The bedroom Aaron shared with Jeff, one of Jefferson’s sons, was not unlike his room in Rubidoux. The walls were covered with posters—one of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant together, another of Allen Iverson—and covers of Slam magazine. There was a wood bunk bed and Aaron was given the top bunk, which was fine by him.
For the first week, living with Jefferson’s family in Buena Park felt like an extended sleepover. Aaron, Jeff, and Jeff’s younger brother, Byron, sat on the bunk beds playing with Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon cards they bought at a nearby 7-Eleven with money given to them by Jefferson or his wife. She sometimes cooked chicken or pasta for dinner, or Aaron bought a carne asada burrito at a taqueria in a strip mall across the street.
He missed his mother and brother, but the arrangement was bearable. To make the NBA, he thought, I can handle this. That changed, however, when another player, Keith Wilkes, moved into Jefferson’s home so he, too, could attend Brethren Christian. Wilkes’s father, Keith, Sr., was an assistant coach on Jefferson’s team, and Keith, Jr., was close with Jeff and Byron. That cost Aaron, beginning with his place on the top bunk. “There’s a mattress in the garage,” Jefferson told him. “Pull that into the room and put it on the floor. You can sleep there.”
Aaron didn’t tell Barbara about losing his bed, in part because they rarely spoke. He returned to Rubidoux the first weekend after moving to Buena Park, but then Jefferson insisted he stay on weekends to play in tournaments or work for him at the Warrior Center. Aaron thought his mom didn’t call because she didn’t miss him. Barbara thought Aaron acclimated so seamlessly to Jefferson’s family that he didn’t need her anymore.
One day, Aaron sat on his mattress leafing through Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, when Byron walked into the bedroom and ordered him to hand them over. After all, his father had paid for them. “No, they’re mine,” Aaron responded, and then he showed his back to Byron. The younger boy casually fetched an aluminum baseball bat from underneath the lowest bunk and struck Aaron in the center of his back.
Sensing that Aaron would tell Barbara about the fight, Jefferson called her first. “You know how boys are,” he told her. “His first fight. I guess now he’s officially a member of the family.”
Jeff, Byron, and Keith, Jr., teamed up on Aaron, and their taunts had a continuous theme: that Aaron was the only boy without a father. “The only reason you are here is so my dad can be your dad,” Byron or Jeff would say. “He’s not your dad.”
After a month, Jefferson’s older daughter and her son moved in, and Aaron, Keith, Jr., and Jeff lost their room.
“I want you boys to go out into the garage and start cleaning it out,” Jefferson said. “Get all that stuff out of there and we’ll finish it up and you guys can stay out there.”
It took the boys three days to remove the mounds of boxes and other junk. They would get to the bottom of a pile and find bags filled with rancid food and other waste and then fight over who had to clean it up.
Jefferson had the boys drag the bunk bed into the garage. The first two boys home at night slept in one of the beds. The last to arrive—which was almost always Aaron, because of his late workouts at the Warrior Center—slept on a sofa.
Sleeping on a torn and dirty couch in a garage was not an inconvenience Aaron kept from his mother, and she confronted Jefferson during a phone call. “It’s a temporary thing,” he said. “I am having some people come in a week or so who are going to finish the whole garage, put down a floor and some carpet, and insulate the walls. Then it will be fine.”
Aaron was responsible for cleaning the home’s only bathroom, which was shared by eight people. One day, he grabbed a bucket and some rags and a bottle of Pine-Sol and faced the task. Standing in the doorway, looking over the mud-caked floor and overflowing garbage, he revolted. He emptied the full bottle of Pine-Sol on the floor and watched it bubble like some sort of witches’ brew. Then he dropped the bucket and the rags and left the house. Later, Jefferson’s wife berated him, but he refused to clean up the mess, ran out the door, and didn’t return until she was gone.
When he wasn’t at Jefferson’s house, Aaron could be found at the Warrior Center as Jefferson showed him off to coaches and others considering holding events there. “Go out there and shoot around,” Jefferson would tell Aaron, who would then run the floor and shoot jumpers while the men watched. Jefferson would boast that Aaron was only thirteen, that he was going to be in the NBA someday, and that the Warrior Center would be known as the place where he got his start.
Jefferson described the setup as ideal. Aaron got to train every day at a top-notch facility, and Brethren Christian was a great school. He also portrayed himself as a concerned guardian: He made sure Aaron took the bus to school every day, did his homework, and he said Aaron had “carte blanche” when it came to food, benefiting from sponsorship deals local restaurants had with the Warrior Center.
Aaron described a vastly different arrangement. After two months at Brethren Christian, he was flunking every class except wood shop, because of repeated absences, he said. On the days he was in school, he was listless and fell asleep at his desk. Teachers who gave him failing marks didn’t know that he was barely sleeping at night, that Jefferson would come into the garage often as late as 3 a.m. and wake Aaron and the others. Jefferson would enter through the outer garage door and Aaron would leap from the couch, fearful that Jefferson was driving his car into their makeshift bedroom.
At a time when Aaron’s body should have been filling out, he said he lost nearly ten pounds in his first eight weeks in Buena Park. “Mom, when I get home, there really isn’t any dinner or anything for me to eat,” Aaron told Barbara during a rare phone conversation. She began dropping off snacks for him at the house, but if he wasn’t home to receive them, others ate the food before he got home. If Aaron was there, he hid bags of ramen noodles and boxes of Cap’n Crunch and Pop-Tarts under the sofa in the garage.
To make the NBA: That was the justification Aaron whispered to himself, the mantra that held him together. To make the NBA, he would live apart from his mother and brother. To make the NBA, he would go hungry and sleepless. To make the NBA, he would tell no one of his plight, not even about the pain he felt just below his stomach, a hurt so biting he knew it wasn’t from a lack of food. Later, a doctor would tell him it was likely caused by anxiety, but at the time he believed it was one of the “sacrifices” Jefferson talked about, the cost of a future in basketball.
Late in 2003, Jefferson’s team played in a tournament in Fontana. Before the game against another eighth-grade team, Aaron watched a group of seventh-graders dominate their opponents. Aaron loved their blue and white uniforms and the spotless Adidas Promodels each player wore. Their coach yelled too much, but that didn’t really detract from the team’s appeal.
Later that afternoon, Aaron scored 38 points and grabbed 27 rebounds to lead Jefferson’s team to victory. Though he turned the ball over often and didn’t know where to position himself on defense, Aaron’s raw skill caught the eye of the coach of the seventh-grade team that had played earlier.
The following Friday, Barbara arrived at the Warrior Center to pick Aaron up and received some startling news. He was now a member of Team Cal.
“But isn’t that a seventh-grade team?” Barbara asked.
“Yeah, I’m in the seventh grade now,” Aaron said. “Coach Mark pulled me out of school, and Coach Joe has me doing homeschool.”
Aaron could see his mother’s temper rise. “Coach Mark said he talked to you about it and that everything was cool.”
“How could you pull my son out of school without asking me?” Barbara shouted at Jefferson when she found him sitting in his office.
He explained that it was better for Aaron’s development to play for Team Cal. He didn’t mention that Keller had promised to stage several of his Adidas-backed tournaments at the Warrior Center in exchange for Aaron.
Barbara became more confused than angry. How could Aaron suddenly be in the seventh grade? How
did someone set up homeschooling? Who was monitoring his work? She took him home to Rubidoux, giving Jefferson no answer when he asked when they would return.
Aaron had already played one game with Team Cal, and it had been an eye-opening experience. Demetrius and the other players spoke a different language on the court, shouting terms like back screen, weak-side help, and high post. Aaron also liked the way Keller pushed him instead of merely showing him off as Jefferson had. “You ready to be a horse?” Keller asked him before his first game. Later, when Aaron missed a dunk and came up limping, Keller called him out. “You’re not hurt. You’re just embarrassed, so you’re pretending you’re hurt.”
Aaron learned that Demetrius—the leader of the team—had no relationship with his father, and he instantly bonded with Roberto, as both were newcomers. Soderberg told him about his playing history and offered to act as Aaron’s “personal big-man coach.” Demetrius introduced him to older boys who were already talked about as some of the best young players in the area, such as Brandon Jennings and DeMar DeRozan, who were a year older than the Team Cal kids but treated them as peers in a special club.
“Mom, I want to keep playing for Coach Joe,” Aaron told Barbara when they were back in Rubidoux. “I don’t want to go back to Buena Park anymore. I hate living there. Please don’t make me go back. But please let me stay on Team Cal.”
Barbara was once again presented with a decision about whether to trust a man she barely knew.
Keller had orchestrated Aaron’s removal from Brethren Christian and enrolled him in homeschooling a grade lower, all without consulting Barbara. It was not a first impression that lent itself to unmitigated trust. But Keller invited Barbara and Aaron and Micah to his apartment in Fontana, and he gave them Adidas shoes and clothes, and he laid out how he would supervise Aaron’s homeschooling for the next semester. He assured Barbara that either he or Violet would pick Aaron up every day at around 3:00 p.m. for workouts, that she would never be burdened with getting Aaron to Fontana for practice or games. He also said that Aaron could stay with him whenever he wanted and that he would help feed and clothe him. Team Cal was like “a family,” Keller said, and he introduced Barbara to Violet and showed off his kids. Later, while attending a Team Cal game, Barbara was moved by how Keller rushed over and picked up little Alyssa right after the final buzzer.
There were contemplative cigarettes smoked in front of her house and a few conversations with Aaron and a few more with Keller, but, Barbara being Barbara, there was never a doubt about the conclusion she would reach.
Joe Keller was exactly the type of man Aaron needed in his life.
14
Team Cal at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis in 2004
On an overstuffed sofa in the lobby of a Holiday Inn near the airport in St. Louis, Demetrius and Aaron sat side by side, each with a set of oversize headphones covering his ears.
“This is tight!” Aaron shouted, and he took off his headphones and nudged Demetrius. He removed his own and they traded.
“Oh, that is ‘Bone Crusher,’ ” Demetrius said too loudly. He bobbed his head along with the song for a few seconds and then they switched back.
At the start of the next song, Demetrius said, “Oh, yeeaaaahhhh,” and then he poked Aaron with his elbow. They swapped headphones again.
“Usher. That’s real,” Aaron said.
Outside the hotel, visible from where the boys sat, Keller stood next to a minivan with Soderberg in its driver’s seat. Keller leaned in to the passenger window several times but then stepped away in what appeared to be frustration. It went on for so long that it was obvious the men were arguing, although that was nothing new. They sparred during practices and after practices, before games and after games. The point of contention was essentially the same each time: Keller disagreed with the changes Soderberg wanted to make to Team Cal’s offense and defense.
Keller was jumpier than usual in St. Louis, because it was Team Cal’s first major event after landing the Adidas deal and adding Aaron and Roberto. Team Maryland and Hoosier Hoops weren’t in St. Louis, but there were enough quality teams present that Keller fretted about the possibility of a loss. If Team Cal faltered in a tournament less than six months after he’d landed his shoe contract, he and the team would look like a bad investment. When Keller got nervous, he reverted to what had worked for him in the past: Demetrius and Fist. But Soderberg had worked too hard over the past months integrating Aaron and Roberto into the offense and refocusing the boys defensively. “Why would you have me work with the boys on this stuff, Joe, if we aren’t going to do it in games?” Soderberg said. “You’ve got to trust me, Joe.”
Keller’s anxiety softened upon arriving at the Simon Recreation Center on the St. Louis University campus. He saw Team Cal’s first opponent, St. Louis Game Face, and knew instantly they would pose no challenge. “The biggest thing we do is intimidate,” a serene Keller said pregame. “We come out and teams look at us and know we are going to rip the rim off.”
In a locker room ten minutes before the game, Keller pulled Demetrius aside. “You’re the leader. You’ve got to get them fired up.” Demetrius had also seen Game Face when the team arrived, and the look he gave Keller seemed to say: Really? For them?
“Are you all going to get hyped or what?” Demetrius said loudly after the coaches left the locker room. “We’re the best team in the country. We’ve got to show it every time out on the court. We have to take this team seriously. We have to …” He stopped, looked down, and then started to laugh.
Aaron jumped up and stood next to Demetrius. “Yeah, let’s go,” he said overzealously, and this made Demetrius laugh even harder.
“Yeah. We gotta do this!” Terran shouted. He never spoke during meetings, and his feigned enthusiasm triggered a wave of laughter that continued as the team exited for the court.
Coupled with Soderberg’s direction, Aaron’s insertion in the lineup changed the team’s core philosophies at both ends of the court. Against Game Face, Team Cal played only man-to-man defense. This would have occurred without Aaron, but his presence smoothed the transition away from Fist. By guarding Game Face’s tallest player, Aaron freed Demetrius to mark the opposing wing player and thus stay farther from the basket. His quickness was better utilized there, as he got into the passing lanes and created turnovers. It also allowed him to transition to offense more quickly, using his speed to start counterattacks. He often led the break after an Aaron block or rebound or filled one of the wings as Jordan or Justin pushed the ball.
When Team Cal was on offense, Game Face played zone to try to negate Team Cal’s size advantage. In the past, Keller had hindered the boys’ efforts to break a zone defense because he insisted that the ball be dumped down to Demetrius, no matter how many players crowded him. The new offense still revolved around Demetrius—Soderberg saw him as the ideal facilitator—but he was being counted on to get his teammates more involved. One play Soderberg drilled was called “high post,” and Team Cal relied on it heavily against Game Face’s 2-3 zone. Demetrius popped to the free-throw line, between the two defenders atop the zone, where he received a pass from one of the guards. He wheeled toward the basket and then selected from several options. If no one converged on him, he simply shot a 12-foot jump shot. If the post players moved toward him but did so slowly, he drove straight at the hoop. If they stepped to him aggressively, he dropped a pass to Aaron or Roberto down low for an easy score. If the two top guards sandwiched him, he found Jordan or Justin open at the 3-point line. He might have looked short standing next to Aaron, but Demetrius still towered over almost every opposing player, which gave him a clear view of the court. His passing, always an underrated strength, made him the perfect catalyst, and he tore Game Face’s zone apart.
Team Cal won 58–40, a victory marked by a rare occurrence: Demetrius was not the team’s top scorer. Aaron led the way with 16, followed by Demetrius with 12. But Demetrius had eight assists, the most I had ever seen him tally, and looke
d just as dominant as in those games when he scored 20 or more.
Against a team from Indianapolis the following day, Demetrius again finished second to Aaron in scoring, but he provided the game’s highlight. Late in the first half, Justin got a steal, and as he ran unobstructed toward the basket, he noticed Demetrius trailing him. He turned and nodded at Demetrius, and then he tossed the ball hard off the backboard. Demetrius burst forward, jumped, and in one motion caught the ball with his right hand and slammed it through the hoop. He hung on the rim too long, spinning and landing so that he faced half-court, and the Indianapolis coach hollered at the official to whistle him for a technical foul.
“I’ve never seen a seventh-grader do that before,” the referee said after the game. “He can hang on the rim all he wants.”
At times in a 64–36 victory over Team Springfield that evening, Keller behaved like a royal jackass. He got a technical foul for yelling at the officials in the second half with his team up 38, and he reinserted Demetrius late in the game in a failed attempt to execute Red Sea. But he yelled at the boys less and stopped the aimless substituting, and Soderberg’s modifications to the offense and defense took hold. Keller also showed compassion for another team for the first time in four years. Leading 40–14, Keller ordered the team into a four-corner offense designed to milk the clock. He earlier agreed with Team Springfield’s coach to allow the clock to run during free throws and when the ball went out of bounds, which sped the game to a less humiliating end. Team Cal could have won by 80, but the “new” Joe Keller settled for a 30-point victory.
Aaron’s arrival overshadowed two other moves Keller made in the wake of the Adidas deal. He finally convinced Gary Franklin, Sr., to fold the Runnin’ Rebels and bring Gary, Jr., over to be Team Cal’s point guard. Gary was the pure point the team had been missing since the departures of Andrew and Pe’Shon. Part of the package to get Gary included taking another Runnin’ Rebels player, the aptly named Craig Payne. He was a Terran clone with the same wide hips, huge butt, and thick arms. He could be overly aggressive—the hard foul might have been his signature skill—but he was the perfect enforcer to put on the floor when Terran needed a break.
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