SAN ANTONIO — The batty occurrences at the AT&T Center continued Sunday with play delayed for the third time this season when a bat swooped onto the court during the third quarter of the San Antonio Spurs’ 121-114 win over the Milwaukee Bucks.
The scene reminded some Bucks players in the postgame locker room of a February quote to SB Nation made by center Brook Lopez, who welcomes the opportunity a bat sighting could bring.
“If you’ve learned anything from the modern superhero myth, if you see a bat around and it bites you, you have a 75 percent chance of ending up a superhero,” Lopez told SB Nation. “Otherwise, you’ll probably get really sick. But it’d be cool to be a superhero. You don’t need to be too afraid. I’d say give it a shot.”
Remembering Lopez’s remarks, both Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe sitting side by side in the locker room asked him where he was when the bat came onto the court.
“I was standing right there. It was swooping down on me. I made myself available,” Lopez said, spreading his arm wide while teammates laughed.
San Antonio’s mascot, nicknamed “Coyote”, immediately swooped down on the bat when it came out onto the floor, and dispatched it with a net. Celebrating a birthday during the game, the Coyote was also wearing a Batman costume when it caught the wayward bat as Bucks players such as All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bledsoe scurried in different directions to avoid contact with the animal.
Mama I got attacked today😔 #theundefeatedSanAntoniobatslol
— Eric Bledsoe (@EBled2) March 11, 2019
Bledsoe was asked what goes through his mind when he sees a bat flying his way: “Stay out the way. I was just trying to stay out of the way. That kind of scared me when they brought the little net catching things over there. I tried to get out of the way of that, too.”
Antetokounmpo, meanwhile, asked Lopez and the media assembled near his locker why San Antonio’s mascot “a Coyote and not bat.”
“Oh yeah, definitely [I was scared],” Antetokounmpo said. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen a bat up close. I’m scared of all the insects. I don’t like roaches. I don’t like ants. And if I don’t like that, I don’t like a bat. I tried to run away.”
Three bats delayed a Spurs game in January against the Phoenix Suns, and despite arena officials putting together a plan to stop another bat invasion, they weren’t able to prevent bats from delaying a February 2 matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans for nearly two minutes. Prior to that game, arena officials erected netting to capture bats flying over the court.
But the Coyote dispatched of the bats on Sunday against the Bucks and during the Feb. 2 game against New Orleans.