With four minutes to go in the third quarter, Cameron Johnson drilled his fourth three-pointer of the game, giving him nineteen points, just two short of his rookie season high in points. He had sixteen possible minutes of game with which to acquire another bucket (or perhaps a pair of free throws) to tie his season high mark of 21. In fact, sixteen minutes was so much time that I allowed myself to imagine the possibility that he would not only reach the 21-point mark, but actually surpass it with an additional bucket.
And when I say I imagined it, what I actually did was start constructing a shrine in the spare room of my apartment devoted to Cameron Johnson. It sounds rather silly looking back on it, but I was preparing for my new life as a religious hermit whose only purpose in life was to worship at the altar of Cameron Johnson and induct new devotees into this new pseudoreligion. You might think this was a metaphorical altar, but it was a real altar made out of Pop-Tart boxes and some decorative ribbons that I had from ten years ago (which is the last time that I bothered wrapping the Christmas presents I get for my family members).
Well, the shrine has been dismantled now because Cameron Johnson only scored nineteen, an amount that is obviously not worthy of any amount of worship. I would normally be mad at Monty Williams (for not giving Johnson enough minutes) or Ricky Rubio (for not passing Johnson the ball often enough) or Devin Booker (for hogging the ball too much), but, honestly, I think I dodged a bullet here. There would have been no more DownToBuck highlight videos because there would be no need to pay attention to any NBA players other than Cameron Payne. It sounds like a nice life, and I’m sure, overcome as I was by religious fervor, that I would have been content with it, but I think things are better this way.