So, okay.

1) Kevin Durant made a movie about a magic basketball that causes him to swap talents with an uncoordinated high school student named Brian. It is called Thunderstruck, and it is currently playing a few times a week on HBO. As UPROXX’s resident expert on movies involving stolen basketball talent, I felt it was my duty to watch it.

2) It is … not good. But it is also amazing. It’s kind of like if you took Space Jam, Teen Wolf, and Blank Check, whirred them up in a blender until there were no more chunks, ran the mixture under the faucet for a few seconds to water it down, then sprinkled a dash of “Okay, but what if his best friend is a hacker?” on top.

3) How do we know his friend is a hacker? Within the first 10 minutes he informs Brian that he “hacked the webvite for Stacy King’s party” to get them invited, which is hilarious because it makes it sounds like Stacy King’s party is the Vanity Fair post-Oscar party instead of a small-town Sweet 16, and she wouldn’t see them at her door and be like “Yeah, I didn’t invite you. Beat it, dorks.”

4) And here’s how we know Brian is bad at basketball: At one point, while he’s playing by himself in his driveway, he dribbles the ball super-hard into his nuts and falls over. Try to guess if this is in the trailer. (Spoiler: Yes.)

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The NCAA is a cartel that exploits the unpaid labor of teenagers to make obscene profits for stuffy old people in suits. No one of reasonable intelligence disputes this. It’s been true, it continues to be true, and it will remain true until huge sweeping changes are made or the whole thing goes down in a spectacular fireball like the infamous hydrogen balloon pictured above. Good men and women have screamed about it from mountaintops for a while now (most notably Taylor Branch in his fantastic takedown in The Atlantic two years ago), and it almost, kind of, maybe seems like we’re finally getting to the point where the wood in all this has bent as far as its going to bend, and small cracks, creaks, and snaps are starting to become noticeable. Good.

Anyway, I bring all this up because the always excellent Charles Pierce has a piece up at Grantland today that is pure word-gold if you’re into this stuff. He starts off discussing the absurdity of playing the Final Four in cavernous domes (and really, you should read the whole thing), but the real fun part comes when he gets to NCAA president Mark Emmert’s recent statement that the NCAA’s “miscellaneous expense allowance” somehow doesn’t conflict with their stance that college athletes shouldn’t be paid. You. Read. Now.

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Conan O’Brien wrapped up his week in Atlanta last night with a terrific bit that combined a number of things very near and dear to me: 1) Dunks; 2) Charles Barkley; 3) Mean jokes at Shaq’s expense; 4) References to Dick Vitale’s penis (don’t ask); and 5) Stupid shenanigans involving trampolines and silly costumes. Pretty much the perfect storm for me.

Specifically, the bit was called “Weird Dunking Mascots,” and it featured Barkley and Vitale critiquing a number of awful dunk attempts by the insane mascots the show created, (examples include Obese Colonel Sanders and Superman With His Cape Stuck In A Toilet) and tossing some pretty decent burns at each other in the process. Say what you will about Dick Vitale as an announcer, I give him a world of credit for going back to the old fat joke well more than once for his digs at Barkley. That’s dedication. And I give Barkley a world of credit for blowtorching Shaq, his Inside the NBA co-host, with that Superman line. Charles ain’t care, not even a little.

But mostly I’m posting this so I can give a public shoutout to Obese Colonel Sanders, who somehow got the ball to go in the basket despite jumping off a trampoline while wearing a big poofy fat suit and fake facial hair on national television. That alone makes him more qualified to earn starter minutes in the NBA than Spencer Hawes.

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This video of a sea otter dunking a tiny orange ball is taking the Internet by storm this afternoon. As it should. After all, it is a video of a sea otter dunking a basketball. This is why the Internet was invented (probably). But I’m sure many of you watched it and said to yourselves “Holdonholdonholdon. I have some questions about all of this.” Well luckily, I, the UPROXX Senior Dunks and 90s R&B Correspondent, am here to walk you through it.

Please, fire away.

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Alex Rodriguez has found himself at the center of another steroids scandal, which is something I wouldn’t give a single horseback-riding sh-t about under normal circumstances. But Outside the Lines released a report based on their investigation into the South Florida doping operation run by Anthony Bosch, and it will surprise you exactly zero percent to find out that A-Rod required special treatment even while using PEDs.

The texts, the source said, usually came late at night, telling Anthony Bosch to come to the house. Bosch would then head to the waterfront mansion on Biscayne Bay, through the gate on North Bay Road, to inject performance-enhancing drugs into Alex Rodriguez.

Procedures were different, though, sources told “Outside the Lines,” for the other athletes who were customers of Bosch’s Biogenesis of America clinic in Coral Gables, which Major League Baseball considers the center of a widespread doping operation in South Florida. Those athletes, sources said, relied on intermediaries to transport the performance-enhancing drug regimens Bosch provided.

But for A-Rod, the service was always personal: “Only Tony handled A-Rod,” one source told “Outside the Lines.”

Are you like me? Do you really want to see those texts? For some reason, I don’t know exactly why, I feel like Alex Rodriguez’s texts are littered with emoticons. “Come over. Bring steroids :)” “Not now. Neighbor came over to borrow sugar and won’t leave :/” and so on.

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Earlier today Brandon posted a highlight reel of the best high school basketball dunks from 2012, which was all well and good except for the part where here we are, only a few hours later, and the whole compilation has been rendered moot. According to this blog post, high school sophomore Victor Dukes did the dunk pictured above in a game that took place on December 31, which is notable for a few important reasons:

• December 31 was in 2012, making it eligible for said list.
• Holy crap, look where his head is.
• HOLY CRAP, his name is Victor Dukes. VICTOR DUKES. That sounds like the name of an evil businessman in a Disney movie who is shutting down the local street hockey rink to build a strip mall or something. “But … but … we can’t take on Victor Dukes! We’re just a bunch of kids!” “Exactly. He’ll never see it coming.”
• HOLY CRAP HE IS A SOPHOMORE. So he’s, like, what, 16? Jeeeeeeeeeeesus.

Anyway, the video is posted below. As With Leather’s resident dunk expert, please know that everything about this video makes me both excited and incredibly jealous. I can’t decide if I should hate young Victor Dukes or rip off my shirt and zoom around my apartment shouting “OH BABY! OH BABY!” like someone up and made my living room Rucker Park. I suppose I should just do both to be safe.

The Score via Reddit