Imagine Your Boss Is Michael Jordan, And Imagine He's Angry Enough To Hit You

The Hornets came back from a 12-point second-half deficit to topple the Detroit Pistons Wednesday night, by the score of 108–107. The ending was dramatic: the Hornets went on a 13–0 run to go from down 101-91 with about six minutes on the clock to up 104-101 with 47 seconds left in regulation. The teams then traded points and were tied when Jeremy Lamb knocked down a 22-footer to put the Hornets ahead with tenths of a second left on the clock:

Ballgame! Except, no, wait, not ballgame! What that cool video of Lamb’s bitchin’ shot doesn’t show is Malik Monk racing out onto the floor from the bench to celebrate the moment, with time still on the clock for one final desperation shot from the Pistons. This next video has it—look for the goober in Charlotte warmups sprinting out towards center court while Lamb’s shot is still in the air. That would be Monk.

He wasn’t the only idiot in a Hornets uniform—another boob ran all the way to midcourt in warmups while the Pistons were actually inbounding the ball— but the ruling on the court was a technical foul on Monk, which gave the Pistons a free throw and possession of the ball, with a much, much better chance at an unlikely game-winner. As you can imagine, this was not much to the liking of Monk’s boss, perhaps the most pathologically competitive person in the history of organized sports. Michael Jordan, Hornets controlling owner, was sitting in his usual courtside seats. OOPS.

That is for sure not the face you want to see when you’re headed back to the sideline after making that kind of mistake. The jaundiced, bloodshot eyes of one of modern history’s great cutthroat maniacs, burning with the accumulated rage of every miss and loss and snub across a lifetime of spite-fueled domination, searing a tunnel of red-hot disappointment right through your forehead and all the way into your alligator brain, where every one of your basic survival impulses is suddenly frantically ringing an alarm bell. Perhaps it’s the same recklessness that sent Monk onto the court that kept him from sprinting out of the arena and directly into federal protection.

You will be relieved to know that Monk survived the exchange with just a couple angry head slaps from the wild man upstairs, and the Hornets lead survived the fuck-up. Langston Galloway made the technical, but Nic Batum stole the subsequent inbounds pass, and that was that. One can only imagine what might’ve happened to Monk if the Pistons had managed to win it. Carnage.