When an NBA team wins a title, everyone in the organization gets in on the celebration, from the players and the coaches all the way down to the locker room attendants. Euphoria is in the air at the culmination of a season’s worth of hard work. If you’re lucky, you get to touch the Larry O’Brien Trophy. If you’re not, you get a bottle of champagne dropped on your head by one of the greatest centers of all time.
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That’s what happened to Kid Jay, cohost of Byron Scott’s Fast Break. Jay, whose real name is Jason Wagers, was a locker room attendant for the Lakers when they won the title over the Philadelphia 76ers in 2001. In all the commotion, he took a bottle of bubbly to the domepiece.
Jay told the story after comedian Aries Spears called today’s players soft for wearing goggles when they popped champagne. No one used to do that. Ray Allen started the trend after winning the 2013 title with the Miami Heat.
“We won our championship in Philly,” Jay recalled, “and we didn’t have goggles. And Shaq, he says, ‘Jay, grab me some champagne bottles. I gotta do this interview. Have ’em ready for when I walk in.’ I said, ‘I got you big fella. I got you big fella.'”
“[Shaq] comes into the locker room. I’m standing right there. I’m being sprayed and everything,” Jay continued. “As soon as he comes in, of course, all the other players, they’re just shooting the champagne all in his face. I handed him the bottles, and he raises the bottles in his hands, he’s getting squirted and squirted, and drops one of the bottles.”
This is the point where the story resembles Wile E. Coyote looking up as an Acme anvil descends on his head. “Now [O’Neal’s] 7’2″; I’m 5-foot-9. Bottle, BIIIING!” At this, Jay points to a spot just above his right eye. “I got a permanent scar right here, and I literally damn near bled out right there in Philadelphia.”
Here we were for all these years thinking that Allen Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue in Game 1 was the worst thing that happened to someone in those Finals. Time heals all wounds, though, and Jay is able to laugh about it now.
Byron Scott brought up a good point when he said, “You could be a very wealthy man right now. ‘Shaq dropped a bottle on my head!'”
Jay may not have been a player, and he may not have benefited financially from the ordeal, but he does have a leg up on today’s players in one regard. “I know about the ‘no goggles,'” he declared triumphantly.
