The National Basketball Association, attempting to boost last year's sagging attendance figures caused by too few photographers getting kicked in the balls and too few players wearing female undergarments on their heads, will totally change all the old rules of the game to a totally new set of totally new rules of the game.

The N.B.A.'s Deputy Commissioner, Hollis Mosher III, announced the new rules, today, after nearly 15 hours of meetings with whoever was left standing after the ceremonial lysergic acid-drenched wafers were scarfed down to signal the start of the nearly 15 hours of meetings, which took place in a series of cheap Manhattan hotel rooms, lit only by the blinking neon sign on the lesbian bar across the street.

The decision to change the rules came after the N.B.A. turned down players demands to replace kicking photographers in the balls to boost attendance, with kicking premium-seated Hollywood celebrities in the balls to boost attendance.

The new rules, a compromise which broke the seemingly intractable player-owner stalemate, were apparently made possible only by very recent advances in digital compression technology.

"Using a totally new, high-level compression algorithm from Intel," Mosher said, "-- one developed specifically to take advantage of redundancies in sports and games and other forms of social organization -- we have been able to compress the entire strike-shortened basketball season into a single strike-shortened game, lasting for just approximately one extremely dense, highly-compressed minute."

In the new rules, what used to be called "passing" is now called "immoral sex," and is frowned upon, though it occasionally happens when no one is looking. What used to be called "dribbling" is now called "being a self-righteous dickhead," and is punished by lifelong suspension from all future games. And what used to be called "rebounding" is now called "fucking up -- really really bad," and is punished by suddenly, itself, becoming the only thing in life that isn't just a dream.

Under the new rules, scoring is done by throwing (now called "eating") a round rubbery inflatable object (formerly called "the ball," now called "my balls") through a round metal hoop with a net, still called "a basket."

When a player does this successfully, he is awarded 71 home runs and immediately breaks the all-time home run record and is named MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Cy Young Award Winner. Then the game and season end, and his team becomes league champions until next year's season, which has also been so compressed that it actually starts the following day.

"Using the advanced technology of calling something something else," said Indiana Pacemakers Center, Garth Register Jr., "we have been able to compress a vast amount of excitement into a much much shorter space of time -- so people can much more quickly get over these violent emotions of winning and losing and kicking each other in the balls and setting all-time records -- thereby gaining many thousand valuable 'bonus' hours to devote to leading lives of quiet desperation."