical records and photographs attached, in hopes of avoiding a similar fate.

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!