C.J. McCollum was interrupted from his Game of Thrones marathon by his phone ringing. He took a quick glance at the screen, planning to ignore the call, but when he saw that it was Blazers GM Neil Olshey, he reluctantly paused the show and answered the phone.
“Hi Neil, what’s up?”
Neil’s voice sounded breathless. “C.J., I need your help.”
“Yeah, for sure,” answered C.J., trying not to sound surprised that the most important man in the organization needed assistance from a player. “Shoot.”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for LaMarcus and I can’t find him!” said Neil. “Did he tell you where he was going or what he was doing? I haven’t seen him since the season started.”
As Neil said all of this, C.J. wondered to himself whether or not Neil needed some kind of intervention. “Uh, that’s weird. No, he didn’t tell me anything. Did you try looking under all the seats in the arena?”
“Twice!” wailed Neil. “But he could be moving around to different seats while I’m looking. Could you come over and help me look?”
C.J. looked longingly at the TV screen where Game of Thrones was waiting to be resumed. “Actually, I’m kinda super busy right now. Working on my ball handling.”
Neil seemed to forget that he was on the phone and instead began talking to himself. “Oh, LaMarcus, I wish you would come back and work on your ball handling with me like we used to,” he sighed. “You were pretty good at it last time, I barely lasted two minutes. And I was getting pretty good at it too, I remember how much you squirmed.”
C.J.’s mind went blank. “Neil, I really gotta get going,” he mumbled before hanging up. Trying to push these newly introduced ideas out of his head, he turned back to Game of Thrones, but now, he couldn’t focus.