It’s easy to take things for granted. Laundry is one of those things for me. For the past 10 years, my laundry has magically disappeared. I put the full bin of clothes into the laundry room about once a week, and poof:
Two days later, all my clothes are clean.
Every once in a while, I think about it real hard, though, and I have an epiphany.
“Egads,” I think to myself, “My wife does my laundry!”
Which prompts me to say thank you and try harder to remember to pick up my share of the chore bargain.
My wife and I have attended roughly 300 Wolves games throughout our marriage, because we have season tickets. If you add my transfer to the media sphere, I’m probably closer to 500 games in my life. The halftime show is one of the things I think any fan or media in attendance takes for granted.
Whether it’s Cornell Freeney and his German wheel or Gary Sladek and his 20-foot high chair stacking routine, most people expect that they will pull it off without a hitch.
That’s why Tuesday night was that much more traumatic as Ring Nui (Red Panda) fell during her routine.
Nui has performed at NBA arenas for decades; she is even the featured halftime act in the NBA 2K franchise, something I was particularly excited about a couple of years ago. (Seriously, how cool is that!?)
Her performance involves climbing atop a 7-foot-high unicycle and balancing a porcelain bowl on her head. If this were the entire act, it would already be impressive. However, Nui then balances bowls on her foot and shin, and kicks them with perfect precision so that they land stacked on her head.
Starting with kicking one bowl and eventually ending with five or six, depending on how much time the team allots her.
It’s a routine she has done since 1993, when she debuted at halftime of an LA Clippers game. She’s performed her act on America’s Got Talent and appeared on Britain’s Got Talent last year. It’s an act that has gotten her international acclaim as an acrobat and as a public figure in the NBA community.
On average, she does roughly 40 halftime shows a year for the NBA, WNBA, and NCAA. Multiply that by the 32 years she has been performing, and you get to 1,280 shows. However, she took time off in the mid-2010s, and her workload peaked at an estimated 60 shows per year. Still, she has had over 1,200 gigs in her career. Her only injury was a broken wrist she suffered while practicing in 2014.
It’s a remarkable success rate, which people may take for granted every time she goes out to perform her daring halftime act. However, that changed on the Target Center floor Tuesday. Seconds into Niu’s act, after she accessed the ladder to the top of her unicycle. She started to wheel forward, but the unicycle slipped out from under her.
Niu fell nearly seven feet. She braced her fall with her arm and landed on her buttocks. After what felt like hours, she stood up, bracing her arm, and walked to the baseline. The crowd cheered because she appeared to have avoided major injury.
After reaching the baseline, she sat back down, and EMS workers placed a brace on her arm and wheeled her into the back tunnels of the Target Center for further medical attention. Thankfully, it didn’t appear that Niu hit her head, and the fortitude she showed by walking off the Target Center court was nothing short of heroic after such a hard fall.
While the NBA community awaits a clear update on Nui, it’s essential to take a moment to not take things for granted. Nui has performed at dozens of Wolves games over the years, and most people assume she will perfectly execute her routine.
As is the case with all halftime acts, regardless of how expected they are, they are taking a risk to their safety. As Nui recovers from whatever injuries she sustained, remember that she performs a high-risk act so routinely that sometimes we take it for granted.
