Foul Trouble

by John Feinstein

  Without even looking to see if Terrell had rolled away, Danny threw a semi-lob toward the middle of the key. He saw Terrell’s hand reach to grab it and a second later he was in the air, slamming the ball down with the authority Danny’s dad had demanded a moment earlier. And, as promised, he was fouled. The noise level doubled—the pleading became screeching.

  Danny glanced at the clock. There were 41.2 seconds left. As Terrell went to the line, he heard his father’s voice over the din. “If he makes it, call time-out,” he said.

  Danny nodded. Terrell swished the free throw, and Danny, standing next to one of the officials, called time. It was 41–39.

  “No fouls,” his dad said in the huddle. “There’s a six-second difference between the shot clock and the game clock. That’s plenty of time. You’ve got to play defense one more time and get the rebound. We have no time-outs left. Once we’ve got the ball, get into our scramble offense and take whatever shot is there—a two or a three. Got it?”

  They nodded. Danny’s heart was pounding so hard, he was afraid it was going to burst through his chest. He looked at Terrell coming out of the huddle.

  “When I get the board,” Terrell yelled in his ear, “be ready to get the ball from me and go!”

  Danny just patted him on the shoulder to let him know he understood.

  Allenson brought the ball up court and dribbled the clock down. Danny gave him room. The look on Allenson’s face told him he was surprised. Clearly, Waltham had expected them to foul. With the shot clock at 10 seconds, Kvancz shouted at Allenson, “Run red, Corey. Run red!”

  “Red” was almost a universal call. It meant the point guard was supposed to drive the ball at his defender and create space to get a shot before the clock went to zero. Danny dug in. Sure enough, Allenson came right at him as if he intended to drive the lane. Danny knew he wouldn’t do that because Terrell was back there. Sure enough, Allenson pulled up right at the three-point line and started to go into his shooting motion. Danny was there, hand up, getting as far off the floor as he could. He saw Allenson lean back just a tad to get the shot off over him. The shot-clock buzzer went off as the ball came out of Allenson’s hands.

  Danny saw the shot glance off the rim and right into Terrell’s hands as he outleaped everyone around the basket. Danny curled back and Terrell flipped him the ball.

  Everyone was sprinting in the other direction. Danny could see the clock slip from five to four as he put the ball on the floor and raced across midcourt. Allenson had come to cut him off. Danny faked as if to veer right and went left. He could see Terrell trying to race into position in the key, but there was no time for a pass.

  He couldn’t afford to look at the clock again, so he let his basketball instincts take over. As he neared the key, he knew he didn’t have time to dribble the ball more than one more time. He took as big a step as he could with that dribble, so he could step into his shot as he released it.

  Allenson, not wanting to foul him, flew past, arms flailing. Danny knew his body was squared to the basket as he released the ball and he heard the buzzer sound with the ball in the air. For a split second, it felt as if time had stopped, but Danny knew he had made the shot. He could tell by the way it felt when he released it. A photo in the newspaper the next morning showed him with his arms up while the ball was still en route to the basket.

  It finally splashed through the net, and Danny felt as if an earthquake was happening around him. He was swallowed by teammates and students stampeding the court. As they lifted him onto their shoulders, he had one thought: Thank God that wasn’t the last shot of my high school career.

  There was another game to play next week.

  When Danny’s shot swished through the hoop, Terrell felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief. He was so exhausted after being hounded by double-teams all night and chasing Waltham through each lengthy possession on defense that he could barely get his arms up in the air in celebration of the shot and Lexington’s stunning 42–41 victory. He was glad to see Danny being carried around the court as the hero. He deserved it.

  As the chaos around Danny continued, Terrell was thinking of the Waltham players, who had worked so hard and come within a second of pulling off an improbable upset. Three of them were still on the floor, shocked by the ending. He went and offered a hand to Corey Allenson. Terrell had been camped out under the basket to try for a desperation tip if the shot missed, so he had a perfect view of just how close Allenson had come to deflecting the shot. He helped Allenson up and saw tears in his eyes. He gave him a hug and said, “Great game, man,” which was all he could think of to say. Allenson said nothing. He just returned the hug and sobbed quietly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, just outside the circle of mayhem, Terrell could see the two coaches shaking hands. Coach Wilcox was giving Coach Kvancz the same kind of hug he was giving Allenson. There wasn’t much to say. Somebody had to lose.

  As Allenson walked away, a few of the revelers grabbed Terrell to try and bring him into the circle. Even though he was very glad not to be in Waltham’s shoes, he just didn’t feel like jumping up and down. What he felt wasn’t joy; it was relief. All their dreams had almost blown up. One more tick and they would be in the locker room right now listening to Coach Wilcox tell them they’d had a great season, no matter what. Now, they still had a chance to have a great season, but they were at least five more wins—maybe six—away from that.

  THIRTY

  The sectionals for the Minutemen would be held in Worcester, at Holy Cross. Eight teams were vying for one spot in the state championships. The four section-winning teams would go to the TD Garden in two weeks and play on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon—there was a hockey game in between on Friday night. Then, on Sunday afternoon, the Massachusetts state champion would play the Connecticut state champion. This was a brand-new concept created by the high school associations. The theory was that the team who won that game would move up in the final USA Today national rankings—which had become so important in the world of high school basketball.

  Following their two losses, the Minutemen had dropped out of the top twenty-five. They were back in this week at number twenty-one. Only one other Massachusetts school, Central High School in Springfield, at number twelve, was ranked higher than they were. The state high school association hoped that the state champion, if it beat the Connecticut champion, would at least crack the top ten.

  After the nail-biter with Waltham, the sectionals felt like a cakewalk.

  Terrell had looked forward to playing in the Hart Center, the gym at Holy Cross, because Danny had filled him in on some of Holy Cross’s basketball history. Notable to Danny was that it was the school that had produced Bob Cousy. Terrell wasn’t the hoops junkie that Danny was, but he knew who Bob Cousy was—arguably the first truly great point guard in NBA history.

  There was a statue of Cousy in front of the Hart Center, and they all stopped to look on their way in to their first practice. “So I guess he was pretty good,” Terrell said as they read the plaque. He was goading Danny—he knew that Danny thought the two greatest guards in NBA history were Cousy and Walt Frazier. Danny liked guards who were great passers, because that was what he did best. He loved Chris Paul too. When Terrell brought up Magic Johnson, who was as great a passer as he had ever seen when he watched old NBA games, Danny shook his head. “Doesn’t count. He was six nine. Make me six nine, and I could do stuff too.”

  “Stuff like that?”

  “Well, maybe not like that…”

  The Hart Center seated 3,600, and it was situated right at the top of the hill on which Holy Cross was built. Looking down toward Worcester, Terrell thought the town appeared almost pretty—markedly different from the feel it had when they had driven through it the night before en route to their hotel. The day was bright and sunny but very windy—especially on the hilltop. “What did you call the weather around here?” he asked Danny.

  “Worcestering,” Danny said. “Actually, it isn’
t Worcestering today. Worcestering is a constant drizzle or snow flurries and a gray sky. This isn’t bad.”

  The entire weekend was actually pretty good. The wind never seemed to go away, but the sun stayed out. More important, the Minutemen were never challenged. Framingham, their first opponent, tried the Waltham approach, spreading the floor and running the shot clock. But Coach Wilcox was ready this time. Instead of having his players chase for thirty seconds, he had them sit back in a zone and then jump into man-to-man when the shot clock hit ten and Framingham started to run its offense. Framingham was one-for-nine in the first quarter and Lexington led, 19–2. That was the end of the delay offense. The final was 69–36.

  There wasn’t much suspense the next two days, either. No one in the section had anyone who was even close to Terrell, so it was a pick-your-poison situation for the coaches: try to guard him one-on-one and watch him score every time he touched the ball or double him and get buried from the outside. When Worcester tried to double-team Terrell, Coach Wilcox sent him to one corner with two defenders and Alan Inwood to the other corner with no defenders. That left Danny, James Nix, and Monte Torre to play three-on-three in the open court.

  They were considerably better than the three Worcester kids who were guarding them. Nix kept going past his man for easy layups. On one play, one of Terrell’s two bodyguards left him to try to deny Nix another layup. Nix flipped the ball to Terrell, who made a quick move and dunked.

  Terrell scored 29 in the last three quarters, and the final was 84–58.

  Natick was the opponent in the final. The school’s most famous graduate was Doug Flutie, the Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback. According to Coach Wilcox, they had two players who were being recruited by Division I schools. When Terrell saw that they were going to play straight-up man-to-man defense and not play stall-ball, he felt his heart start to pound. He knew he was ready for a big night. So did Danny, who kept getting him the ball in places where he could score—inside and out.

  The two of them came out of the game with about three minutes to go and Lexington leading, 71–47. Terrell had 39 points, and Danny had 18 assists, which they would learn later was a sectionals record. Terrell was voted the MVP. He happily accepted the trophy that came with it but was much happier when he and Danny, the team co-captains, were given the sectional championship trophy for the second straight year. They were back in the state Final Four.

  The “We just want to help Terrell” Club had been smaller than usual in Worcester. It was March now, so the coaches couldn’t travel for recruiting; they were all busy with their current teams in the run-up to the Final Four. The dudes were all there, though, and so was Stan Montana and a couple of other guys Terrell had seen before but not met. There was no Paul Judson, but there were enough people in suits sitting near Montana and the shoe reps to make Terrell think they were agents or financial advisers.

  Danny had told him about his encounter with Coach Stephenson and the super friends on the day of the Waltham game, but so far no one had made any sort of direct move. He suspected it was coming soon.

  Coach Wilcox had kept the team on a pretty tight leash since it had to play three nights in a row, so the super friends had to be satisfied with quick handshakes as the team walked straight from the locker room to the bus.

  “It’ll start again in Boston,” Coach Wilcox warned both Terrell and Danny on the trip home after the championship game. “I’ve asked Tom Konchalski to come, because he can ID anyone new who shows up. And Frank Sullivan will be there for the same reason. They’re going to come at you in all directions, hoping to tempt you.”

  “To do what?” Terrell asked. For all the talking and jabbering and “We’ll do anything to help,” no one had actually offered him anything specific besides Stan Montana’s invitation to all the Athena gear in the world.

  “Who knows?” Coach Wilcox said. “Maybe they’ll offer part ownership in the Celtics. Or in a restaurant. Or a hockey team.”

  “I don’t even like hockey,” Terrell said.

  “Well, then, that’s out,” Coach Wilcox said. “Almost everything else you can think of isn’t.”

  At the very least, Terrell thought, he’d be curious to hear what anyone had to say to him. He remembered something his mother always said after dinner in a restaurant: “Looking at the dessert menu doesn’t mean you have to eat dessert.”

  So the season had come down to this. Boston. The state championship.

  The team that had beaten Lexington in the final game the previous year was back again too. Central High’s star player, six-foot ten-inch Wilson Walton, had already announced that he was going to Kentucky. Their point guard, Andrew Norton, was a fast-talking, cocky kid who was going to UConn. They’d be taking on Barnstable High School, the Cinderella team in the Final Four, while Lexington’s first game would be against Gloucester. Gloucester had a great shooting guard named “Trey” Benson, who had committed to Duke. Benson, as his nickname attested, was a deadly three-point shooter.

  As good as Benson was, Terrell thought his team could handle Gloucester. He fully expected a rematch with Central in the final.

  Each of the four teams was given an hour on Thursday morning for a shoot-around so they’d have a chance to get on the court at TD Garden and get accustomed to the shooting backgrounds and the massiveness of the building before they played that night.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Danny said to Terrell as they rode the elevator up to the third floor, which was the building’s floor level.

  “The freight elevator, you mean?” Terrell said, unable to resist tweaking his friend who, he knew, was almost quaking at the thought of playing on the Celtics’ home court.

  “Come on,” Danny said. “Look at this place! Tell me it’s not cool. It’s a lot different than last year in Springfield, admit that.”

  Terrell didn’t see anything especially cool in the hallways or even in the locker room, which wasn’t that much larger than their locker room at home. But when they walked into the huge, empty building and he looked up and saw all the Celtics’ championship banners—Danny had already told him there were seventeen—and all the retired numbers of great Celtics, he had to admit he was impressed.

  Coach Wilcox had come prepared for the awestruck look on his players’ faces. When they assembled at midcourt, he smiled and asked them if they had seen the movie Hoosiers. Of course they’d seen it. Anyone who had ever looked at a basketball had seen Hoosiers.

  “Okay, then, if you want me to get a tape measure and show you that the baskets are ten feet high, like Gene Hackman did, I’ll do it,” he said as they all laughed. “You’re going to have to trust me that the court is ninety-four feet long. And I’ll tell you one other thing: None of the other teams has ever played in here before, either, so it will be just as new for them. Just try to remember, everyone is still just playing basketball.”

  Terrell was trying hard to remember that. It wasn’t so much the TD Garden that was weighing on his mind as everything else. If this was going to be the weekend of reckoning—off the court—he wanted to be ready for it. His mom was driving into town that evening with Valerie, Laurie, and Coach Stephenson. He figured the super friends were assembling as well.

  After practice, Danny asked his father if it would be okay if he and Terrell walked back to the hotel so they could take a detour to eat in the Quincy Market at Faneuil Hall. Danny and his dad came into town to go to Celtics games pretty often, so he knew his way around. Coach Wilcox said it was fine as long as they didn’t walk around too much with a game to play that night.

  It was a beautiful late-winter day, and the walk from the Garden to Faneuil Hall only took about ten minutes. Terrell loved Quincy Market—anyplace that had that many different kinds of food available in one place was okay by him. They decided on pizza at a place called Regina’s and walked outside to sit down and eat.

  Terrell was happily devouring his second slice of pizza when he heard Danny say, “Well, look who’s here.” He looked up
and saw Bobby Kelleher walking in their direction. “You set this up?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Danny said. “I knew my dad wouldn’t want us to do this on a game day, but Bobby said it was important.”

  Bobby didn’t exaggerate much, so Terrell figured Danny had made the right call.

  “Pizza on game day?” Kelleher said, shaking hands upon arrival. “Danny, what would your coach say?”

  “He’d say pizza is okay seven hours before tipoff, but not reporters,” Danny said.

  Kelleher laughed and sat down on a bench next to them. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Terrell, you a hundred percent? Your stats certainly are.”

  “I’m fine, perfect,” Terrell said. “Danny said you had something important to tell us.”

  “Patience, Terrell,” Kelleher said. “I have a lot to tell you, so I’m going to need a slice of that pizza too.… ”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Bobby came back with two slices of pizza and cut right to the chase. “This is the weekend it all comes to a head,” he said. “All the players are going to be in town, are probably here already. Except for the coaches—they can’t travel right now and they all have tournament games this weekend anyway. That doesn’t mean they don’t have people here watching you.”

  “Like who?” Terrell asked.

  “Well, the presidents of both Atlanta and Mass State will be here. They can’t contact you directly, but they can buy a ticket and let you know they’re here to show you their support.”

  “Support,” Danny said. “Just what Terrell needs.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Kelleher continued. “You are not only the biggest star in this class, Terrell, you’re the only really big name left. Michael Jordan has committed to Kentucky. He says he wants to follow in the footsteps of Anthony Davis.”