Here's a sports fun fact: Sam Cassell was traded three times in the 1996 season. Basketball historians have noted that he was not particularly hideous or non-human in appearance when he left the Rockets in August of that year, but that by the time he arrived at in Dallas to play for the Mavericks in late December (after a 22 game layover in Phoenix), he appeared to be extra-terrestrial in a nature.

So what happened in the interim? A freakish chemical spill followed by a botched bone-graph? No.

Do you know what movie premiered in 1996? Space Jam, a film about aliens commandeering the bodies of NBA players, twisting their appearance hideously in the process.

Coincidence? No.

Diversion? We think so. After all, what better way to discredit any nosy investigative sports journalist who might claim that Cassell had been occupied by an alien than by releasing a ridiculous children's movie with the same plot mere months before doing so?

Touche, aliens. Touche.