If President Barack Obama goes up strong for a layup on the basketball court, does the opposing player:

A) Check to see if the Secret Service agent on the sidelines has a menacing look and an itchy trigger finger?

B) Foul Obama so hard that he sees as many stars as there are on the American flag?

C) Part the lane the way Moses parted the Red Sea and let Obama safely score his points?

Obama's basketball prowess came under humorous attack at Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner. Comedian Wanda Sykes suggested that the president shouldn't beat his chest about his basketball abilities.

"I bet you think your game is really nice right now, don't you?" Sykes told Obama. "Yeah, you really think you got good moves. C'mon, nobody's going to give the president a hard foul with the Secret Service standing there."

Obama isn't the first basketball-playing politician, just the highest-ranking one. Former New York Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo was a basketball fiend during his years in Albany. He played one-on-one  or three-on-three against all comers, and organized a statehouse basketball league. 

Cuomo believes that Obama is probably playinig old-school ball where the general rule is if there's no blood, there's no foul. Obama played pick-up Saturday at a downtown Washington, D.C., YMCA. The president came out unscathed, but his personal assistant, Reggie Love, sported a band-aid on his chin and muttered that he might need stitches. No word on how Love got injured.

 "It's hard to play basketball, play all out, without hitting a guy the way you didn't want to hit him," Cuomo said. "I suspect a guy like Obama, if he's playing five-on-five, he strikes me as a real player who wants to play a real game."

Cuomo said he kept it real when he played as governor, recounting hard fouls and fist fights - even against a team of State Police officers. "We kept it in the gym," he said.

"I got hit between the nose and top of the lip, loosened two teeth in front four days before I had to give the speech to nominate Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden," Cuomo said. "I gave the whole speech scared to death that I was going to lose teeth in the Garden."