Foul Trouble

by John Feinstein

  Terrell shrugged. “So? I had places like Texas and Notre Dame on my list, and when I had to cut down, they didn’t make the cut.”

  “Yeah, but I remember Alex telling me specifically that he didn’t want a school where almost every guy was one-and-done. You know who’s on his list now? Kentucky, Atlanta, Memphis, Mass State, and Mississippi State. The only one on that list that isn’t a one-and-done type school is Mass State.”

  “Atlanta?” Terrell said. “No one mentioned to me at U of A that he’d visited.”

  “He hasn’t, not officially,” Danny said. “Next week. The kid’s got like a three-point-six GPA and he’s not interested in Vanderbilt? Doesn’t sound like he’s looking for a great education.”

  There was an announcement calling their flight.

  “Harvard is still where you should go,” Terrell said to Danny. “It would make your dad so happy.”

  “It also might make him broke,” Danny said. “It’s hard to pick a place that’s not offering you a scholarship. Though I’ve heard they have great financial aid.… Oh, we’ll see. Maybe you can go with me when I visit?”

  “No need—I’m sure it’s exactly like the U of A.” Terrell laughed. “Though I’m willing to bet there’s not a single girl there named China or Destiny.”

  Terrell reported on his Atlanta visit to his mother that night. He was glad to be able to talk to her without Coach Stephenson around.

  “It sounds like a place you’d have fun,” his mom said when he had finished. “It also sounds like we have to decide if you’re choosing a college or a basketball team.”

  Terrell was a little shocked. “I didn’t think that was a question for you.”

  His mom nodded. “I know. But I’m trying to keep an open mind. I mean, I’ve been thinking of basketball as your ticket to a great college, a great education. But all this attention you’ve been getting…”

  “What are you saying?” Terrell was almost afraid to know.

  “I guess I never saw the NBA as a real option before. So few people can really play at that level.… But I’m beginning to believe you could. If you want to. Is that what you want, Terrell? To play professional basketball?”

  “Well, yeah, of course…,” Terrell answered. He’d certainly fantasized about it anyway.

  His mom took a deep breath. “Okay. Well. Then maybe we should be asking ourselves which school—which team—will help you achieve that goal.”

  Terrell’s head was spinning. Had he been leaning toward the more academically oriented schools and going for four years because he thought it’s what his mom wanted? Or was it what he wanted?

  Did he have to decide right now?

  No, he thought. Not really.

  “Mom, that’s the thing about Duke. There I can get both a great coach and a great education. I can keep my options open.”

  His mom smiled. And did she look a bit relieved? “That makes sense,” she said. “But let’s keep our word to Barrett and go through the entire process before making a decision. There’s no way that can hurt. Maybe you’ll go to Mass State next weekend and love it and decide to stay close to home.”

  Then she grinned and said, “Or maybe that girl Destiny will call you and convince you to go to Atlanta.”

  Terrell rolled his eyes. “For a date maybe.”

  The next week was the most fun Terrell could remember having since Lexington’s march to the state championship game the previous spring. There was no doubt that the Minutemen were good, and the addition of a sophomore forward named James Nix was clearly going to make them even better. As a player, Nix reminded Terrell a lot of Jay Swanson: a very good shooter who was able to run the floor very well. The difference was that he clearly wanted to be part of a good team and was willing to work on defense and try to fit in with his new teammates.

  Not surprisingly, Coach Wilcox wasn’t oohing and aahing about his team’s play at practice. Even if he thought he was coaching the greatest team in the history of high school basketball, the last thing he would do was tell his players that. He didn’t need anyone thinking they were unbeatable a month before the first game.

  And there was a lot to work on. Terrell had played most of last season in the low post, with his back to the basket, largely because he was too quick for most big men to guard there. But his perimeter game had improved so much during the summer that it would be silly not to use him that way too. Coach Wilcox had put in a series of plays built around screens on the baseline that freed Terrell up in the corners and out on the wing. From there he had two options: shoot if he was open or, if he found himself double-teamed, get the ball back to Danny or Nix on the perimeter.

  As sound as that offensive strategy was, it was an adjustment for everyone, especially Danny, who was used to looking for Terrell in the low post and having space to himself outside.

  On the night before Terrell was scheduled to make the drive to Mass State, he and Danny took James Nix out for a getting-to-know-you dinner at Nettie’s, which was a local staple known for their pizza. Danny and Terrell both liked the pizza, but they also really liked the waitresses who delivered them.

  After they had ordered, Nix held up his iced tea to deliver a toast: “To you two guys, for letting me be part of this team.” He turned to Danny. “And especially to you, Danny, for not getting upset with your father for changing the offense.”

  Terrell could see that Danny was caught off-guard. “How’d you know we changed our offense?” he said.

  “When I knew I was moving here, I asked your dad if he had some tape from last season. I figured it would be good to know how you guys played. From what I saw, you had a lot more space to do your thing last year because Terrell was always near the basket. Now you’ve got to share that space and make more decisions. It isn’t just, ‘Get the ball in to Terrell’ anymore.”

  Terrell grinned. They rarely encountered another player who thought the game through the way Danny—who had learned from his dad since he was little—did.

  Danny took a sip of his drink and nodded. “Yeah, it is a little bit tougher,” he conceded. “But we’re a better team this way.”

  “True. But it makes it harder for you to show the college coaches what you can do.”

  Danny shook his head. “Now, that you’re wrong about,” he said. “Running an offense that relies on just dumping the ball to the best player in the country isn’t that challenging. I may get fewer shots this way, but it will show coaches I can adapt and make decisions on the fly.”

  Terrell nodded. “One thing you’ll find out, James, if you’ve got skills, Coach’ll find a way to use ’em. He knows Danny can run a more complicated offense. And that I need more variety in my game.”

  “Is that why he’s your number one adviser about where to go to college?” James asked.

  “Who said that?” Terrell said.

  “I’ve read it,” James said. “In fact, a lot of the scouting services say that some college coaches have been frustrated because they don’t think they’ve been given a fair shot at you—it seemed like they were implying Coach Wilcox was keeping them away.”

  “What would you expect the coaches who aren’t on his final list to say?” Danny said. “They have to be able to explain to their alumni and boosters that it isn’t their fault they don’t have a shot at Terrell.”

  James nodded. “Good point,” he said. “I gotta admit, I knew it would be a little bit crazy when I came here because of you, Terrell, but I never dreamed it would be like this.”

  Terrell was about to tell him about Destiny and China and friends when he heard someone calling his name. He looked up and saw Maurice and the dudes approaching the table. He was a little surprised—he hadn’t seen them much since school started.

  “Terrell. Long time no see, dude,” Maurice said, walking to the table, followed by the four other dudes and someone Terrell didn’t recognize. He gave Terrell a fist-bump and turned to James. “So is this the new guy I’ve heard so much about?”

  �
��It is,” Terrell said. “James Nix, Maurice Evans.”

  “Pleasure,” Maurice said, surprising Terrell by giving James an actual handshake. “Meet Chao, Anthony, Sky, Dante, and Felipe. Hey, Terrell, you haven’t met Felipe yet.”

  Terrell shook Felipe’s hand and introduced him to James and then to Danny—who was leaning back in his chair, glaring daggers at Maurice. When it came to the dudes and Danny, Terrell had a simple goal: keep Danny and Maurice from getting into a fight.

  Without even looking at Maurice, Danny shook Felipe’s hand and said, “So, Felipe, where are you from?”

  “New York,” Felipe said. “I’m goin’ to the community college over in Waltham.”

  “Really?” Danny said. “You have to be the first college student to ever hang out with this crowd.”

  Maurice gave a disgusted half laugh, half grunt. “Your boy here still thinks he’s the funniest guy in the room, huh, Terrell?”

  “I’m impressed, Terrell,” Danny said, still not looking at Maurice. “One of the dudes actually picked up on my humor. That’s pretty good.”

  “Come on, you guys,” Terrell said. “Let’s all try to get along this season, okay? No reason not to, right?”

  “Yeah, right,” Maurice said.

  At that moment, Laurie Walters, their waitress, arrived with their pizzas. “Hot stuff coming through!” she said, forcing the dudes to give her a path to the table.

  Laurie was a senior at Lexington, and Terrell had been trying to convince Danny to ask her out for almost a year. The two of them were always making eyes at each other. For now, though, that was as far as it had gone.

  “Hot stuff is right,” Maurice said as Laurie put the pizzas down.

  “Down, boy,” Terrell said lightly, seeing the look that crossed Danny’s face.

  “What, somebody got a problem with me noticing a little hottie when I see one?” Maurice said. He stepped into Laurie’s path as she was leaving the table. “You don’t mind it, do you, little hottie?”

  Before Laurie could do or say anything, Danny jumped from his seat and was in Maurice’s face. “Leave her alone, Maurice,” he said. “She’s not for you.”

  “Whoa, white boy. Did I hit a nerve?”

  “You want to see something hit, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  They were chest to chest. Terrell was pretty certain Maurice would back down. On the other hand, he knew Danny wouldn’t. Terrell quickly got between his best friend and Maurice. He didn’t want Danny to get in trouble for beating the crap out of him. “Cool it, would you? Maurice, do me a favor and just let us have our pizzas. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  It was Anthony who responded. “Yeah, all your days are big ones these days, aren’t they, Terrell? Too important to hang with your friends.”

  “He is hanging with his friends,” said Danny, who was still glaring at Maurice even though he had taken a step back.

  “Yeah, right,” Anthony said. “All of his friends these days are rich white people. Why is that, bro?”

  “Nah, man, it’s cool,” Maurice said, shaking his head. “We’ll catch you later, Terrell. Good luck with your ‘big day.’ ”

  The dudes all left, which was good, but Terrell felt bad. He could have sworn that tough-guy Maurice had looked kind of…hurt.

  TWENTY

  Mass State was about as different from the University of Atlanta as basketball was from hockey. It was almost rural, just a few miles from the Massachusetts-Vermont border, with trees everywhere—or so it seemed.

  “If you’re looking for big-city parties, this ain’t the place for you,” Jordan Augsburg, a junior from New York, said as they walked across the campus. Terrell had gone to the basketball office upon arrival and had been greeted by Augsburg and sophomore point guard Jerrell White. White was from LA and had been recruited by all the top schools, but he had chosen Mass State over UCLA at the last possible moment, stunning much of the basketball world.

  “That’s why I came here,” White said as they headed for the union building, where they were supposed to meet the rest of the team for dinner. Clearly, there would be no meals at Morton’s on this trip. “I just loved the quiet,” he continued. “It gets cold in the winter, but the snow is beautiful.”

  Augsburg laughed. “Says the guy from LA.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said White. “So I was pretty stoked about my first snowball fight.… And the skiing is awesome. We can go down to Springfield or Hartford if we want city stuff. But really, everything I want is right here.”

  “Yeah, you get used to it,” Augsburg put in. “Coach will make you work—I won’t lie to you. But if you work hard, there’s a lot of good that comes from that. Look what it did for us last season.”

  Mass State had made the NCAA Tournament the previous spring for the first time since it had joined Division I in 2001. It was one of the last four at-large teams into the field and had made it all the way to the Elite Eight before losing in overtime to Kentucky. Along the way, the Freedoms had become media darlings. Four seniors had graduated—Coach Todd always pointed out that they had, in fact, graduated—so this was a rebuilding year.

  “We’ll be better than people think this season,” Augsburg went on. “Next year, though…we get you, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

  Terrell couldn’t help but notice that everywhere he went, his arrival on campus was apparently going to change school history. That said, it might be more true at Mass State than at any of the other places he had visited. Duke and North Carolina had won multiple national championships and would always be top-ten teams. UCLA hadn’t won for a while but had more championship banners than any program in history. Atlanta and Mass State were the new guys on the block, but Terrell’s sense was that Mike Todd and his program would be around longer than Grant Hathaway and his program.

  After dinner, Augsburg and White drove Terrell to Coach Todd’s house, where he was introduced to everyone on the coaching staff and to their wives. There were a number of other people there too, some of them clearly boosters, but they all blended together in Terrell’s mind. There was no one who reminded him of China or Destiny.

  “We’ll talk more at breakfast tomorrow,” Coach Todd told him. “For now, I just wanted you to meet everyone and get a feel for what we’re about here.”

  At breakfast the next morning, it was just Terrell and Coach Todd. No assistants, no hangers-on—just the two of them. Coach Todd was waiting for him in the hotel lobby at eight o’clock, as he had promised, and they sat in a corner of the dining room and talked for almost two hours.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Terrell,” Coach Todd said. “If I was a high school senior and Duke or North Carolina recruited me, I’d have a tough time saying no to either one. They’re both great schools and they’ve got great coaches.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “But think about this. You can never mean as much to those places as you would mean to us. You go there and win four straight national championships, which even for a player as talented as you, isn’t going to happen—you’re still just building on what’s already been done.

  “You come here and you can be Mass State basketball. That’s no knock on the guys who have gotten the program to where we are right now. But none of them has your talent—they all know that. You can be to Mass State what Bill Russell was to the Celtics, what Michael Jordan was to the Bulls, what LeBron James should have been to the Cavaliers.”

  “Should have been?” Terrell was curious to hear what Coach Todd thought of LeBron.

  Coach Todd shrugged. “He left too soon—the job wasn’t finished. Coach Wilcox told me he believes you when you say you don’t want to be a one-and-done. If that’s true, I think you’ll stay here to finish the job. And with you here, I can recruit players who will make sure you do that.”

  It was heady stuff. Coach Todd had seemed nice enough in Terrell’s living room in Lexington, but there had been five other people there—two assistant coaches, Coach Wilcox, Coach Stephenson, and his m
om. Now it was just the two of them. Man to man.

  And somehow this felt more real than all the wining and dining of the previous weekend. The players here seemed more grounded than those at Atlanta or even at Duke or North Carolina, where, even though they went to class and graduated, they were given plenty of special treatment. Terrell could suddenly see the appeal of a quiet campus in the middle of nowhere.

  The rest of the weekend was great. Mass State didn’t have a football team, so the players took him to a soccer game, where they stood around on the sidelines for a half before deciding to take off. They went to a place called the Redcoat Inn, where they were greeted the same way Terrell and Danny were greeted at home in Lexington. They piled into a corner booth right next to a fireplace.

  The next few hours were full of story swapping. Everyone had recruiting stories to tell. Two of the players—Johnson Highsmith and Tony Alexander—had visited Atlanta. They weren’t surprised to hear about Destiny and China.

  “Mine were named Amber and Britney,” Highsmith said.

  “I think I had Lola and Tonya,” Alexander said.

  “You gotta admit,” Augsburg said, laughing, “you do remember them.”

  Terrell felt completely at home with the players. They went to a movie after dinner that night, and he had a farewell breakfast with all the coaches the next morning.

  “We aren’t going to call you or text you every day,” Coach Todd said. “You know what’s here for you. You know what you could mean to us and, I hope, what we could mean to you. I’ll only ask one thing of you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t sign early. I know most guys like to sign early because it gets the biggest decision of their lives behind them before the season starts. Sometimes it makes sense. But not for you. You became a star late, so you started your recruiting late. I know you’ve seen a lot, but I think you should wait and see who everyone signs with and how everyone’s season plays out.”