In a weird twist of fate, both one AND four years ago on THIS VERY DATE, Aron ‘Bangers’ Baynes TWICE played against teams he’d eventually go on to play for! That’s right, in some sort of cosmic alignment that not even the good sorts at Parkes Observatory could’ve seen coming, four years back Bangers suited up for the San Antonio Spurs against the Detroit Pistons — the team he’d leave them to join — then, three years later, he pulled ‘em on for the #Pistons against the team he’d eventually leave *them* for, the Boston Celtics! How bloody weird is that! That’s maybe even weirder than those dreams I used to have about Ranger Stacey from ‘Totally Wild’.
Maybe.
Anyway. Even if the teams Bangers played for were bending the rules by sticking an NBA jersey on a phone booth, giving it a haircut stolen from a Surry Hills barista and running it out there as their center, this is still a phenomenon we might have to phone up triple j and ask Dr Karl about.
(For anyone too young to know what a phone booth is, it’s a tall glass box your mate Tall Kane would always take a lash in on the walk home after too many schooners of New down the Woy Woy pub)
But the weirdest aspect to this Cosmic Bangers Alignment is that the Mareeba Man Mountain — with the shaved albino pineapple for a noggin’ — had a pair of games that were absolute Barry Crocker shockers!
In his 1 minute of playing time in that 2014 Spurs win over the Pistons, Bangers finished with a line classically known as a trillion — or in Bangers’ case, a trillion and ten — 1/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/1/0. That extra one there? A turnover that, rumour has it, caused Pop to make Manu Ginobili take a giant growler in Bangers’ left shoe that filled that big ol’ size-18 to the brim.
Then, three years later, while playing for the Pistons against his NEXT future teams, the Celtics, Bangers AGAIN had a night rougher than Barnaby Joyce’s irritable bowel syndrome over the last couple of weeks, playing 12 minutes and ending up with only 3 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists and a foul.
Still, you’ve gotta wonder what so special about this date that Big Bangers went ‘yeah nah, reckon I should go play for these blokes instead’… TWICE!
I reckon they were all like ‘Oi, Bangers, come play for us and we’ll give you free double-shot almond milk lattes and top-knot hairies for life’, and he was like ‘yeah nah, alright.’
Anyway.
#ONYA Bangers!
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