Get Well Soon, Red Panda

The last few weeks have been a string of hard times for Indiana-based basketball, even with victories strewn across the landscape. The Indiana Pacers reached the NBA Finals—good—but lost Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in Game 7—very bad. The Indiana Fever are now the WNBA's leading draw because of Caitlin Clark—good—but Clark has been injured twice, first her quad muscle and more recently her groin—bad—in addition to finishing ninth at her position in player voting for the All-Star Game—confusing—and being the subject of Christine Brennan's upcoming unauthorized hagiography—ominous.

But those were circumstantial. Now we know something is karmically amiss, because a vengeful universe has just taken out Red Panda.

Red Panda, stage name of quinquagenarian fourth-generation circus performer Rong (Krystal) Niu, has been with her unicycle and stackable kitchenware a staple of NBA and WNBA games since 1993, when she was a late fill-in for a no-show halftime performer at a Los Angeles Clippers game. The Clippers were at the time beginning a stretch of 12 consecutive terrible years, which may explain the other act's no-show, but it also sparked Ms. Panda’s career as a crowd favorite—the Lou Gehrig of halftime acts to the no-show's Wally Pipp.

For those 39 of you who haven't been made familiar with Mme. Panda's work, she sits atop an eight-foot unicycle and flips 16 bowls made by her father onto her head in an increasingly harrowing stack, and even in her 50s she is doing dozens of shows per season at an estimated $3,000–$5,000 per show. She is now a full-on brand, and is in short getting jobbed on a nightly basis, as she is worth way more. She reached the quarterfinal of America's Got Talent in 2013 but pulled out because her father fell ill, and this year made the semifinal of Britain's Got Talent.

Thus, she was booked for the Commissioner's Cup final in Minneapolis between the Fever and Minnesota Lynx Tuesday night, took a frightening fall barely a few bowls into her show, and was placed in a wheelchair and taken to a local hospital. We don't yet know the extent of the injury; the principal guess was a wrist, and as such not sufficient cause for her to be waived and stretched à la Damian Lillard, though these are perilous times for injured athletes. We do know, though, how her injury affected Clark and her Fever teammates, most notably Sydney Colson.

It is safe to say that there is no more powerful or poetic entertainment legacy than "I don’t think Red Panda’s watching my shit." Maybe this Commissioner’s Cup can cleanse the bad juju surrounding Indiana basketball, in which case Red Panda's injury will have served a greater cause than her own and therefore made her more of a god than she already is. Because Red Panda is everywhere, all-knowing, all-seeing, and watching everybody's shit, all the time.