A Reddit user has gone viral after suggesting that their favourite basketball team lost a game because of a Ghost show that took place in the same arena shortly before.
On January 23, the Orlando Magic suffered a 97–124 defeat against the Charlotte Hornets on their home turf of the Kia Center, in a loss so dramatic and embarrassing that Sports Illustrated said the Florida team were “completely dismantled”.
Two nights beforehand, the Kia Center had played host to a different form of entertainment: Swedish Grammy-winning heavy metal band Ghost put on a show there as part of the North American leg of their ongoing Skeletour world tour.
A playfully sacrilegious bunch with lots of Satanic lyrics and a frontman who used to dress up as a skeletal pope, their performance rattled one Kia Center employee, who took to social media after the Magic loss to suggest that the hard rock heathens had something to do with it.
In a since-deleted post in the Orlando Magic subreddit with the title ‘Kia Center Needs Holy Water’, they wrote: “So I work at Kia. The night before [sic] we got blown out by Charlotte there was a concert there by this rock band called Ghost & I'm not even exaggerating super satanic vibes. Devil imagery, stained-glass church setup, chanting ‘Lucifer,’ all types of weird shit I'm not into at all. I was mad as hell I was forced to sit through that lol”
They added that, possibly, “whatever energy [the band] left in the building carried over into the game because there’s no other explanation for how bad we looked. Is this a valid excuse or are we just inconsistent af?”
The post may have been in jest, given the user tagged it with the term “shitpost” when they made it, but that hasn’t stopped it from spreading, nor Ghost fans from poking fun. A screenshot was shared in the band’s own subreddit, where it received more than 800 up-votes in one day. One user who attended the Orlando show claims to have seen people who were actually annoyed, as well.
“I saw some employees look upset at some songs,” they write, “and when I was walking to my car some employees were complaining about having to work the show. I didn’t have good interactions with a few during the show too.”
Ghost’s tour has also been somewhat cursed. Three dates had to be cancelled over the weekend due to the effects of an intense winter storm. However, things are set to pick back up tonight (January 28) at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut and carry on as planned. Hopefully no more basketball teams will be adversely affected as the shows continue.
Orlando Magic sucks at basketball. Kia Center employee blames Ghost. from r/Ghostbc
