Who among us has never had a little more coffee than strictly necessary for a strong start to the day and spent an hour or two vibrating like a well-struck tuning fork? Most of us are lucky enough to have our little caffeine freakouts in the privacy of our own homes, or at least well away from news cameras; for Kent Bazemore of the Golden State Warriors, the consequences of bringing the jittery euphoria of a caffeine spike to a literal news conference are now stretching into their second day.
The trouble started during Monday morning's shootaround ahead of Golden State's game against the Utah Jazz. Bazemore was asked to reflect on teammate Steph Curry putting up 49 points in just 29 minutes during Saturday's blowout home win over the dreadful Oklahoma City Thunder. Curry is locked in a tight race for the scoring title with Washington's Bradley Beal; Bazemore, grinning and fidgeting like a 9-year-old who has eaten all his movie candy before the end of the first preview, used the scoring title picture to frame Steph's heroics, with a stray shot at Beal:
"49 points in 29 minutes, though, that's unreal. And we've got guys hurting hamstrings trying to keep up, so. Y'all gotta do some research on that."
Beal, who trails Curry by half a point per game for the scoring title, in fact did strain his left hamstring during the late stages of a 50-point outing Saturday night, during a one-point Wizards overtime win over the Indiana Pacers. Beal is now on the shelf at least through Wednesday's tilt against the Atlanta Hawks; perhaps it is because he is out of action that he had time to notice a comment from a bench guard averaging seven points per game. Beal was not super happy about it!
This is probably a lot more smoke than Bazemore wants to court when prompted to say something nice about his teammate who is having a good season. Beal, too, probably could stand to chill, although joking about a person's injury is the sort of thing that will reliably draw a heated response. Bazemore explained Monday night that he "jokingly, half-heartedly said it," and that there was "nothing malicious about" any of it, but this is where acting under the influence of a mega-jolt of caffeine can get you in trouble.
"It was 11:30 in the morning, 12 o'clock, I was off my Bulletproof Coffee feeling good, enjoying seeing you guys' faces, and that's kind of what it was. I don't know, man. I don't think I would have reacted that way. But to each their own; he's a great player, played against him for a long time, he's been getting better every year, so [I wish him] a speedy recovery. I hope that helps."
ESPN
Bulletproof coffee is an absurd combination of high-test brewed coffee, a couple tablespoons of melted grass-fed butter, and a few teaspoons of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil, whipped together in a blender until the resulting beverage has a frothy cap. It's a breakfast replacement, so users are left to ride the wave all the way to shore. With no gutful of chewed hash brown to counteract the stimulating effects of the caffeine, and the MCT oil providing its own sudden energy burst, Bulletproof coffee drinkers spend a portion of every morning glimpsing the code of the Matrix, interfacing with the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Or so goes the sales pitch: Bulletproof coffee is a few coffee and diet fads old now, and has been largely debunked as a health hack. Turns out buttered coffee is mostly just coffee with butter in it.
There are evidently those among us who still crave that rich fatty joe in the morning, and Bazemore is clearly among them. Which is fine. Do your thing! But let this be a lesson: Gone off buttered coffee is no condition for a press scrum.
