by Mike Lupica
Going back to basics.
Basketball 101.
One week before the start of the real season for the Rockwell Rams.
“It was just one lousy scrimmage,” Coop had said when it was over.
But Ben knew better. He had seen something today, found out something about his own game at the same time he’d gotten a good look at Chase’s for the first time.
He had to get better, because he was going to see Chase Braggs a lot. Three regular-season games, the first next Saturday. And then, if Rockwell and Darby managed to finish 1–2 in the league, again in the championship game.
Which right now seemed as far away as the moon he could see now in the sky.
He took a quick break now, knowing he’d start to run out of daylight soon. Running back to the house, getting a couple of the plastic stick figures his dad had brought home from the Y one time. They were the kind of stick figures you saw in parking lots and even in the street sometimes, reminding everybody that there were children in the area and to drive slowly.
There had been a delivery of them to the Y, more than Jeff McBain needed there. So he’d brought some of the extras home, telling Ben they were perfect to use when he wanted to practice his passing when his friends weren’t around.
Ben carried four of them back to the court, spread them around, started hitting them with passes off the dribble. Not minding when he’d miss and have to go chase the ball, it just made him more determined to make a sharper, better pass next time.
Ben making sure he didn’t telegraph passes to the orange stick figures the way he had when Chase had been guarding him during the game.
As easy as it would have been to just write it off as one bad day, one lousy scrimmage, Ben knew in his heart that he had looked as bad as he had because Chase was that good.
Starting to get darker now. Close to dinner. Ben shooting the ball now. Step-back moves and drives to the basket and the little teardrop floater he liked to use when he had to get the ball up and over taller guys in the lane. He fell once as he went down the baseline, stepping in a hole he didn’t see, skinned his knee, got right back up. What did they always tell you in sports? No pain, no gain. Every once in a while he’d stop and do one of his favorite basketball things, at least out here: Make free throws underhand. Ben’s favorite basketball movie was Hoosiers, nothing else even close, and he loved the scene where the guy Ollie made his two big free throws underhand, winning a game for Hickory High with three seconds left on the clock.
Not so long after he saw somebody shoot them that way in the movie, Ben and his dad were watching ESPN Classic, watching an old-time player named Rick Barry, and when Ben saw him shoot free throws underhand, he’d said, “I thought only the guys as old as dinosaurs shot like that.”
“Not only did Rick Barry shoot them that way,” his dad had said, “he was pretty much the best free-throw shooter I ever saw.”
“Then how come everybody doesn’t shoot them that way?” Ben had said, and his dad said, “Because they don’t want to look funny. Or not cool.”
Ben had gotten so good at doing it, alone usually, sometimes with Sam in a game of H-O-R-S-E, that he sometimes thought he was better underhand than shooting regulation.
He made ten in a row, then went back to working on his ballhandling, what he was really out here for, Saturday afternoon becoming Saturday night, the air much cooler, but Ben sweating now like he’d been running end-to-end drills in an overheated gym.
“I feel like I’m out of breath just watching you.”
Ben’s head whipped around, but he already knew the voice, knew it was Lily.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that, you know,” he said.
“A police car with its siren blaring could have snuck up on you, McBain.”
“Just practicing, is all.”
“That what you call it?”
She had arrived — quietly — on her bike. Wearing jeans and the Packers T-shirt he’d gotten her after Aaron Rodgers, his favorite football player in the world, had beaten the Steelers in the Super Bowl played at Cowboys Stadium. Ben saw she had on her new white Pumas with the pink stripe. When he’d asked why pink she’d said, “Because as good as I am at hanging with boys, I’m still a girl.”
Boy, was she ever a girl.
Now Lily said, “I’ve never seen one-on-none basketball look like a contact sport before.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Lils.”
“Really?”
“Really” with Lily, in that tone of voice, a certain look on her face, was the same as her calling him a liar. In a nice way, of course.
“Just out here trying to get better,” Ben said.
“Better than who, Kobe and LeBron?”
Before Ben could say anything to that, Lily hit him with this: “I heard about the scrimmage, McBain. And about the way Chase played. And the way you played. Or didn’t.”
“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” Ben said.
Now Lily smiled at him, like the first light coming on in the neighborhood tonight, and said, “Really?”
“I give up.”
Lily said, “That’s always best.”
They sat down on the court. Ben told her his version of the scrimmage, how good he thought Chase was, how he — Ben — didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to get after it, and get better.
“You’re always trying to get better,” Lily said. “Because that gives you a better chance of winning the game.”
“That’s the thing, Lils. I had no chance to win the game today.”
“Wow,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d taken on Darby all by yourself. That hardly seems fair.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Sounded that way to me. Let me ask you something: If you’d played your absolute best game today, would you guys have won?”
Ben was tired all of a sudden. Tired from the game, tired from his postgame practice. Tired of talking already, even with Lily, even knowing she wanted him to feel better. Ben looked past her, across the street to where his house was. How come your parents never called you when you wanted them to?
Like right now.
“Probably not,” he said. “They’re pretty good. Darby, I mean. I would’ve picked us to win the league, but that was before they got Chase.”
“Which is why you’re gonna practice until it’s too dark. Or maybe until next Saturday’s game.”
“I’m done now.”
“You think Sam and Coop and Shawn, all your boys, were so freaked by the scrimmage that they gave themselves basketball detentions?”
“It’s my job to make the other guys on the team better,” Ben said.
“Your job?”
“You know me better than anybody,” Ben said. “So you know what I mean.”
“I know you gotta chill, McBain. Aren’t you the guy always telling me that you’re never as bad as you look when you lose, and never as good as you look when you win?”
“Have you forgotten anything I’ve ever said?”
Lily smiled again. “Oh, sure. I try to forget your dumb jokes, how your fantasy teams are doing. Lots of neat stuff. You want the whole list?”
“No, thank you.”
Ben could hear his mom calling him now, seeing Lily with him and asking if she wanted to stay for dinner, Lily yelling back that she had to go, she and her parents were going out tonight.
“Here’s the deal,” Ben said. “I just got the earliest wakeup call I’ve ever gotten on a season today. I gotta find a way to get better. Fast.”
“Or what?” she said in a quiet voice, those eyes of hers on him.
“Or else we’re not going to win the championship,” he said.
Lily shook her head, stood up. “What, now every season has to end the way the football one did?”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Lily said. “Because that’s not the way things work in sports. Not even for you, McBain.”
Lily told h
im he better go get something to eat, lack of food was clearly making him light-headed. Then she got on her bike and said she’d call him later, when he was making more sense.
Ben picked up his ball, drove to the basket one last time. But right before he was going to push off on his left foot, he dribbled the ball into one more hole he didn’t see and it bounced away from him.
He thought: End of a perfect day.
The schedule during the season was for their team to practice three nights during the week, an hour at a time at either Rockwell Middle School or at Rockwell High School, the practices only an hour because so many other town teams used the gyms, too.
But even on days when there wasn’t practice, Ben was out on the court at McBain, getting ready for the start of the season this Saturday.
Friday afternoon after school, no practice scheduled that night, Ben even got Sam to come work out with him.
Sam Brown wasn’t as good an all-around basketball player as Chase Braggs, not based on what they all saw in the first scrimmage. But he had been the quickest and fastest small forward in the league last season, even though he wasn’t really small, he was tall enough to play center for the Rams. But Coach just thought Sam’s skills still fit small forward best:
He could run the court, he could cover, and his outside shot had gotten a lot better over the summer.
But as far as Ben was concerned, the best part of his friend’s game was how unselfish he was. Ben knew Sam well enough to know that he didn’t give a rip what his stats were at the end of the game as long as their team won.
Sam wasn’t just a good defender, he was an awesome defender, taking pride in locking down the player he was guarding, using his long arms and length on defense to his advantage the way Chase did.
Because of all that, Ben decided Sam was the perfect guy to go up against in one-on-one as a way of getting ready for Darby.
Which meant getting ready for his rematch with Chase.
“You usually hate playing one-on-one,” Sam was saying now.
“There’s a reason.”
“Can’t wait to hear this one.”
“The reason,” Ben said, “is that even as competitive as you know I am —”
“You? Competitive?”
Ben ignored him. “As I was saying, even as competitive as I am, I don’t like to compete against you. Guys think I always want us to be on the same team in everything because it gives us a better chance to win. That’s not it. I just don’t want to beat you. That make sense?”
“Actually it does,” Sam said. “It’s why I don’t like to play video games against my dad. I act like I want to beat him, but I really don’t.”
“Same.”
“But you want me to go at you hard today, right?” Sam said.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “At first I wanted to go two-on-two, but Shawn had a guitar lesson and Coop had to stay after school for not getting his English paper in on time. Then I got to thinking about it, and the stuff I still need to work on, it’s better with just you and me.”
Sam said, “I always look at it the same way: When you get better, the team gets better.”
“Let’s hope,” Ben said.
Ben figured that if he could get his shot against Sam today, he could get it against Chase tomorrow in a game that counted. If he could protect the ball against Sam’s long arms and stupidly quick hands, well, he could do that against Chase.
That was the plan, anyway.
“Before we start, can I ask you something?” Sam said. “Why are you so fixed on a dude you’d never even met until last weekend?”
“You sound like Lily.”
“Thank you,” Sam said. “But is that your answer?”
“Okay, here’s the way I look at it,” Ben said. “If I’m gonna be as good as I want to be and we’re gonna be as good as we need to be, I can’t let this guy dominate me. Is that a good enough answer?”
“You left one thing out.”
“What?”
“How much he annoyed you while he was dominating you.”
Sam took the ball out of Ben’s hands, turned and squared up, and made a shot from the free-throw line. Then, as he jogged over to pick up the ball, he bobbed his head and smiled and pointed into an imaginary crowd.
Then he blew a kiss at Ben, even though Chase hadn’t done that last Saturday.
“You sure he didn’t annoy you?” Sam said.
“Maybe a little bit.”
“Maybe a lot.”
Ben said, “Are we gonna play or talk?”
Sam said, “Coop thinks you’re always supposed to do both.”
“Coop’s being kept after school.”
“I feel like I am, too,” Sam said, then grinned and added, “Just kidding.”
Today Ben actually tried to beat Sam at one-on-one, pretending as well as he could that he really was going up against Chase. And kept telling Sam to play his hardest, not go easy on him.
“Just worry about yourself,” Sam said. “You’re the one on a mission here.”
“Yeah, to kick your butt.”
“If you can.”
They played two games of first-to-eleven, only had to win by one. Sam won the first, Ben won the second. Both by a single basket. When Ben would get careless with the ball, Sam would knock it away from him. When Ben didn’t make a good enough move or create enough separation between him and Sam, Sam would block his shot. One time Ben had him clearly beaten off the dribble, drove to the basket on the right side, and Sam still managed to come from behind and block the shot, hard, knocking it all the way into the street.
When Ben retrieved it, Sam said, “Listen, when you go up against bigger guys —”
“You mean when I go up against almost everybody,” Ben said.
“— you should think about shooting the ball on the way up. Or even before you go up, which means before the defense expects it.”
So they practiced that for a few minutes, Ben releasing his shot close to the basket before his feet left the ground, working on shooting it from his hip almost as the ball came up out of his dribble, like it was all one motion.
“One more game,” he said finally.
“Do I get a vote?” Sam said.
“No.”
“Wait, no was my vote!”
Ben shrugged as Sam said, “Coop’s right, this isn’t much of a democracy around here.”
“C’mon,” Ben said, “you’re making me get better.”
“All you’re doing is making me tired.”
“You never get tired.”
“No, that’s you.”
“One more game of eleven.”
“Seven.”
“Deal.”
They got to 6–all. Sam’s ball. He started backing in, patiently trying to get to his spot in the low blocks, because they’d both seen last Saturday that was one of Chase’s go-to moves against Ben, a way to use his length. But this time Sam turned and the ball hit hard off the back of the rim and Ben chased down the rebound, dribbled outside, Sam not giving him any space, running with him.
But Ben went to his left hand, got a step, got into the lane. Only instead of driving the ball all the way, trying to get a layup, he went with the from-the-hip shot he’d been working on, shooting the ball off his right foot instead of his left, a pretty little teardrop.
Nothing but string.
He and Sam bumped fists and Sam said, “Want to blow me a kiss?”
“That’s not me.”
Sam gave him a long look now. “Nope, definitely not you these days.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m just playing with you,” Sam said.
“Seriously?” Ben said.
“That’s it!” Sam said. “You cracked the code. You’re playing way too seriously.”
“I just want to have a good season,” Ben said, “is all.”
“We all do,” Sam Brown said. “It’s just that the rest of us have sort of figured out that the season hasn’t started yet.�
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“Well, it already started for me,” Ben said.
“You’re joking. I hadn’t picked up on that. Coop, either. Or Shawn. Or Lily.”
“Go ahead, have your fun.”
“You first,” Sam said.
The Rams had had a good week of practice, offense and defense, running their plays, getting better at pressing and breaking a press, working hard on being the kind of help defenders that Coach Wright wanted them to be, learning when to switch and when not to, and when he wanted them to double-team the ball.
Ben could see them coming together as a team. More than anything, Ben could see how much Shawn was going to help them this season. Shawn’s dad had played in the NFL as a backup quarterback to Peyton Manning, and had raised Shawn to be a quarterback before things had changed halfway through the football season, but Ben was starting to think basketball might be Shawn’s best sport.
Starting to think Shawn had no idea just how good a basketball player he might turn out to be.
Shawn could run the court almost as well as Sam and was a better outside shooter, even playing power forward. And he was turning out to be a maniac on the boards, rebounding the ball at both ends of the court, another reason why Ben was sure that Shawn, Sam, Coop were going to make up the best front line in their league.
Sam was still the one player on the team Ben knew they could least afford to lose, just because he did so many things well. But it was clear already that Shawn had it in him to be a game changer, too.
Ben was trying to be one now against Darby. Holding their own this time, even though they were behind eight points at halftime. The Rams had gotten behind by more than that early, Chase and his teammates coming out hot again in the first quarter, same as they had last Saturday in their gym.
But then Darrelle, the Rams’ shooting guard, made a couple of three-pointers, and with two minutes left in the first quarter, the game was tied, and stayed tied until Chase Braggs went on an 8–0 run all by himself at the end of the half, the last coming after he blocked Ben’s shot, pushed the ball with time running out, had to pull up at the free-throw line for the jumper that beat the horn and made the score 32–24 for Darby at the half.