by Mike Lupica
They were down four.
Two minutes left.
Corey beat the trap, started backing Lucas down again, on the left side. But this time Lucas didn’t just hold his ground. He read the rhythm of Corey’s dribbling perfectly, reached in at the perfect moment, knocked the ball away from him. Sharif grabbed it at the free-throw line. Almost without looking, he threw the ball down the court like a football quarterback, hitting Billy right in stride. Billy was the one making a layup now.
They were down a basket.
Twenty seconds left, the game tied, the Wolves ended up with the ball after Corey missed a wide-open jumper. Ryan got the rebound. Lucas brought the ball up. Gramps didn’t call a time-out. He just signaled for them to play.
Lucas and Ryan tried to run one more pick-and-roll. But Corey and Max were ready for it. Max blew up the screen. Corey stayed on Lucas. Ryan had no clear path to the basket.
Six seconds.
Five.
Lucas knew he was outside his range. Corey was right up on him. But there was no choice but to put the ball up.
He stepped back, the way Steph Curry did.
He got the ball up and over Corey’s outstretched arms. Lucas used all the strength he had in him to do that, actually ending up on the floor after he released the ball.
He was sitting on the floor, leaning around Corey to see, when he saw the ball go through the net.
Wolves 56, Jazz 55.
One last time, Lucas got up.
The next day, Gramps got knocked down again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nearly sixty years later, there was another story about the Ocean State Bisons in the Los Angeles Times.
Lucas’s mom was the one who told him, because the story had popped up on her phone. Without telling him, she had been doing some research of her own about Gramps and his teammates and the scandal, trying to find out if there really was more to the story. So she had set a Google alert. If there was a mention anywhere about the Bisons, she found out about it right away.
She got the alert on Gramps on Sunday morning.
The story wasn’t really about him. It was really about Tommy Angelo, who was eighty years old by now and close to dying.
“He’s living in an assisted living facility outside Los Angeles,” Julia told Lucas after she’d read the story. “It’s where elderly people who can’t take care of themselves on their own end up.”
Somehow the reporter had found Tommy Angelo through his wife. She sat in on the interview, because Tommy didn’t remember things as well as he once had. But the story talked about what he had done when he was at Ocean State, how he’d been the player who ended up in prison along with a couple of the gamblers involved, what he’d done with his life after prison, finally ending up working as a church custodian. The story also mentioned that two players who’d taken money to manipulate the point spreads, had died a long time ago.
Lucas’s mom showed him the story. Lucas read it, and saw that in the middle, the reporter mentioned that a fourth player, Joe Samuels, was now living in Claremont, having changed his name to Sam Winston.
Mr. Winston, it said in the story, had declined to be interviewed about what the players had done, and the life he’d led since Ocean State.
“It was all my fault,” Tommy Angelo said down near the bottom of the story in the Times. “But they never forgave me.”
Lucas and his mom sat at the kitchen table. After Lucas had finished reading, he read it again.
“He never said anything to me about getting a call from a reporter,” Lucas’s mom said. “What about you?”
“I would’ve told you,” Lucas said.
She closed her laptop. Lucas imagined her shutting a door by doing that, making the story just go away. But he knew that wasn’t happening.
“Do you think Gramps knows about this?” Lucas said.
“Maybe the reporter gave him a heads-up,” his mom said, “and gave him one more chance to comment.”
“But he might not know,” Lucas said.
“He certainly won’t know by seeing a story online,” she said. “The only paper he reads is the Claremont Telegraph, and only when it’s in his hands.”
“He’s going to find out,” Lucas said.
She blew out some air, loudly, and ran a hand through her long hair.
“I’m afraid everybody is about to find out,” she said.
Lucas’s phone blew up for the rest of the day, but he didn’t answer any of the calls, or return any, not even the ones from Maria. His mom had been right, of course. By the time he was back in school the next day, everybody knew. His classmates knew. His teammates knew. So did their parents. He felt as if the whole world knew.
So did Gramps’s paper, the Telegraph. They ran a story of their own about the one in the Los Angeles Times. And the news that Gramps had wanted to stay buried in the past was bigger than ever.
TWENTY-NINE
I tried to text you a bunch of times yesterday,” Ryan said as they were walking to their first class.
“I know.”
“You didn’t hit me back.”
“I didn’t hit anybody back,” Lucas said, “even though I did feel like hitting something a few times.”
“So is it true?”
“It’s true,” Lucas said.
He hadn’t taken the bus today. His mom had driven him to school, so they could talk one last time about all the questions he was going to get, the way she was sure his friends were going to react, how he should handle it.
“You can’t hide from this,” she said.
“I’m not hiding,” he said.
“And you have to remember, you didn’t do anything,” she said.
Lucas answered her by quoting Mr. Collins, who’d told him that sometimes other people’s choices affected your own, whether you liked it or not.
They had tried calling Gramps all day Sunday. They had driven over to his apartment and rung his doorbell. Nobody had answered. His car wasn’t in its usual parking space on the side of his building. Lucas’s mom told him that as soon as she dropped him at school, she was going to take another ride back over there.
“Your grandfather really did all that wack stuff?” Ryan said. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t my place to tell anybody,” he said. “He never told me until I found out.”
“Usually you tell me everything,” Ryan said.
Lucas managed to smile, if not for long. “No,” he said. “Most of the time you tell me everything.”
Ryan said, “My mom thinks this is going to be a big deal with the people who run town basketball.”
It was something else Lucas had discussed with his mom, what the fallout might be with the Wolves.
“She thinks they might want another coach to finish the season,” Ryan said.
“Does she want that?” Lucas said.
“She doesn’t,” Ryan said. “But she thinks they might fire him.”
From his room after they’d had an early dinner, Lucas heard his mom on the telephone in the kitchen for nearly an hour. She wasn’t a board member herself for Claremont Basketball. But she knew just about everybody who was.
When she finally was off the phone, she came up to his room.
“They were actually more reasonable than I thought they’d be, and a lot less hysterical,” she said. “They all feel as if they got blindsided by this news.”
“So what did they decide?” Lucas asked.
“They didn’t decide, as a matter of fact. Just about everybody I spoke to mentioned that it’s Christmas, and even if they do end up voting to fire Gramps, they don’t want to do it during Christmas. And they’d all like to hear from him before they make a decision.”
“Did anybody try to call him?”
“A bunch of them did. They did as well reaching him as we have,” his mom said.
“Is Gramps still in Claremont, even?” Lucas said.
“Kiddo,” she said. “Your guess is as good as mi
ne.”
She sat next to him on his bed and put an arm around him.
“But if he is still in town,” she said, “isn’t he supposed to be at your last practice before Christmas tomorrow night?”
“He said he wanted to have one last practice before our break even though there’s no game next Saturday,” Lucas said. “That was after the Jefferson game. He said he wanted to have us be together one more time before we went on vacation.”
She kissed him and left his room, shutting his door behind her as she did.
Where was he?
What was he feeling, being in the newspaper like this all over again, like he was one more page in Lucas’s dad’s scrapbook?
Lucas was just finishing his homework when he heard the doorbell, and yelled to his mom that he’d get it. When he got downstairs and opened the door, he saw Ryan standing there.
“Sorry I didn’t call first,” Ryan said.
“No worries,” Lucas said. “I just finished my homework.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Ryan said.
“You finish your paper?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“Dude,” Lucas said. “You know it’s due the day after tomorrow, right?”
“You think I don’t know that?” Ryan said.
They headed up to Lucas’s room. As they passed his mom’s room, they heard her say, “Hey, Ryan.”
Ryan said, “Sorry about everything that’s happened with Coach, Mrs. Winston.”
“Not as sorry as we are,” Lucas’s mom said.
When they were inside Lucas’s room, it was Ryan who closed the door. And got right to it.
“You have to help me finish my paper,” he said.
“You know I can’t do that,” Lucas said.
Ryan sat at Lucas’s desk. Lucas was on the bed, cross-legged.
“If you’re really my friend, you’ll do this,” Ryan said.
“We already talked about this,” Lucas said. “You know you have to do this on your own.”
“I know what Mr. Collins said,” Ryan said. “I want to know what you say.”
“I can’t help you,” Lucas said, “not this time.”
“If you don’t,” Ryan said, “I’m going to get a bad grade. And when I do, I’m off the team. You always say you’ll do anything to help the team. Well, you can help the team now by keeping me on it.”
“If I do what you want,” Lucas said, “it won’t just be us who know. Mr. C. will know.”
“It won’t be like last time,” Ryan said. “I’ll change things, I promise. Dude, I’m, like, begging you.”
He thought Ryan might cry.
“I can’t,” Lucas said.
“You mean you won’t,” Ryan said.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I thought I was being a good friend and a good teammate before. But all that did was get us both into trouble.”
Ryan stood up. So did Lucas. They were only a couple feet away from each other, neither willing to back up.
“Fine,” Ryan said. “Start getting used to the idea of passing somebody else the ball when we get back from break.”
“You don’t know that’s going to happen,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, I do,” Ryan said. “I might not be much of a writer. But I can still read. I read my own paper before I came over here. And it still stinks.”
“Maybe you should do a different paper,” Lucas said. “There’s still time.”
“That’s your brilliant idea?” Ryan said. “I should start all over again, with a different subject, with a little over a day to go? Yeah, that’s gonna work.”
Ryan shook his head. His face was red.
“This is your idea of being my friend?” Ryan said. “Seriously?”
And suddenly Gramps’s voice was inside Lucas’s head, telling him that character was something you showed even in an empty room. His bedroom wasn’t empty, but in this moment he understood what Gramps had meant.
“I am your friend,” Lucas said.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Ryan said.
He turned and walked out of the room. Lucas heard Ryan saying good-bye to his mom. Then the sound of the front door closing.
Now he was alone in his bedroom. He was the one making a choice that affected somebody else. He just hoped it didn’t cost him a friend. And a teammate.
But if he’d acted differently, he would have lost a lot more.
THIRTY
To Lucas’s great surprise, after having not heard from him since the Wolves’ last game, Gramps did show up at practice the next night.
He was moving slowly. He seemed to be limping even more than usual. He didn’t joke around as much with the guys while they were shooting around, and said nothing at all to Lucas.
But he was there.
When they were finished with their warm-ups, he called the players out to where he was standing at mid court.
“Pretty sure you boys are old enough to have heard the expression about an elephant in the room,” he said. “Well, guess what? Tonight I’m that elephant. Except I’m not invisible, much as I’d like to be these days. I’m standing right here in front of you.”
Neil was the one who spoke up first.
“Is it true about you, Mr. Winston?” he said. “What we read?”
“Yes, it is,” Gramps said without hesitation. “That boy they wrote about in the newspaper, I used to be that boy.”
“So you did those things?” Sharif said.
“I did,” he said. “But it wasn’t worse than what I didn’t do, which was stop ’em from happening.”
Billy raised a hand, as if they were all in class, and he were asking permission to speak.
“Are you sorry?” he said.
“Sorry for who I was,” he said. “But it’s a funny thing: I’m who I am now because of who I was.”
There was a ball on the floor right in front of him. Gramps leaned down, groaning just a little as he did, picked it up, and rolled it around in his hands. Lucas thought there might even have been just a hint of a smile on his lips as he did.
“I’m sure you’ve got more questions than the ones you’ve asked,” he said. “But this is probably the last time we’re going to be together for a while. And just because there’re no guarantees in this world, it might be the last time we might ever be together.”
Is he going to quit? Lucas thought.
He told me he didn’t quit.
“My grandson Lucas here,” he said, “he told me I’d been dishonest with him when he found out who I was, and what I’d done back there in college. And I suppose there’s something to that.”
He stopped talking then, and spun the ball on the index finger of his right hand.
“But since I made the terrible mistakes I made, I believe I’ve led an honest life,” he said. “And I know I’ve been honest with you boys about what I believe makes you the best players you can be, and maybe even the best people.”
He looked at them all now, one face at a time.
“So while I will apologize to all of you for what I did,” he said, “I won’t ever apologize for who I am.”
He looked at their faces, one after another, all over again.
“I just want you all to know how proud I’ve been to be your coach,” Gramps said.
He nodded. Lucas didn’t say anything. Neither did any of the other Claremont Wolves.
“Now let’s play some basketball,” he said.
They did. When they were finished, after what Lucas thought might have been the best practice game of the whole season, Gramps did drive him home. When they were in front of the house, he told him he was going away for a little bit, and didn’t know when he’d be back.
“Where are you going?” Lucas said.
“It’s like everything else, son,” he said. “If I wanted you to know, I’d tell you.”
Then he turned in the front seat and put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder and said, “Merry Christmas,” and smiled one more ti
me.
Just not his Santa Claus smile.
THIRTY-ONE
Gramps was not back for Christmas.
It was just Lucas and his mom. She got him a new pair of Stephen Curry Under Armour sneakers that she told him to have broken in for the last few games of the season, or else. There were some new school clothes, too. And a Celtics hoodie. And two Chip Hilton books Lucas had never read.
Lucas used allowance money he’d saved up to buy a new picture frame that Maria helped him pick out. Inside it was a photograph he’d found in the attic, one of his dad and his mom from high school, Dad in his Claremont High uniform, his arm around her, both of them smiling, as if they really were going to live happily ever after, forever.
She cried when she unwrapped it.
“I told Maria this was going to happen,” Lucas said.
“Good tears,” she said. “We’ve talked about them before.”
“I still don’t believe good tears are a real thing,” he said.
“Well, you’re wrong,” she said.
The Chens invited them for Christmas dinner. After dinner was over, Maria watched the second-to-last NBA game on television with Lucas and Neil before it was time for Lucas and his mom to leave.
When they were back home, Lucas said, “I can’t ever remember having a Christmas without him.”
They both knew who he was talking about.
“It’s because you’ve never had one without him,” she said.
“Where do you think he is?” Lucas said.
“I wish I knew,” she said.
“You think he’s gone for good?” he said.
“Even after everything that’s happened,” she said. “I don’t thing he’d leave for good without saying good-bye.”
It wasn’t just Gramps who had disappeared. Ryan had done the same thing, pretty much. Lucas hadn’t seen him, or talked to him since last Wednesday, when Ryan had delivered his paper to Mr. Collins.
Lucas had asked Ryan about the paper, but he said he didn’t want to talk about it. When Lucas pressed him, and asked if he was happy with it, Ryan just said, “All that’ll matter is if Mr. Collins is.”
Then he’d sat by himself on the bus ride home. Maybe he was still angry at Lucas for not going against Mr. Collins’s wishes, and helping him out. Maybe he was already expecting the worst when he got the paper back, and was already starting to blame Lucas if he didn’t get to finish the season, as if somehow this was all Lucas’s fault.