Local Basketball Team's Defense So Bad It Actually Creates Small Wormholes in Spacetime
RIVERSIDE, OH — In what scientists are calling "the most impressive failure in the history of organized sports," the Riverside Community College Raccoons basketball team's defensive performance has become so catastrophically porous that it has begun creating actual tears in the spacetime continuum.
Dr. Margaret Fieldstone, a theoretical physicist at Ohio State University who was attending her nephew's game last Tuesday, first noticed the phenomenon when opposing players began scoring baskets that appeared to defy the laws of physics. "At first I thought it was just terrible defense," Fieldstone explained. "But then I saw a player from the visiting team literally phase through three defenders and emerge on the other side of the court. That's when I knew we were dealing with something beyond conventional basketball incompetence."
Using specialized equipment typically reserved for particle accelerator research, Fieldstone's team has confirmed that the Raccoons' defense creates micro-wormholes approximately every 14 seconds during active play. These dimensional rifts, while small, allow opposing teams to score from virtually anywhere on the court, including what appears to be alternate timelines where the game hasn't started yet.
"We've recorded instances where the other team scored points that showed up on the scoreboard before they even attempted the shot," said team statistician Harold Blimpkin, whose job has become significantly more complicated since the discovery. "Last week, the Burlington Beavers scored 847 points in a single game, with 312 of those points apparently coming from a parallel universe where basketball hoops are the size of swimming pools."
Raccoons head coach Jimmy "Squeaks" Morrison remains optimistic despite his team's reality-bending defensive struggles. "Look, we're working on it," Morrison said while a opposing player casually walked through what appeared to be solid matter behind him. "Our defensive scheme is based on the revolutionary concept of 'not being where the ball is,' and I think we're really starting to master that philosophy."
The situation has attracted attention from NASA, CERN, and several government agencies whose names cannot be disclosed. Dr. Fieldstone warns that if the Raccoons' defensive performance continues to deteriorate, the wormholes could grow large enough to allow entire opposing teams to score from different dimensions simultaneously.
"We're essentially looking at a scenario where the Raccoons could lose to teams that don't even exist yet," Fieldstone noted. "From a scientific standpoint, it's fascinating. From a basketball standpoint, it's probably the worst thing that's ever happened to the sport."
The Raccoons are currently 0-23 this season, though officials note that three of those losses technically occurred in futures that haven't happened yet. Their next game against the Springfield Squirrels has been postponed pending consultation with quantum physicists and several religious leaders.