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

“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.

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Labels: Alexis Ajinca, Brook Lopez, David Stern, Los Angeles Sparks, NBA, NBA Draft, NCAA basketball, Penny Toler, Robin Lopez, Stanford Cardinal, WNBA

Posted on April 2nd, 2008

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