5 Most Hilarious Pro Sports Pranks

April Fool’s Day is just around the corner and this year we want you to be in on the joke. That’s why we’ve lined up five of the funniest and most elaborate pranks in the history of professional sports to amuse and inspire you. These classic cons run the gamut from staged stunts to hilarious ruses that took weeks to unfold.

5. Cuban Gets Smoked

Mark Cuban has always been known for his fiery antics, so it didn’t surprise fans when he got into a heated argument with an NBA referee during a game against New Orleans on April 1, 2003.

However, it didn’t take long before things got out of hand. His war of words quickly escalated and spilled out onto the court, where Cuban began to forcibly push the official while shouting obscenities in his face. The two men eventually had to be broken up by players and security guards before a full-on fist fight broke out.

The best part of the prank was the reaction of beleaguered Dallas head coach Del Harris, who had not been informed of the joke in advance, and rushed into the fracas to prevent his team owner from beating the snot out of a league official. His relieved reaction at the end of the video is priceless.

4. Devean George is Caught on Tape

Being a rookie is never easy, but it’s even harder when you’re teammates with a notorious prankster like Shaquille O’Neal. Devean George discovered that the hard way in 1999 when the then 22-year-old joined the Lakers out of tiny Augsburg College.

Being a rookie is never easy, but it’s even harder when you’re teammates with a notorious prankster like Shaquille O’Neal.

The Big Diesel pulled numerous pranks on George during his first year in the league, but the most memorable came early in his tenure when he duct taped him to the court of Staples Center. George remained there unable to budge for a full 15 minutes until an arena worker discovered him and helped him escape.

3. Looky Liu

Do you remember Charlie’s Angeles star Lucy Liu? Tony Bobbitt sure does. The journeyman shooting guard was a rookie with the Lakers in 2004-05 when he thought he noticed Liu eyeing him from the sidelines during a home game. Bobbitt became excited and did what any red-blooded male would do in his position: he began bragging about it to all of his teammates.

The team’s vets decided to put the rook in his place and had a ball boy give Bobbitt a slip of paper with a phone number on it supposedly belonging to Liu. Next, they got a female Lakers employee to leave an outgoing message posing as the actress. Over the next few weeks Bobbitt left multiple messages on the line and even sent a succession of steamy text messages. The whole team got involved and eventually set up a “date” for the pair at an LA hot spot.

When Bobbitt showed up at the restaurant Liu was nowhere in sight, but all of his teammates were. The 25-year-old guard was later waived by the Lakers in November, and in a way it’s lucky he was, because he never would have heard the end of it.

2. Falling on Jeff Ears

Jeff Francoeur found himself at the heart of a brilliant long con in 2014 when his teammates on the El Paso Chihuahuas convinced him that pitcher Jorge Reyes was profoundly deaf.

The players planted the seeds for the prank in early April when they had Reyes stand stock still and remain unresponsive while other players around him shouted “heads up.” Francoeur took the bait and began communicating with Reyes from that day forwards by using elaborate hand signals and dramatically overenunciating. Reyes did his part too by remaining mute at all times and eschewing headphones in the locker room and on long bus rides.

Francoeur’s teammates eventually revealed the prank three weeks later by screening a hilarious behind-the-scenes documentary. Check it out for yourself below. This one has to be seen to be believed.

What makes this prank so surprising is that Franceour wasn’t a young kid getting his first taste of professional ball. The then 30-year-old had already played in the Majors for ten years with five different clubs and had won a Gold Glove in 2007 with the Braves.

1. Kyle Kendrick’s One-Way Ticket to Japan

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, sometimes it takes a whole clubhouse to prank a pitcher. The Phillies tapped into the strength of numbers in the spring of 2008 when they successfully convinced Kyle Kendrick that he had been traded to the Yomiuri Giants for a player named Kobayashi Iwamura.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, sometimes it takes a whole clubhouse to prank a pitcher.

Phillies starter Brett Myers, manager Charlie Manuel, assistant GM Ruben Amaro, and a gaggle of reporters were all in on the ruse and played their parts to perfection as they presented a stunned Kendrick with a new contract and led him through an impromptu press conference announcing the deal.

The MLB Network has since named it the number one baseball prank of all-time, but not everyone thinks it’s a laughing matter. Kendrick fired his agent that year because of his involvement in the joke and still harbors hard feelings about being a league wide laughingstock. Judge for yourself if you think it went too far by checking out this classic clip.