Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball

by Charley Rosen

  During this last bit, CW seemed to be staring at Marwane Wright.

  Then CW coughed, and graced us with a reluctant, tight-lipped grin as he stepped back. When his assistants began applauding, we all followed suit.

  Then, as CW made a quick exit stage left, Lee stepped forward and consulted a list as he announced which of us should flip our reversible jerseys to show the yellow side, and which of us should stay red-shirted.

  All of the eight returning lettermen, plus LeVonn, constituted the Red team, while the Yellows numbered ten, which included all of us recruits plus three of the walk-on hopefuls.

  Then Lee ordered us to “double-time” down the hall and onto the gym floor, where Chad Brownley was waiting to warm us up. Five half-speed laps around the court, then a lengthy series of stretches before we were directed to form layup lines. That’s when every one of us showed off our power dunks.

  Elementary drills were next. Footwork. Defensive postures and slides. All kinds of reverse and crossover dribbles. One-footed changes of direction.

  Then Lee dummied us through our basic offensive set. A passing game. Pass and pick away. Pass and dive-cut. Down picks. High picks. Baseline picks. Weakside picks and curls.

  Basic high school stuff.

  The other assistants fetched loose balls, clapped their hands, and occasionally shouted, “Let’s go!”

  This lasted for nearly an hour before Lee picked five-on-five for an “anything goes” scrimmage. Only then did CW appear to sit on a raised chair set adjacent to the court. His feet were planted just out-of-bounds, with each foot on either side of the time line, and he held a battery-powered microphone in his hands.

  Maybe once every ten minutes he barked something out, and the metallic sound of his voice froze all the players.

  “Hey, Number Seven in yellow. Dive for the loose ball even if you have no chance of grabbing it. Hustle is its own reward.”

  “You, Number Ten in yellow. Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to box out?”

  An occasional whistle sounded as two of the other assistants adjudicated out-of-bounds situations. Otherwise, the Reds ran helter-skelter, making no effort to run anything resembling the offensive set Lee had demonstrated.

  While the three Red subs were periodically shuffled onto the court, the five substitute Yellows (including me) stayed glued to the bench. And for a while, the Yellows did attempt to follow Lee’s instructions, but soon fell into the wild playground pattern established by the Reds.

  Wright never passed the ball and only had eyes for the basket. And LeVonn was by far the best player on the court. Rebounding. Swatting shots. Even dunking on the run.

  Then we split up into two groups and practiced our free throws. Taking ten at a time. A foolish routine that does nothing to replicate how these shots are taken during a game. In high school, we’d each shoot two, then run full-court sprints until our turn came around again.

  Overall, the whole session was a monumental waste of time. Especially for me and the other spectating Yellows.

  From there, we double-timed to the weight room, where Brownley and three of his muscle-bulging underlings had us execute all kinds of lifts, from chest presses to bicep curls, from squats to leg extensions.

  After another hour of this, we were each given charts that recorded what we had lifted that day and how much the weights and reps would be expected to increase until the season started in four weeks.

  We then showered, dressed, and dispersed.

  Except for some aching muscles, I felt fresh enough to play a doubleheader.

  When I voiced my complaints to LeVonn over dinner, he just shrugged and said, “I thought it was a pretty good run.”

  Later, I fell asleep at my desk while trying to read Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

  When I finally roused myself and crawled into bed, I dreamed that I was a knight in shining armor being chased around a basketball court by a growling, coughing giant who was wearing black USA sweats.

  Chapter Seven

  More bullshit in my American History class, starting with Columbus, who “discovered” a land where about a million people already lived. And, of course, nothing was said about how he treated the natives in the Bahamas, his first landfall. Making them slaves, beating them, murdering some.

  What a hero!

  No mention either of the Father of Our Country being a slaveholder. Nor the fact that the holy Constitution counted slaves as being only three-fifths human.

  But after the brouhaha in English Comp, I kept my yap shut.

  Basketball practice wasn’t much better. Coach Lee was the only assistant who did much, and in fact he seemed to be the de facto head coach. So it was Lee who put in some more offensive sets.

  A big-men-up-small-men-on-the-blocks box set that had several options: down picks, cross picks, cross-down double picks, bigs ducking into the pivot, even some isolation sequences. I really liked this one.

  Also installed was a dumb-ass zone offense that featured some dive cuts and position exchanges but never generated any clean shots.

  As the preseason sessions got closer to our first game, it was clear that LeVonn would be starting at center. Plus, the starters and second-stringers became slightly more invested in running the half-court sets.

  As for me, and most of the other recruits?

  We went through the same boring drills, but with more enthusiasm and precision than the Reds. During the daily scrimmages we each got perhaps five minutes of playing time. It wasn’t until the last fifteen minutes of each session when CW left the premises that Lee sent the Reds to the showers and let us play.

  In addition, Lee spent much more time and attention correcting our mistakes and generally coaching us than he did with the Reds.

  All things considered, I had no doubt that I was in the wrong school at the wrong time. I should have listened to my father and gone to an Ivy League college.

  So I formulated a vague plan to transfer during the summer to . . . Yale? Princeton? Harvard? Penn? Brown? Dartmouth?

  Whichever was the farthest away from New York City.

  Furthermore, with the season looming, I came to several more unfortunate conclusions.

  Besides LeVonn, who had become a Red mainstay, there were only two other recruits who were the real deal. LaGerald Monroe, a transfer from some junior college in Kansas, who played the same position as me. The guy could shoot the lights on and off, but he couldn’t guard his own shadow. Nevertheless, he was appreciably better than Rodney Lopez, the backup shooting guard on last year’s team who hadn’t played much behind Marwane Wright. Sooner rather than later, Monroe would be awarded Lopez‘s meager playing time.

  Where did that leave me?

  I knew I was not quite the shooter that Monroe was, but I was a much better defender, passer, finisher in a crowd, as well as having a much higher basketball IQ.

  But Monroe had been an All-American during both of his two seasons in Kansas, so I guess he was considered to be more advanced than me. Which was bullshit.

  Okay, so would Lopez be the third-stringer at that position, which meant that I’d be the fourth shooting guard on the roster? Or would I jump ahead of Lopez? Either way, I would end up bench-bound and getting calluses on my ass.

  Once or twice, I tried to corner Lee and remind him of his inflated promises that had helped lure me to USA. No, they weren’t promises. They were outright lies.

  “We’ll talk later,” he’d say as he turned away and quickly vamoosed. But later never came.

  We (or rather they) played a bunch of nonconference patsies to open the season. Four blowout wins where the final margin ranged from 35 to 47 points. Despite the lopsided scores, each of the starters played at least thirty-five minutes.

  Nevertheless, CW’s pregame locker-room spiel for all of these games was identical: “Our biggest game of the year. Absolutely a
must-win.”

  Really?

  Why did USA play these sad-sack teams? And why were they willing to play us?

  Money.

  In addition to racking up four easy wins to pad our record, the USA athletic department was also paid $20,000 for hosting the Universities of Phoenix and New Mexico. For the 20K, the bozo ball clubs could brag to potential recruits that their respective basketball programs were big-time operations and were still growing.

  Two of these win-win games were played on the road, and USA received $50,000 plus expenses from East Texas, and California Baptist. Our presence ensured capacity crowds, wealthy alumni happy to make large contributions to their alma maters, and enormous exposure from the local media.

  But something strange happened on these road trips. For sure, the luxurious USA basketball bus as well as the college airplane featured large screens that showed game tapes of our next opponent, also comfy reclining seats with plenty of leg room, plus a gorgeous attendant in a minidress who served soft drinks and yummy snacks—all first-class arrangements that were probably better than the transportation used by NBA teams. And the hotels were likewise five-star quality.

  However, when Coach Lee handed out the room assignments in the five-star hotel in East Texas, I was astonished to see that Wright had a single room, while the rest of us were three to a room. Even back in high school, we were two to a room on our overnight stays.

  My roomies were LaGerald Monroe, the spot-shooting, JC All-American, and Rodney Lopez, the defensive-oriented holdover shooting guard. The three of us were basically competing for the five or six minutes of daylight behind Marwane Wright and had nothing to say to one another. Except to determine that, based on their edge in experience and a two-to-one vote, Monroe and Lopez slept in the two beds while I was delegated to sleep in the rock-hard bed that pulled out from the couch.

  I later discovered that we were indeed booked for doubles, but that tripling us left four empty rooms that had already been paid for. The hotel clerk then sold those four rooms to alums who had been on a waiting list, then split the money that USA had paid for those same rooms with Lee. All told, Lee pocketed about $600 from each of these early-season trips.

  T even crazier than I expectedScreaming every time the home team scored no matter what the score was, half of them with their faces painted in their school’s colors, terrible horn-bleating bands, beautiful cheerleaders with muscular legs and bouncing breasts, a game-long explosion of noise and madness.

  But I did have a good courtside seat to see Wright put up 30-plus points, mostly on unopposed layups and dunks—and to watch LeVonn record at least a dozen points and 15 rebounds, and routinely swatted erstwhile layups into the stands.

  However, I was shocked by CW’s behavior while sitting in his raised, cushioned chair, which also accompanied us on road trips. In his right hand he held the tightly rolled game program, which he tapped against the palm of his hand for the entire game. Meanwhile, he cursed the refs when even the most righteous calls went against us. Worst of all, he talked to each and every opposing player who chanced to pass close to our bench,

  “You, Number Fifteen. You’re a shitty player.”

  “Hey, you! You’re so fucking bad you could never play for me.”

  “Number Ten, my trainers are better than you!”

  Another saint with bullshit on his shoes.

  Back at USA, I wasn’t at all surprised when LeVonn starting eating his meals with his fellow Reds.

  So I decided to chow down in the “civilian” section of the dining hall. All by my lonesome. Until, that is, some rail-thin, bearded hippy-looking dude approached me with his faded Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirt, his multipatched jeans, and his tray loaded with greens and beans. A refugee from a fantasyland where Rolling Stone was both the bible and the national anthem.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “Ain’t you on the basketball team?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then how come you ain’t in there with the rest of the jocks?”

  “I don’t like eating bullshit burgers.”

  “Ha! I can dig it. Mind if I join you?”

  I wiggled my eyebrows and said, “Why? Am I coming apart?”

  He laughed as he sat down opposite me. “I get it! Groucho Marx! Man, you’re all right.”

  So that’s how I met Jason Scott, and temporarily became more of a stoner than a hooper, and more of a swordsman than a jump shooter.

  I mean, why shouldn’t I make the best of such a fucked-up situation?

  You dig?

  “Yeah. It’s me . . . Fine. Everything’s just fine and dandy. Couldn’t be better . . . no. I’m sorry. . . .”

  Chapter Eight

  Turned out that Jason was the go-to drug dealer in B Dorm, but since I was “a righteous jock,” he freebied me all the weed I cared to smoke. And I did righteously avoid getting stoned before practices and games. Although Jason routinely conducted his business in his room, he was careful to make sure I was elsewhere whenever his deals went down.

  And even though the school had a zero-tolerance policy toward drug use, Jason wasn’t worried.

  “No sweat, man. I give the dorm monitor a free zee every week, a juicy bag with no seeds or stems. And, as you can see, I stuff a wet towel under the door and one above it so the smoke and the smell don’t leak into the hall. And my roomie’s my runner, man. So I got it all doped out. Dig it? I got the dope doped out.”

  I most often turned on with him and some of the other dopers on the football field at night. “Don’t worry,” Jason told me. “None of these dudes will turn you in ’cause they’re just as vulnerable to getting kicked outa here as we are. I mean, if you can’t trust a weed buddy, then who can you trust?”

  In addition to his seemingly endless supply of pot, Jason was a good stoner partner because he had a high-trilled laugh that was infectious, and he had lots of funny stories. Like the night before a game when he and a couple of his friends got into the football team’s locker room through a window that was left unlocked by a dopie who was one of the trainer’s student interns.

  “We put red-hot pepper powder in all of the jock’s jocks. When the powder kinda melted, like when they were warming up before the game, alla them guys were hopping around like their dicks was on fire. When they finally figured it out, they had to delay the start of the game while the dudes ran into the locker room, washed their dicks, and got new jocks. They got penalized fifteen yards for delay of game. They claimed it was food poisoning, but it’s still a secret about what really happened.”

  Then he’d do an imitation of a player with hot nuts.

  Jason was a sociology major in his junior year who was well acquainted with my brainiac roomie.

  “Man, that’s one nutty, fucked-up dude. Some of his chinko buddies are my best customers, but him? He’s a straight arrow.”

  Just to be sociable back in high school, I had smoked an occasional joint at a few parties, but my obsession with basketball had kept me straight. However, under Jason’s game plan, I soon discovered there were several advantages to my newly developed stoner stance.

  I was much more relaxed during practice sessions, and although I still hadn’t appeared in any of the games, during the intrasquad scrimmages my shots were falling, my passes were on-target, my defense was tight, and I was having a good time.

  The intensity of my focus in classes and in my studying greatly increased. Everything was interesting. Even the fact that the ideal temperature for a locker room was 72 degrees.

  To augment my studying, I also lit up before our bus and plane trips to road games. Somebody had taken notes during the classes I had to miss, then typed them up, printed them out, and put them in my mail box. Reading somebody else’s view of what the teachers had said was more interesting than it would have been had I been straight.

  Also, Jason set me up with several willin
g girls, including one cheerleader, who all loved to smoke and fuck. My being a bona fide ballplayer seemed to make me particularly desirable to them. Jason also had the key to an empty room in Dorm A, where I spent several nights “making the beast with two backs.”

  Then, one fateful rainy postpractice afternoon, Jason’s roommate had the flu and the otherwise empty room in Dorm A was occupied by a shortstop and his babe. So, in desperation, we went up to my room in the slim hope that Brainiac was elsewhere—which he was, so that’s where we got high.

  “Here’s another one,” Jason said. “I mean, I usually don’t like jocks. Present company not included. But especially I hate football players. Right? So, you know those little containers, whatever the fuck they’re called . . . ? The ones with the spouts on the bottom that are filled with . . . I think it’s Gatorade? With plastic cups stacked up next to them? So the football dudes can get a drink during games? Well, I got one of my customers to dose the tanks with this stuff called Dulcolax, right? It’s one of them diuretics, but he could only do it for a practice. So, since it was a really hot day, guys couldn’t get enough to drink. Then, guess what? They started shitting in their—”

  Suddenly the door was unlocked, and in walked Phillip Brianiac with a big bag of Mickey D’s. Even as the wet towel above the door fell on his head, he gave us one look, sniffed once, then left.

  “Oh, shit,” said Jason. “Let’s get the fuck outa here, pronto.”

  Three days later there was a message from the dean of students in my mailbox. I was thereby summoned to a specially convened session of the Ethics Committee, which was composed of three students and three faculty members. They would address the charge that I had “imbibed illegal drugs” in Room 313 in Dormitory B at 7:35 p.m. on Thursday, November 10. In the face of a sworn statement by an anonymous eyewitness, I would be questioned as to whether there was any reason why I should not be expelled as per the school’s zero-tolerance drug policy.