Kyrie Irving says he got bitten by bed bugs at ‘haunted’ OKC hotel
Kyrie Irving saw just nine minutes of playing time in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Sunday stomping of the Oklahoma City Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena before bowing out late in the first quarter due to what the team called “flu-like symptoms.” As the three-time All-Star revealed Monday, though, the issue wasn’t that his stomach was turning; it’s that his skin was crawling.
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Like many teams that visit Oklahoma City, the Cavaliers stayed at the Skirvin Hilton, a downtown landmark that has become legendary over the years as the “haunted hotel,” where visiting players (and other guests) have reported strange noises and ghost sightings. As John Branch of the New York Times wrote in 2014, the story goes that the hotel’s haunted by Effie, who worked as a housekeeper in the early years of the hotel, became pregnant after having an affair with its owner, was forced to stay locked inside a room even after having the baby, and eventually lost her mind, grabbing the baby and jumping out a window, killing them both.
To hear Irving tell it, though, he wasn’t afraid of no ghosts. He was freaked out by bed bugs. From ESPN.com’s Dave McMenamin:
“As you can see I got it at the top of my head,” Irving continued, lifting up his baseball cap to show a bite mark on his forehead near his hairline. “It’s just like bed bugs and I didn’t get any sleep. We came into the game, then I was freaked out, then I started feeling nauseous so it was just a whole bunch of B.S. honestly.”
The three-time All-Star said none of his other teammates experienced any problems with bed bugs specifically, but added, “I know they had a pretty s—– night, though.
“But it is what it is. I feel like I got the worst of it. I wound up sleeping on the couch, waking up my back was tight. It was a long night two nights ago, I just wanted to get back home to Cleveland.”
Irving continued: “I got three hours (of sleep). Just imagine how freaked out you’d be if you saw friggin’ five, big-ass bed bugs just sitting on your pillow. I woke up itching and I’m just looking around and I’m like, ‘Are you serious right now?’ It was 3 a.m. and I was so tired at that point. It was, whatever.”
At first blush, Irving’s story sounded a bit off. Were these really bed bugs — the nasty little bloodsucking parasites that hide in all manner of cracks and crevices in sleeping areas before coming out to feed on folks at night — or just, y’know, bugs in his bed? (Which, to be fair, is more than freaky enough.) But a spokesperson for the Skirvin confirmed Monday night that Kyrie’s night vision was as sharp as his court vision, according to Erik Horne of The Oklahoman:
Jessica Dustin, Director of Rooms for The Skirvin Hilton, said the bed bugs were reported on Sunday morning. Dustin said inspectors confirmed that the infestation was isolated to one room, which will be out of commission for “several weeks” after multiple treatments.
“Unfortunately, every hotel at some point or the other has a case of the bed bugs,” Dustin said Monday night. “We were fortunate enough that he did report it to us immediately.”
Dustin would not disclose the floor of the contamination.
“We were very fortunate we were coming off a lower occupancy,” Dustin said. “We took the necessary steps to remedy the situation.”
A Skirvin spokesperson told ESPN.com’s McMenamin that an inspection found “it was an isolated case in the one room,” so, y’know, sleep tight, Skirvin dwellers!
Rested and refreshed after re-entering a bug-free sleep environment, Irving scored a Cleveland-high 30 points on 11-for-21 shooting with five assists and two steals in Monday’s home game against the Detroit Pistons. But with LeBron James seemingly wiped out (12 points on 5-for-18 shooting, six turnovers against five assists) and precious little punch coming from the bench, that wasn’t enough to overcome a balanced Detroit attack that featured six Pistons scoring in double figures in a 96-88 road win.
I’m glad Kyrie’s feeling fine and eager to put that unpleasant incident behind him. However, as a Brooklyn dweller who rolled snake eyes last summer and wound up having to fight off a bed bug infestation, I feel compelled to offer these free words of advice to the former No. 1 overall pick:
Take whatever you brought back with you from Oklahoma City (including the luggage), run it through a hot-wash/hot-dry laundry cycle, toss it all in black plastic garbage bags and keep it separate from the rest of your stuff until after you’ve had your local exterminators/pest control professionals come through and take a fine-toothed comb to wherever you’ve slept or sat for an extended amount of time since coming home. Do the work up front to nip this thing in the bud, my dude. You do not want to be dealing with repeat bed bug business in the weeks and months ahead while you’re trying to fend off the Toronto Raptors and hold onto the No. 1 spot in the East. Down that road lies madness, and many, many more sleepless nights ahead.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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