by Mike Lupica
He had a lot of red hair and even more freckles.
“But we’re not,” Lucas said.
“Probably all the way through high school,” Charlie said.
“Fine by me,” Lucas said.
Charlie grinned, then reached out and bumped Lucas some fist.
As small as Charlie was, the rest of his team was tall, and long. The Bulls’ next best player, after Charlie, was the guy Ryan would be guarding, Darrell Zimmer. Zim was built more like a tight end than a small forward. And he was fast. He could handle the ball outside if he had to, and was a bear underneath the basket. Ryan liked to say that when Zim had you boxed out, you felt as if you had to run around a city block trying to get a rebound. But Ryan loved the challenge of going up against him the way Lucas welcomed the challenge of going up against Charlie.
Gramps gathered the Wolves around him, right in front of their bench. As much as his grandfather could talk your ear off about basketball if you let him, he always kept his comments brief once there was a game about to break out. He liked to say that if he’d done a good enough job in practice, once they did get to game day, basketball would be exactly what it was supposed to be: the players’ game.
“Run when you can,” Gramps said. “Run our stuff in the half-court when we have to set up. And you all know what we’re going to do on defense.”
“See the ball,” Lucas said.
Sam Winston smiled then, as happy to be in this gym as they were.
“Where else,” he said to the Wolves, “would any of us rather be right now?”
Where the Wolves didn’t want to be, as things turned out, was down ten points to the Bulls by the end of the first quarter.
They were doing what Gramps had told them to do, fast-breaking when they could. They were running their basic sets in the half-court. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they weren’t making any shots, and the Bulls were making theirs. Simple as that.
It was like the announcers always said on TV: Basketball was a miss-make sport. And the Wolves were missing all over the place.
“We’re fine,” Gramps said when they were back at the bench after the quarter. “Our shots will start to fall. But until they do, let’s press those guys all over the court.”
He subbed in Neil for Sharif, and Liam O’Rourke for Richard. The Wolves got a little smaller in the process, but also got a lot more tenacious on defense. Gramps told Neil and Liam to double-team the ball every chance they got. And he told them to cover for Lucas when he took some chances and went for steals, even in the backcourt.
The press worked right away. The Wolves were the ones playing faster now, and more aggressively. Lucas did make a couple quick steals. The Wolves began the second quarter with an 8–0 run, and just like that, they were within a basket. When Lucas made another steal and fed Ryan for an easy basket, the game was tied.
Lucas gave a quick look over to the bench. Gramps just sat there with his arms crossed in front of him, looking the same way he had when they were falling behind. But the press had changed everything. The Wolves’ not-so-secret weapon had already made his presence felt, in the first half of the first game of the season.
The game was still tied at halftime. It was still tied at the end of the third quarter. Gramps had done plenty of substituting by then, experimenting with different combinations, as if letting the Wolves decide which five would be on the court at the end today.
But with two minutes left and the Wolves up by a basket, he called a time-out and put his five starters back into the game.
He looked down at the scoreboard, then back at the players sitting in front of him.
“Since the game does count,” he said, “and since the other team is Homestead, I can’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t haul off and win this thing.”
As Lucas started to walk back on the court with his teammates, Gramps gave a quick tug on his arm.
“That big kid guarding Ryan is gassed,” Gramps said.
He meant Zim.
“Make him defend the pick-and-roll every single time you can,” Gramps said.
“Got it,” Lucas said.
Lucas started to pull away. Gramps still had his arm. But he was grinning.
“If he can defend that thing,” he said.
The Wolves had the ball in the backcourt. Lucas brought it up. Charlie darted in a couple times, going for the steal. Lucas was ready for him. Lucas didn’t call out “Utah” as he crossed half-court. All he had to do was look at Ryan. They both knew.
Ryan knew. Zim knew. Charlie knew what was coming and so did Lucas.
Let them try to stop it.
Lucas angled to the right side when he got to the top of the key. He was right-handed. Charlie knew Lucas was more comfortable driving right with his dominant hand. But now Lucas crossed over and went left toward the free-throw line.
Ryan was there by then. Zim was behind Ryan, and jumped out as Lucas cleared Ryan, seeing that Lucas had a step on Charlie. So now it was Zim guarding Lucas, Charlie on Ryan.
Charlie had time to get in front of Ryan as Ryan turned for the basket, guarding him as closely as he could, knowing what kind of height advantage Ryan would have down near the basket if Lucas passed him the ball.
But Lucas caught Ryan’s eye. As he did, he tilted his head slightly to his right, telling Ryan to pop out behind the same three-point line they used in their league that players used in high school. He was telling Ryan to go for what the TV guys called the “dagger.”
Charlie, fast as he was, was slow to react when Ryan didn’t make a move for the basket, and ran out to the line instead. Lucas didn’t hesitate. He wheeled and hit Ryan with a chest-high pass. Ryan didn’t even need a dribble. He just put a pure shooting stroke on his shot, even holding his follow-through just slightly.
All net.
Now the Wolves were up by five, 39–34.
The Bulls came back and scored. But then Billy made a baby hook, his favorite shot. The Wolves were back up by five. Twenty seconds left. The Bulls tried to run a pick-and-roll of their own at the other end with Charlie and Zim, but Ryan fought through Zim’s screen, got a hand on the ball, slapped it over to Lucas, who beat everybody down the court. Only Lucas didn’t shoot the ball. They were under ten seconds now, and instead of driving all the way to the basket, he cut to the corner while Charlie chased him, then back toward half-court until the buzzer sounded, ending the game.
Sometimes when you were the open man, all you had to do was dribble out the clock.
They were 1–0.
SIX
Gramps treated the players to a pizza lunch in town at Gus’s. The Wolves took up two long tables in the back room.
While Lucas and Ryan waited for their pizzas to come out of the kitchen, Lucas told his friend it felt as if they were celebrating a championship, and not just the first game of the season.
“Fine by me,” Ryan said. “Sometimes I think it’s okay to celebrate the beginning of something the way you do the ending.”
“I thought you were just thinking about your first slice,” Lucas said.
“That too,” Ryan said. “Like you’re not?”
“What I’ve been thinking about is the way you waited until the exact right moment to pop out for that three-pointer,” Lucas said.
“You know I saw you give me the nod,” he said.
“And I knew you knew,” Lucas said.
“Gotta admit, though, the play was pretty chill,” Ryan said. “But if you really think about it, I was only open that much because of you.”
“How do you figure?”
“Zim decided he wasn’t going to let you beat them with a drive,” Ryan said. “So he overplayed right away. And then you beat them with the dish.”
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t make the shot,” Lucas said. “Plus, you’re a better shooter than I am.”
“In today’s game maybe,” Ryan said.
“Only game that matters right now,” Lucas said.
“But aren’t they always hungry?” Ryan’s mom said.
“Even when they’re sleeping, pretty sure.”
Gramps wasn’t sitting with Lucas and Ryan. He was at the head of the other table, his slice of plain pizza untouched in front of him. He was hunched over his napkin, smiling as he scribbled on it.
Ryan followed Lucas’s eyes over to where Gramps sat.
“What’s he doing?” Ryan said.
“I’ll bet you my allowance and yours that he’s diagramming a new play because of something that happened in the game today,” Lucas said.
“Not taking that bet,” Ryan said.
“Chicken?”
“We both know you’re right,” Ryan said. “I’m surprised that Xs and Os don’t come spilling out of his ear sometimes.”
Lucas grinned. “I think his hearing aid keeps them trapped inside,” he said.
Everything felt right today. They hadn’t just won their opener, they’d won a rivalry game. They’d beaten a team they knew they might face for the championship—again—if the season went the way they thought it would go, and hoped it would go. Had they played their best game? No one expected that in their first game. They sure hadn’t looked like much of a championship team in the first quarter. But they had fought their way out of that ten-point hole. Sometimes what mattered most in sports was overcoming something. It brought out the best in you.
When the game had ended Gramps had said, “Anybody can get knocked down. Heck, I used to do it all the time. There’s no trick in that. Any old crumbum can do that.”
It was one of his favorite words: crumbum.
“It’s how you get yourself back up after you do get knocked down, or even knocked back, that tells you plenty about yourself. And the other team, too.”
Lucas knew that Gramps’s wife—his grandmom—had died in a nursing home when Lucas was just two years old. But Gramps said he’d lost her years before that, and that by the time she finally passed, all her memories were gone. Just not his. He still called her his “best girl.”
Now he lived in an apartment within walking distance of Lucas and his mom’s house on Cypress. And while he didn’t have dinner with them every night, he had dinner with them most nights. Lucas’s mom said that the table just didn’t look right to her when it was set for two, instead of three. Julia’s own parents had moved to Oregon, on the other side of the country and what felt like the other side of the world, because her dad’s only brother lived out there. Lucas and his mom now visited them every other year. His other granddad would make sure that when they did come visit, he would get tickets to a Trailblazers’ game. His other grandfather was a basketball fan too. Just not the way Gramps was.
After Gus’s, Lucas and Ryan went back to Ryan’s house and watched college basketball, Georgetown against Villanova. But as soon as it was halftime Lucas suggested they go out in Ryan’s driveway and play a game of H-O-R-S-E.
“But it’s cold out there,” Ryan said. “And nice and toasty in here. And I’m just throwing this out there, but didn’t we just have a game?”
“Now we can have another game, just the two of us,” Lucas said. “You know you want to. You love playing H-O-R-S-E against me. Like I said, you’re a better shooter than I am.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, grinning. “I can’t argue with you on that.”
“Come on, it’ll be a blast,” Lucas said. “We can start getting ready for next Saturday’s game.”
It was a road game, against Essex.
“You look tired to me,” Ryan said, even though he knew he would end up losing this fight in the end. “You should rest.”
“After we play H-O-R-S-E,” Lucas said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of basketball?” Ryan said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of asking me that question?” Lucas said. “Because the answer is the same every single time.”
Ryan sighed loudly, got up off the couch, and headed up the stairs. Lucas already had his jacket back on.
“One game,” Ryan said.
“Promise,” Lucas said.
“And don’t pull that thing where when I win you make me stay out and keep playing until you can win,” Ryan said.
“When have I ever done that?” Lucas said, grinning to himself.
“Always!” Ryan said. “You don’t even want to stop playing when it’s dark out.”
There was still a lot of sun when they got outside, even though it would be December soon. But the day had gotten a lot colder since they’d left Gus’s, so they did some running around before they started, just to get themselves as warm as possible.
Lucas let Ryan shoot first. He used to just stand outside and fire away, because his outside shot really was more pure than Lucas’s. Just not anymore. Lucas hadn’t only been working on his outside shot at practice, and with Gramps at the park, he’d been doing it on his own driveway basket. He knew that the more dangerous he became with his outside shot, the more dangerous he became as a point guard. If the guy guarding him was afraid to give him space, it made it easier for Lucas to drive past him and create a shot for himself or one of his teammates.
Ryan got ahead early. Lucas came back with a couple left-handed floaters, which he knew always annoyed Ryan, because being better with his left hand, his off hand, was about the only edge he had out here.
But when they were finally tied at H-O-R-S, it was Lucas who stepped back all the way to Ryan’s mailbox, and buried two straight shots. Ryan matched the first, but not the second. Because it was game point, he got one last chance.
He missed again.
Ryan said, “I don’t like to make excuses when I occasionally do lose to you.”
“That would be so unlike you,” Lucas said.
“But I think my shooting arm was tired after I made that absolute bomb at the end against the Bulls,” Ryan said.
“Well, now you can rest it,” Lucas said, “because of those two absolute bombs I just made.”
* * *
By the time Lucas walked up the street from Ryan’s house to his own, Gramps was waiting for him. It meant he was waiting to talk about the game they’d won. If practice was his favorite thing about coaching, breaking down a game after it had been played was his next favorite.
Then came actually coaching the game.
Lucas pointed that out to him while they ate turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes and green beans.
“That press changed everything today,” Lucas said.
“Even I picked up on that,” Julia said. “The poor boys on the other team looked as if they’d been attacked by a swarm of bees.”
Gramps smiled. “Well, maybe that decision did tilt the game slightly toward us at that point,” he said.
“You think?” his grandson said.
Gramps picked up his water glass. As always, Lucas couldn’t believe how big his hands were, and how long his fingers were. They were old hands, and there were a lot of dark spots on them. But these were great, big basketball hands. When the old man was feeling frisky, he would palm a ball with one hand after he got one spinning on the index finger of the other.
“You boys still had to execute the press properly,” Gramps said.
“Yeah,” Lucas said, smiling. “I heard somewhere it’s a player’s game.”
“Well, it sure as heck isn’t a coach’s game,” Gramps said, “even though there’s a whole lot of coaches who act as if they invented basketball, instead of just putting their players in the best position to win the game.”
“Which is what you did today,” Lucas said.
“Eat your beans,” his grandfather said, “even though you’re pretty much full of beans already.”
“Wonder who he gets that from?” Lucas’s mom said.
“Must be your side of the family,” Gramps said.
After Lucas ha
d finished his apple pie, he said to Gramps, “Hey, we’ve been talking so much about the game I forgot to tell you guys about this cool writing project Mr. Collins gave us in English.”
He explained it, and how it couldn’t be a parent.
“Good!” Lucas’s mom said, sounding so relieved that she wasn’t going to be his subject that they all laughed.
Then she said, “Even though I sort of know what the answer to this question is going to be, gonna ask it anyway: Whose life story are you going to write?”
“Gramps,” Lucas said.
“Oh, come on,” Gramps said. “Can’t you find somebody more interesting than an old man?”
“First of all, you’re not old,” Lucas said.
Gramps turned to Lucas’s mom.
“When was the last time the boy’s eyes were checked?” he said.
“I want to write about you,” Lucas said. “I want to know more about your life. There’s got to be stuff you never told me.”
“I can’t even remember the things I want to remember,” Gramps said.
“C’mon,” Lucas said. “It’ll be a blast.”
He felt the way he did trying to persuade Ryan to go outside for a game of H-O-R-S-E.
Gramps smiled at Lucas now, and reached across the table with one of his old hands and squeezed Lucas’s shoulder.
“You know me as well as you need to know me,” he said, “even if I’m not as great as you think I am.”
“How do you know, Gramps?” Lucas said.
Gramps smiled and said, “Because nobody could be.”
He squeezed Lucas’s shoulder again, got up from the table, and limped out of the room.
“Let’s go watch some basketball,” he said.
They were always on safe ground, Lucas knew, with basketball.
SEVEN
Lucas looked at his mom. She put out her hands and shrugged.
“I thought he’d be happy,” Lucas said.
“Maybe it’s the memory thing,” she said. “You know he gets frustrated when he can’t remember things, and even embarrassed.”
“I know I could probably come up with another subject,” Lucas said. “But he’s the subject I want.”