“Well, it is called the High Flyer,” I said.
“Bet you a dollar you don’t,” said Deuce. At his height, Mike had no shot at dunking. Betting against us was his way of joining in.
“You’re on!” said Mike.
Long story short: We owed Deuce a buck. Mike and I each took three tries at dunking. If it didn’t happen on the first few, it pretty much wasn’t going to happen. And we didn’t want to tire out our legs before the tournament even started. (Of course, if Deuce had bet us five bucks, we would’ve been trying till sundown!)
I got really close on my second attempt. I tried it one-handed. I could extend a little more that way, but holding on was trickier. I had big hands for an eleven-year-old, but still. Anyway, I started with a flat-out sprint, at least ten feet, not even pretending to dribble. Then I launched myself up at the rim. I brought my hand back. The ball wobbled a little, but I held on tight. At the absolute top of my jump, I slammed it forward.
The ball hit the rim, but it shot straight up in the air. That meant the bottom of the ball had hit the top of the rim. I was definitely getting close to dunking — and I was still growing pretty fast. Before I even landed I thought: I’ll get there soon.
Mike banged his shots off the rim a few times, but his bounced straight back. He was still growing, too, but he was kind of growing in both directions. He took off like a big old jetliner.
“Look out below!” I yelled after his last attempt, because he landed like a jetliner, too.
The other kids started to show up. Most of them just took lazy jumpers and stuff. That way, if they missed, they could act like they weren’t really trying anyway. Some of them talked quietly because they knew people were listening. Some of them talked loudly for the same reason. I got a kick out of the loud ones.
We were watching this one loud, lanky kid strut around the court. He had bright yellow sneakers on that looked like hyperactive bananas when he moved. He rattled in a ten-foot shot and looked all around to make sure everyone saw it.
“What’s he want, a prize?” said Mike.
“Maybe he should try not to use every inch of the rim next time,” I said.
“No need to go bananas,” said Deuce, as the kid chest-bumped one of his teammates.
And then all of a sudden, the court was empty.
“Are we starting up?” said Mike.
“Still too early,” said Deuce.
It reminded me of this show I’d seen during Shark Week on TV. One minute, there were all these seals playing around and doing loop-de-loops in the water. The next second they just vanished. Then the camera started panning around, because the guy holding it knew the deal. A shark had showed up and scared off all the seals.
And now I saw the shark. He was long and lean like the cocky kid in banana shoes, but he wasn’t strutting. He was just walking, nice and easy. And he wasn’t looking around either. It was like he didn’t care if people were watching or not.
“Check out this guy,” I said.
“What do you mean,” said Deuce, “good or bad?”
He hadn’t done anything more than dribble the ball with his right hand yet, but I knew.
“Good,” I said.
“How can you tell?” Deuce asked, but just then, the kid took off toward the basket. Three quick dribbles and he was there. Then he shot straight up and threw down a no-doubt-about-it, rim-rattling dunk. He used one hand, but it wasn’t because he needed that extra inch.
“Whoa,” I said.
There was a kid the next row down from us in the stands. He had a basketball in his hand, but I didn’t see any teammates.
“Hey, man,” I said.
“Yeah?” he said, looking back over his shoulder.
“Who’s that guy?”
“That’s Jammer, man,” he said.
“Jammer?” said Mike.
“James ‘Jammer’ Jamison,” said the kid. “He goes to my school.”
“He your teammate?” I said.
“I wish.”
“I think those are his teammates,” said Deuce, pointing.
Two other kids had edged onto the court behind Jammer. The first one fired up a brick from twelve feet away. Jammer grabbed the ball and fired it to the other guy, who took a long shot that rattled around the rim and off. I was seriously relieved that his teammates weren’t as good. But that only lasted the second or so it took Jammer to tip the miss up and in.
Fifteen minutes later, the first-round matchups were announced. We got Banana Shoes and two other kids. I’ll admit, I was a little nervous before the game started. It wasn’t that long ago that I had shied away from tournaments altogether. I’d always loved basketball, but I was still getting used to how serious these things were. Sometimes you’d see two teams play an entire game without any of the players cracking a smile, much less a joke. I didn’t understand that at all.
Plus, the other team was strutting around the court like they owned it. Banana Shoes was their leader, or at least he was acting like he was. He looked over at us as we headed to center court for the opening tip. “This won’t take long,” he said, loud enough for us to hear it. He definitely talked a good game.
Yeah, that lasted about eighteen seconds. I won the tip cleanly, and batted the ball back to Deuce. My legs were moving even before I landed, like how they run in cartoons. The other team tried to keep up, but Deuce was too fast. He blew by them as they backpedaled. They turned to run after him and lost sight of me, trailing the play. Deuce just missed the layup. He was going about a hundred miles an hour, so it had a little too much on it. But I swooped in doing ninety-eight, for the easy tip-in.
Let’s just say that their trash talk pretty much dried up after that. The games at this tourney were to eleven, scoring by ones. After we went up 7–3 on a nice up-and-under move from Mike, Banana Shoes started limping. Funny thing about that limp, though: It didn’t affect him when he had the ball. He was just faking it, pretending that’s the reason they were losing.
Anyway, we pretty much used the rest of the game as practice for the next one. Deuce did a good job of spreading the ball around, and when I got a rebound, I didn’t necessarily go right back up with it. I looked to see if Mike had good position or if Deuce was cutting to the hoop or whatever. We won 11–5, and we all had about the same number of points. But I knew the day was just getting started.
My mouth was pretty dry after the game. There was a drinking fountain over by the sign-in table, and I headed straight toward it. I wanted to check if the second-round matchups were ready yet anyway. They weren’t, but I drank about a gallon of cold water from the fountain.
I looked up and wiped my mouth with the back of my arm. There was a guy standing there. It was hard to tell how old he was because he was one of those old guys who was still in really good shape. He even looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d seen him before.
“Here you go,” I said, stepping aside so he could use the fountain.
“Thanks, son,” he said, “but I’m fully hydrated.”
Hydrated, that was a good word. I made a mental note to use it when I got back to the bleachers, like: “It’s cool, I’m fully hydrated now.”
“Your name’s Amar’e, right?” the guy asked. He even pronounced it right.
“Yeah,” I said, but he obviously knew that already. It’s not like Amar’e is the first name you would guess. Anyway, he kept asking me questions.
“How old are you?”
“’Leven.”
“Where you from?”
“Lake Wales.”
“How tall are you?”
“Not sure. Keeps changing.”
He took a step back and eyeballed me. I guess he was estimating my height. That’s when it occurred to me, you know: Why is this random dude asking me all these questions? And why am I answering?
“Uh, who are you?” I said.
“Name’s Omar,” he said. He smiled and extended his hand.
He still looked kind of familiar. I didn’t
want to be rude, in case he was an old friend of Dad’s or something. I shook his hand.
“Amar’e,” I said, “but I guess we already covered that.”
“Good luck next round,” he said.
“Yeah, all right. Thanks.”
I headed back to the bleachers. Mike and Deuce had their heads on a swivel, keeping an eye on two different games at once.
“Fully hydrated,” I said, plunking down next to them.
“Fully what-what-ed?” said Mike.
“That’s good,” said Deuce. “Some of these other teams are tough.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “I think they’re fully hybraited, too.”
“Hydrated, man,” said Deuce with a chuckle.
By the time we explained what that meant to Mike, they’d started announcing the second-round matchups. They announced ours for Court 2.
“They good?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” said Deuce.
“Most def,” said Mike.
We got up and headed down to Court 2 to find out just how good. We checked in with the ref once we got there, and the other team arrived about thirty seconds later. The first thing I noticed was that two of them were twins. They looked identical, and were wearing the same outfits, right down to their sneakers.
“This is gonna be confusing,” said Mike.
Their third player didn’t have a twin. Or if he did, he’d eaten him. Dude was enormous. Put it this way: The ball he was dribbling wasn’t much rounder than he was.
“Is it still called ‘boxing out’ if the guy’s round?” I whispered to Deuce.
He laughed, but it was kind of a nervous laugh. And he was right, too, because this game was tough from the start.
“You got him?” I called to Deuce as we got bounced around in traffic under the hoop.
“Got him!” called Deuce. But he covered the wrong twin. That left the other one wide open for a little bunny-hop layup.
“No, him!” I said as the ball went through the hoop.
“Oh, then no,” said Deuce.
Mike didn’t have to deal with mistaken identity. It was impossible to confuse the enormous kid he was covering with anything other than maybe a baby elephant. As big as he was, he never moved too far from the basket. From the start, the twins dumped the ball in to him on almost every play.
Sometimes he’d pass it back out, and sometimes he’d take it himself. Not only could I see it when he bodied up on Mike, I could hear it.
“OOOOOOF!” grunted Mike as the kid backed into him.
Before Mike could recover his position — or his breath — we were down 2–0. By the time I noticed that the twins had different color laces (in their identical sneakers), it was already 4–0.
“Red laces!” I called to Deuce. “See ’em?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Blue laces over here.”
And that’s how we identified them. At first, we called them “Red Laces,” “Blue Laces,” and “Big Man,” but pretty soon we simplified things.
“Stay on Big!” Deuce called.
“I got Red,” I shouted.
We got on the board after that with, well, with a little luck. I heaved up an off-balance jumper from long range and somehow it rattled in: 4–1. As we got ready for our next possession, I looked around at the matchups.
Big Man had a size advantage on Mike — he would’ve had a size advantage on a car! Mike was faster, but getting around Big Man was like Magellan trying to sail around the world. Deuce was a little faster than either twin, but a little smaller, too. And even if he got around his guy, Big Man would be right there, clogging up the lane.
I was the one with the best matchup. I was a little bigger than either twin, and at least as fast. We were already down by three. If we were going to win, I was going to have to carry the load.
I went to work. I had the ball and Red Laces was on me tight.
I gave him a quick crossover dribble and a little fake, then took off. I turned the corner on him and rocketed toward the basket. Big Man saw me coming, but he had to stay close to Mike under the basket. That left me plenty of space for a short, pull-up jumper. It was 4–2, and we just sort of chipped away at it after that.
With the score tied at 6–6, Deuce dumped the ball down to me. Blue wasn’t on him that close, and he clapped his hands for a return pass. But I had good position and a few inches on Red. I went up with a hook shot and scored over the top of him. It gave us our first lead of the day, but Deuce wasn’t happy.
“Come on, man, I was wide open,” he said.
Deuce kept the ball on our next possession. He charged straight down the lane and crashed right into Big Man. With their size difference, it looked like a little kid running into the side of a bouncy castle. The ref whistled Deuce for an offensive foul, and the other team scored two straight to put us behind again.
We finally got the ball back. Blue was all over Deuce, and he finally passed me the ball. I had to work hard, but I got by Red again. I swooped in from the side, and Big Man left Mike to pick me up. Mike was open now, but he was really deep under the basket, just inches from the baseline. It didn’t seem worth the risk, especially since I’d been knocking down these short jumpers all day.
I stopped, popped, and scored. It was 9–9, but now both of my teammates were mad at me.
“I’m working hard down there,” said Mike. “Wouldn’t kill you to get me the ball when I’m open.”
“You were all the way under the basket,” I said.
“That’s a good thing!” he said.
“I’m just trying to win the game for us,” I said.
“Oh, what, we’re not?” said Deuce.
“No, I know,” I said. “Of course you are.”
What else could I say? How do you tell your best friends you don’t think they can beat their defenders? Well, I guess I told them that by scoring the next two points. The first one was a put-back on a heave by Deuce, so they couldn’t really blame me for that. But I scored game point on a long jumper from the corner. I just had a good feeling about it, so I took it.
Mike should’ve been happy it went in. I mean, (A) we won, and (B) Big Man had to stop leaning on him now. But when I went to high-five him, I thought he was going to leave me hanging. He finally raised his hand up and gave mine a weak slap.
“Supposed to be three-on-three,” he said as he headed off the court.
I looked around for Deuce, but he was already gone. The only ones left were the guys on the other team. I shook their hands and we all agreed it was a good, tough game. They told me their real names, but they’ll probably always be Red Laces, Blue Laces, and Big Man to me.
As I walked off the court to go find my teammates, I saw Omar still standing by the fence. He gave me a nod. I nodded back, but I still couldn’t figure out why he looked so familiar.
I picked up my pace to catch Mike and Deuce. “Two down, two to go,” I said as I pulled even with them.
We’d made it through the first two rounds, so the next game would be the semifinal. If we won that one, we’d get to play in the championship game. So it was all good, but Mike and Deuce didn’t even respond. Maybe they didn’t hear me. More people had showed up as the morning went on, and it was kind of loud.
“Two to go,” I repeated.
“We heard you,” said Mike.
That was it: Three words and then they went back to the silent treatment. They were still mad.
“Come on,” I said as we found a spot in the bleachers. “I had the best matchup. I had to push the action.”
“Push the action?” said Deuce. “You mean hog the ball?”
“You guys both had the ball early,” I said. “They were killing us.”
“Oh, so you thought you’d just take things into your own hands?” said Mike.
I looked over at him. I didn’t really know what to say. Because the answer was yes. That’s exactly what I thought, and it’s the only reason we ended up winning. We just looked at each other for a long second.
Then I remembered something my dad said once: If you don’t know what to say, just say what you know. “You couldn’t get around that guy,” I said.
Mike rolled his eyes. “Please,” he said. “It just took me a little time to figure him out, is all.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
There was one of those weird pauses where both of us were waiting for the other one to say something more. We both thought we were right. I could either make things worse, or I could apologize. I manned up.
“My bad,” I said.
Mike shook his head and looked away. But he didn’t say anything else. So of course that’s when Deuce decided to speak up.
“What about me?” he said.
I decided to do the same thing: Tell the truth and then apologize.
“You couldn’t get any separation from your guy,” I said. “But my bad anyway,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Deuce.
It didn’t make any sense. The two statements completely contradicted each other, but Deuce was agreeing to both. I think he just wanted to save some face. I think they both did. They didn’t look as mad. Their jaws weren’t clenched up like they were trying to crack a walnut anymore.
Down on the court, the last game of the morning was wrapping up. As I turned to look, one of the players flew toward the rim and slammed one down. It was that kid Jammer.
“Wow,” I said.
Seeing him dunk when he was warming up was one thing. He had all the time — and steps — he needed for that. But doing it in a game was something else. He had to spot the opportunity and be ready for takeoff.
“Can’t wait till I can do that,” said Mike.
“Me neither,” said Deuce.
Mike and I both looked at him. We smiled.
“Deuce, man,” said Mike. “You’re, like, five foot nothin’. That’s going to be a long time from now. A very long time.”
“No way,” said Deuce. “I’m going to do it tonight.”
At first he seemed serious. Then he broke out into a big smile, too: “As soon as I fall asleep and start dreaming!”
We all laughed. It felt good to laugh with my friends again. We settled in to watch the rest of the game. It was like sitting outside a chain-link fence at a construction zone and watching some heavy-duty demolition work. Jammer was the wrecking ball.
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