https://youtu.be/07f3sxW-j6s
With seven minutes to go in the third quarter of this game, Saddiq Bey had already scored his 25th point. Splashing triple after triple while trying (and failing) to keep his team competitive with a vastly superior Nuggets squad, he was well on pace to reach, and probably surpass, his season-high of thirty points. Watching the box-scores update from the comfiness of my “highlights station”, I felt my BHL (Blood Hype Level) inch higher with each shot that Bey made.
The last thing I remember was dumping a bottle of three-alarm buffalo sauce on my head while yelling, “He’s gonna break thirty for sure!” At that point, my heart rate was extremely elevated, my arms and legs felt like they were getting stung by a million wasps, and blood was trickling out my ears. I don’t know how much time passed after I lost consciousness. Probably hours. Eventually, I woke up to my little kitty Japurri Purrker licking my face with his little sandpaper tongue. But he wasn’t trying to revive me or anything, I think he just wanted to sample the buffalo sauce. It made him sneeze but he seemed to enjoy it otherwise.
And it turns out all that hype was for nothing because Bey got taken out of the game halfway through the third quarter and never came back in. It says something that he’s considered too good of a player to be playing fourth-quarter blowout minutes, but it also says something that Dwane Casey apparently doesn’t want Bey to drop a thirty-burger and fulfill the hype prophecy that I had assigned to him. Casey KNOWS that hype junkies like me are going to be watching for rookies scoring thirty or more points, and maybe he was trying to protect people like me by snuffing out the hype before it got out of control, but mostly I just feel blue-balled here. Hype-balled, as it were.
I’m just glad Japurri didn’t call 911 when I passed out. He definitely knows how operate a phone with his little paws, so it could have happened. But I definitely don’t need anybody knowing about my little hype problem. Especially the cute Latina who lives in the apartment above me. If she knew how much I struggled with hype on a daily basis, I could never look her in the eyes again.