Puddle Of Puke On Sacramento Kings’ Home Court Somehow Not A Metaphor

A fan seated courtside at Saturday's Jazz-Kings game in Sacramento barfed all over his seat, his crotch, and the sideline, with 9:32 left in the fourth quarter of what eventually became a road victory for Utah. To you this may seem like a totally natural way to process Sacramento Kings basketball up close, but it turns out in this case the nausea was brought on not by De'Aaron Fox's true shooting percentage but a constitution overwhelmed with alcohol. The sudden rising miasma of fresh puke chased Utah's players away from the visitor's bench area, emptied the seats around the unfortunate barfer, and brought the game to an agonizing 13-minute halt. In true barflord form, buddy just slumped in his seat like a deflating balloon while event staff cleaned up his mess.

This was not one of those awful but minor burps-gone-wrong, where a little risen bile escapes unexpectedly and becomes ejecta. I cannot emphasize enough how much this was not that. Our man's system was in need of a full purge. "He was just throwing up continuously," described Jordan Clarkson, who was one of the first Jazz players to notice the scene. Soon the entire team and indeed the whole arena could do nothing but flee the area and then watch from a horrified distance as the man barfed and barfed. "I can’t even lie, I was just focused on getting out of the way,” Donovan Mitchell said after the game. “Just, no parts. I wanted no parts of that."

Woozy, gut-sick, slick about the dick-and-balls with the reeking evacuated contents of his own poisoned stomach, our hero was left to sit there dumbly, in full view of the thousands in attendance and a live television audience, while arena workers scrambled on their hands and knees to wipe up the unholy mess at his feet, and while players on both teams pointed and laughed at his condition. This period of brutal own-bed-laying soon came to its inevitable, merciful end, when arena security helped the unsteady fellow to his feet and escorted him out of sight. Not coincidentally, Sacramento's overhead scoreboard showed a reminder that severely intoxicated fans will be ejected from the arena.

(This YouTube video shows a brief Zapruder-esque view of the moment of barving, if that's your thing.) With all hands on deck—including Sacramento's mascot, Slamson the Lion, who in a surreal moment got on his, ah, paws and knees and assisted in the cleanup—the mess was soon sufficiently wiped away and the game was allowed to resume. The Jazz would cruise to a comfortable 123–105 win. After it was over, Clarkson expressed empathy for the poor barfing doofus:

I fail to see how Pedialyte will cure him of his fandom of the Sacramento Kings, but I'm sure his tummy will feel better.