Brick!Photo: Getty Images

Judging by what we’ve been reading about the guy for the past two years, we were under the impression that when Barack Obama is inaugurated today, we’d have not just the most perfect president ever, but the most awesome basketball player our government’s ever seen. After all, the Obama profile in Sports Illustrated last week describes his game as “old-school schoolyard” and “feisty,” in addition to explaining how he basically used the sport to win everything from swing states like North Carolina to the approval of future brother-in-law Craig Robinson. The only two downsides to his game, we were led to believe, were that he can’t dunk and that his uniform of sweats “isn’t likely to set a trend.”

But is it possible Obama’s skills are — gasp! — overrated? In SI, Claude Johnson, the editor of baller-in-chief.com, talks about Obama’s cred, and how he’s played pick-up ball with the likes of the Knicks’ Chris Duhon. But in the Post today, Duhon himself crushes our hopes. His analysis of Obama’s best move? "I don't think he has a best move." To make things worse, the Sporting Blog today points out that he’ll be far from the best president, athletically speaking. (That’s a toss-up between Teddy Roosevelt and Gerald Ford.) And now that we think about it, there was that David Axelrod anecdote in SI about Obama blowing a layup last year when he saw North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough coming at him. With regard to his balling skills, at least, consider our expectations adjusted.