The Runnin’ Rebels met the Inland Stars the second time at a tournament near Dana Point in south Orange County. Keller’s bunch won by 8, but to Gary, Sr., it felt like an achievement. Without adding new players, he had cut the Inland Stars’ margin of victory from the first game by more than half. As long as he continued to find ways to make his players better, it was only a matter of time before they’d break through.
A few months later, the two teams met again in the Inland Empire. Keller would come to refer to the game as an “unofficial loss,” and when he talked about his team’s unbeaten record in 2002 he left out that defeat. A tight contest ended when Jordan Finn missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer, giving the Runnin’ Rebels a two-point victory. But Demetrius had missed the game while nursing a knee injury, and in Keller’s mind that nullified the loss. “This game has got an asterisk on it, or whatever you call it,” Keller told Gary, Sr., after the game. “You can’t win if Demetrius plays.”
In June, just before Nationals in Cocoa Beach, the two teams traveled to a tournament in Arizona. Both squads easily advanced to the finals, which was held at a gym on the Arizona State campus. Before the game, Keller teased Gary, Sr. (“Demetrius is playing this time”), and even taunted some of his players. Gary, Sr., had never felt more confident. Keller’s antics, he believed, belied his fear. “Leave everything you’ve got on the floor,” Gary, Sr., told his team before the game. “You do that and I know we will win.”
Justin, Terran, and little Gary never played harder or better. Gary broke Fist easily, and Terran battled Demetrius for rebounds and stepped in front of him on drives, forcing two charging calls. Justin harassed Rome and Andrew and Jordan; he guarded each of them at different points in the game. The Inland Stars led by 8 with two minutes left, but a steal by Justin and a turnover forced by Gary led to baskets that cut the lead in half. With seventy seconds left, Terran partially blocked a shot by Rome and collected the ball, and Gary scored on a drive on the other end. With fifty seconds left, the Runnin’ Rebels trailed by a single basket and had the momentum. As Andrew brought the ball upcourt, the crowd was on its feet, most of the people urging on the Runnin’ Rebels. Their defensive intensity was palpable, and Justin and Gary seized on Andrew as he crossed half-court. Andrew tried to get the ball to Jordan on the left, but Justin’s hand was in the passing lane. He tried to go right, but Gary slid over and cut him off. He picked up his dribble and Gary was all over him, swinging his arms wildly to block his view. With no other option, Andrew leaped backward and heaved the ball toward Demetrius on the block. He threw it higher than normal, counting on Demetrius to get to it before anyone else did. Terran had fronted Demetrius on the block, just as Gary, Sr., had taught him, and he was in a better position to catch the pass. But when the two boys went up for the ball, Demetrius negated that advantage by jumping higher than Terran. He reached his arm over Terran’s shoulder and tipped the ball over his head, effectively passing it over Terran to himself. Before Terran or anyone else could react, Demetrius collected the ball, landed, then turned and with one step laid the ball in for a score.
There were still twenty seconds left, but the game was over. The Inland Stars made a few free throws that upped their margin of victory to 5, but the game was lost on that single possession. The Runnin’ Rebels had played perfect defense, had done everything necessary to get the defensive stop that would have put them in a position for the tying score. But Demetrius’s athletic gifts spoiled it all. After the game, Demetrius went up to a few of the Runnin’ Rebels and told them, “Nobody plays us as hard as you guys.” Justin remained near midcourt, his fingers interlaced and resting on the top of his head. He kept looking at the end of the court where Demetrius had scored the decisive basket, as if he was searching a catalog in his head of all that Gary, Sr., had taught him for what he could have done to change the outcome. But there was nothing. They had played perfectly, and they had lost.
After the earlier defeats to Keller, Gary, Sr., was invigorated. He knew instantly how his team could get better and couldn’t wait to get back to practice. Walking out of the gym in Arizona, he didn’t know what more he could do. He had been around athletics long enough to know that the deserving team didn’t always win, but he also knew that many of his kids and their parents wouldn’t accept that reasoning. The parents of his best kids would soon ask themselves (if they weren’t asking themselves already) if Gary, Sr., was really the best coach for their sons. When he lost that game, he lost their faith, and for that there would be consequences.
In Arizona, Keller approached Gary, Sr., after a coaches’ meeting and told him, “You’re never going to beat us, so why don’t you join us?” Keller had intimated before that Gary, Sr., should merge the best of the Runnin’ Rebels with his team, but this was the most serious overture.
Gary, Sr., ignored him. “He was probably right,” Gary, Sr., said later. “But I didn’t want to believe that then.”
At the end of the summer, Gary, Sr., gave his players a few months off. Gary was playing Pop Warner football, and Gary, Sr., wanted to coach his son. Keller forbade his kids to play other sports, and thus the Inland Stars’ season never ended. In September, Rachel Carter, Terran’s mother, called Gary, Sr., and asked if Terran could play for Keller while the Runnin’ Rebels were off. “I couldn’t tell her that Terran couldn’t play for Joe when we weren’t playing,” Gary, Sr., said. A short time later, Gary, Sr., learned that Justin Hawkins was also playing for Keller. Their moves became permanent, although neither Rachel nor Carmen, Justin’s mom, called Gary, Sr., to tell him.
“It would have been nice if they called, but I didn’t expect them to,” Gary, Sr., said. “That’s just how it works.”
After the loss at Nationals, the boys of the Inland Stars returned to school, most of them now in the sixth grade, and Keller began to remake the team. He replaced everyone except for the four players—Demetrius, Andrew, Rome, and Jordan—he called “my core.” From another LA-based team, he lured a smallish point guard, Darius Morris, believing he’d be a good change of pace when Andrew wasn’t on the floor. (“I like to think of him as a prized long-term investment,” Keller said.) He also brought back Pe’Shon Howard, a stocky guard who had played for the team for a few months but left after his father, Bill Howard, feuded with Keller over Pe’Shon’s playing time. Bill was a Hollywood hairdresser and wore large sunglasses at all times, including in the gym while he watched his son play. Keller thought Bill was arrogant, but he believed Pe’Shon was the perfect player to guard Deuce should the Inland Stars meet the Hoosier Hoops again. To get Pe’Shon back, Keller promised Bill: “Next to Demetrius, Pe’Shon will be the lead guy.”
Bloom and Van Treese, the Hoosier Hoops’ inside players, were on Keller’s mind when he courted Terran and again later when he targeted six-foot-one Xavier Whitfield, the center for the Sacramento Raiders, one of the teams the Inland Stars had defeated in Portland. Keller called Terrance Mitchell, the Raiders’ coach, and pitched an arrangement that sounded a lot like the one Pat Barrett had offered Keller in 1996 when he was after Tyson Chandler. “Joe said that I should add Xavier and two other good players I had to his team,” Mitchell said later. “I shot it to my parents and the kids, and they thought it was a good idea. They knew Joe had a good team.”
Keller paid for Mitchell, Xavier, and two other players to fly from Sacramento to Ontario for a workout. Afterward, Keller told Mitchell he was interested only in Xavier. Mitchell was angry, but Keller sweetened the deal by promising shoes and gear for a younger team Mitchell coached. “We even signed this little bullshit contract,” recalled Mitchell, who didn’t learn until almost a year later that Keller wasn’t officially aligned with a shoe company.
Keller’s final addition to the team puzzled most parents. At first glance, Tommy Stengel seemed the antithesis of the typical Keller recruit. He was short and white and, though he possessed an outstanding outside shot, was neither quick nor strong nor had a natural feel for the game. He was bullish on the co
urt—football seemed a more natural pursuit—and his parents weren’t particularly tall. In Keller’s business of projecting athletic ability, Tommy was as likely a candidate for the Inland Stars as the Asian kids he refused to consider. He did, however, have one thing going for him: His father was rich.
After the 2002 Nationals, Keller was broke. Joe Burton left the team, depriving Keller of what he called the “Indian money” (Burton’s parents had donated generously to the team), and taking the team to Nationals and other tournaments had cost nearly $40,000. The Inland Stars needed a benefactor, and Keller had heard from another coach that Tom Stengel, Sr., was generous to the coaches who worked with his son.
Keller reached out to Tom before Nationals, saying he was interested in Tommy and that they should talk when he got back from Cocoa Beach. Shortly after the loss to Hoosier Hoops, Keller called Tom and told him, “We really could have used Tommy at Nationals.” He continued to call and repeat the same message: Tommy was what the Inland Stars were missing. After a few weeks of planting that seed, Keller unexpectedly backed off. He told Tom he wasn’t sure Tommy was good enough to play with Demetrius and the rest of his kids. It was the perfect ploy to use on an overachiever like Tom. He was a grunt, a guy who outworked you, and his son played basketball the same way. Keller built Tommy up and then out of the blue questioned his ability. Tom started thinking that Tommy needed to be on Inland Stars. He would show Keller that his son was good enough.
Tom had red hair, trimmed to a spiky crew cut similar to Keller’s. He had pale skin and freckles and legs shaped like bowling pins. His calves were so thick they appeared bigger than his thighs. Tommy was a miniaturized version of his father—the same build, hair, fair skin, and freckles. Tom worked as a laborer for a concrete company out of high school and then started his own company, Team Finish, a few years later. He bid on concrete jobs like parking garages and office parks, then assembled teams of laborers and paid them a rate he negotiated. His was a skill in high demand in the stone jungle of Southern California, and he made millions in a hurry.
Much of that money was spent helping Tommy improve athletically. He had separate trainers for weight lifting and plyometrics (workouts designed to improve muscle ability), and Tom hired a former guard at Cal State Fullerton to work Tommy out one-on-one. Tom also installed a hyperbaric chamber—a capsule that creates an oxygen-rich environment—in Tommy’s bedroom, in which he slept after grueling workouts.
A father willing to go to such lengths to make his son a better player wasn’t going to back away when Keller suddenly said Tommy might not be good enough.
In the fall, Tom took Tommy to an open tryout for the Inland Stars, held at a gym in Colton. Watching his son struggle against Keller’s elite athletes, Tom thought, No way is he ready for this. But Keller lauded Tommy’s performance and extended an invitation to join the team. Tom went home and discussed it with his wife. She wanted Tommy to stay with the Orange County Shooting Stars and had been warned about Keller by the parents of Chris Cunningham, a center who had left the Inland Stars the previous year. Keller was not trustworthy, they told her. But Tom dreamed of Tommy playing college basketball and thought he needed to stop playing for “pussy Orange County teams.” He had to compete with and against black kids, Tom believed. After a few more days of deliberating, Tom took Keller up on his offer.
By the end of 2002, Keller and Tom were close friends, eating every dinner together during away tournaments and after practices. Keller put Tom on the bench as an assistant coach. They spent many nights sitting in the backyard of Tom’s home in the hills above Fullerton. Tom had landscaped the yard himself. A bean-shaped pool was surrounded by concrete of various textures and colors, and huge concrete boulders were stacked against a fence. In one corner was a concrete bar with Dos Equis on tap, covered by a cabana with concrete pillars. One evening not long after Tommy joined the team, Keller and Tom sat in the backyard around a gas fire pit. Tom compared Tommy to Michael Gerrity, a star guard at powerhouse Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, who would go on to earn a scholarship to Pepperdine. Sipping his beer, his feet resting on the edge of the fire pit, Keller listened attentively. He did not project Tommy to be as good as Gerrity. In fact, he doubted Tommy would ever be tall enough to start on a good high school varsity team. But Keller lied through his teeth. “I think Tommy can be as good as Gerrity. That’s a good comparison.” This pleased Tom immensely, and he would become the archetypal “Friend of Joe.”
A short time later, Tom agreed to contribute $20,000 to the Inland Stars for the season, with the potential for more. It was a tremendous coup for Keller. In just a few months, he had added size to his frontcourt (Terran and Xavier), got stronger and tougher in the backcourt (Justin and Pe’Shon), added quickness (Darius), and solved his financial woes.
Indeed, Joe Keller was back.
6
Carmen and Justin Hawkins
Keller and Demetrius were at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Sports Center early in 2003 when a young man Demetrius guessed to be about twenty years old entered the gym. Demetrius did not recognize him, but Keller hurried over and they hugged, and he then led the young man to where Demetrius sat lacing his shoes.
“D, this is Keilon,” Keller said. “He used to play for Pat. He’s going to work out with you.”
Demetrius looked at Keilon, more than a little confused. Keilon was a man, with several tattoos on his arms and a chiseled physique. Why is he going to work out with me? Demetrius thought. But he didn’t say anything. If Coach Joe wanted him to work out with Keilon, there must be a good reason.
Demetrius and Keilon loosened up and ran a bit, but eventually the practice turned into a prolonged game of one-on-one. It was, however, the most lopsided game of one-on-one in history. Keilon was the quickest guard Demetrius had ever seen, with the sweetest handle, and he could drive past Demetrius whenever he wanted. They were about the same height, so when Demetrius had the ball he couldn’t just back in and shoot over him. When he tried to dribble past, Keilon either cut him off or robbed him of the ball.
During one possession, Demetrius tried a crossover move, but Keilon easily picked the ball from him. “You can’t show the ball like that. Do it like this,” Keilon said, and he yo-yoed the ball to the right, then quickly to the left, and then burst past Demetrius for a layup. Later, Demetrius tried to drive, but Keilon slid in front of him, so Demetrius threw up a soft runner in the lane. “You can’t get away with that bullshit against good players,” Keilon said. “Go strong to the basket. You’ve got to be fearless.”
His comments were not mocking but instructional, and Demetrius soaked them in. He began looking forward to the individual workouts with Keilon, rushing into the gym and quickly lacing up his shoes, eagerly waiting for Keilon to arrive. Over the next month and a half, as they continued to work out together, Demetrius learned bits of information about Keilon’s past. He had played on the SCA team that lost to Tyson Chandler and Keller in 1996. He attended Compton Dominguez High with Chandler but was sent to Camp Kilpatrick in Malibu, a state-run juvenile detention school, where he also played basketball, and in 2001 was named the Southern Section Division V co-player of the year.
“It’s just part of growing up where I did,” Keilon told Demetrius about why he had been sent to Camp Kilpatrick. “Sometimes you’ve got to do things to protect yourself.”
Demetrius did not hear that Keilon escaped from Camp Kilpatrick after an all-star game in May 2001. (He was eventually caught, his sentence at Kilpatrick extended.) Demetrius was also unaware that Keilon was trying to catch on with a junior college team because no Division I schools wanted him, due to poor grades and his criminal past. He did not know that Keilon needed money and had called Keller, who agreed to slip him a few bucks if he worked out his young star.
During one session, another former Barrett player arrived at the gym. He was six foot four and was introduced to Demetrius as “Olujimi.” He was several years older than Keilon but they were friends, and Olujimi took
a turn instructing Demetrius. “Man, he is just so strong,” Demetrius told Keller after the practice.
Keller did not tell Demetrius that Olujimi had verbally committed to UCLA in 1995 as a junior at Santa Ana Valley High but that poor grades and a Pacific 10 Conference investigation into a car he’d received from Barrett soured the Bruins’ interest. Demetrius did not hear how Olujimi tried to get back on track at the junior college level but that by 2003 the NBA dreams of a player once likened to Oscar Robertson were all but dead.
Demetrius came to view Keilon and Olujimi as mentors, older brothers, and he was heartbroken when the pair suddenly stopped showing up for workouts. One day they were there, teaching him all their tricks, and the next they were gone, with no explanation from Keller as to why. He wondered if they’d tired of hanging out with a twelve-year-old, if he wasn’t a good enough player or wasn’t cool enough for them. Eventually they washed from his memory, ghosts from his grassroots past, great players forgotten until someone brought them up one day much later and he said, “Man, Keilon and Olujimi could ball. Whatever happened to them?”
When they plunge into the grassroots world, parents and kids are bombarded with success stories. From Keller, they learn how he found Tyson Chandler. From Barrett, they hear how NBA players like Tayshaun Prince and Josh Childress wouldn’t be in the NBA if it weren’t for him. Other coaches have their own tales, and the message is the same: Trust me, and your son can also achieve basketball riches.
Play Their Hearts Out Page 9