The Final Four

by Paul Volponi

  First Reporter: Malcolm, just to follow up, obviously you’ve passed your first semester of classes at Michigan State, or you wouldn’t be eligible to continue playing. But there have been reports that you’ve stopped going to class completely during your second semester, in anticipation of leaving school after the tournament concludes. If that’s true, do you feel like you’re manipulating the system?

  Malcolm: I had to take at least six credits my first semester, and I did—passed them all. It doesn’t matter if it was ballroom dancing or basketball 101. I passed. It’s like the second time I took the SAT and scored so much higher. Nobody believed it. And I had to take it a third time to prove I had some natural smarts. Well, I really can’t remember about this semester. It’s been too much basketball and travel for my school. So I’ll have to wait for grades in a couple of months to find out. For the second part of that question, it’s like what my father always says about living in the projects, about being trapped there—no one can manipulate the system who didn’t invent it, a system that was made to keep you down.

  First Reporter: Malcolm, there have been whispers that you may come under NCAA investigation for receiving some type of improper benefits. Do you know anything about that?

  Malcolm: All I can tell you is I’ve got no wheels, no watch, no rings (looking down at his bare wrists and fingers), and no money in the bank. Ask anyone who knows me, anyone who sees me walking around campus. People who are jealous of me are always going to be serving up that Haterade. So as far as I’m concerned, those rumors come under the heading of Child, Please.

  Third Reporter: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has proposed that schools which don’t graduate at least fifty percent of their scholarship basketball players should be banned from playing in this tournament. How do you feel about lowering your school’s graduation rate by leaving early, Malcolm? What if your teammates and school pay the price for that, being banned from a future tournament?

  Malcolm: I don’t care about none of that. I’m looking after number one—myself. I’ve seen what happens in this world when you don’t, when you put other people first. That’s why I wear eleven on my uniform. There are two number ones in a row, to always remind me, in case I forget. I pass the rock to my teammates when they’re open. That’s it. Nobody can ask any more from me. And no one should.

  Broadcast cuts back to the studio announcer.

  Announcer: Within an hour of Malcolm McBride’s comments, the Michigan State Athletics Department issued this statement (statement appears on screen as announcer reads it): “We wholeheartedly believe in amateurism and the ideal of the student athlete. Our scholarship athletes abide by the rules of the NCAA and make great personal sacrifices to compete on the athletic field while maintaining their primary role as students at Michigan State.” (Cut back to announcer) Michigan State coach Eddie Barker, who has been battling laryngitis throughout the tournament, has yet to comment.

  “Where I grew up—I grew up on the north side of Akron [Ohio], lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights—that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.”

  —LeBron James, who went directly from high school into the NBA

  CHAPTER ONE

  MALCOLM McBRIDE

  7:18 P.M. [CT]

  The Goodyear Blimp isn’t as pumped up as Malcolm, standing inside the Michigan State huddle. If it were, it would be providing a national TV audience with a video feed from the surface of Mars right now, instead of an aerial view of the Superdome.

  Coach Barker, who sports a middle-age paunch and stands almost a head shorter than Malcolm, is the focus of the Spartans’ attention.

  “Seize on the momentum Malcolm just gave us,” Coach Barker preaches to his players in a strained and raspy voice. “That shot he made destroyed them. Believe me, they’re deflated. They’ll be dragging out there. They haven’t got the heart or stomach for this kind of pressure. We do!”

  The players standing closest to Malcolm, Grizzly Bear Cousins and Baby Bear Wilkins, each drape an arm across his shoulders.

  Malcolm feels their weight as they try to lift themselves and overcome their exhaustion.

  “They’re tired. We’re not. Stay tough on defense, but watch—” says Barker over the crowd noise, before his voice finally falters.

  Malcolm raises his head from the huddle, gazing into the packed stands. Sitting nine rows behind the Michigan State bench are his parents.

  His mama, a lunchroom worker in a Detroit elementary school, is cheering wildly.

  Though Malcolm can’t hear her over the crowd, he reads her lips mouthing, “Go, son! Go!”

  Malcolm’s father is much more reserved. He claps his callused hands, nodding his head beneath a cap that reads BUILT TOUGH, the motto of the car company that released him after twenty-three years on their assembly line.

  Coach Barker sticks a hand out into the middle of the huddle, and his players quickly pile theirs on top.

  Barker punishes his vocal cords to get out a single word: “Victory!”

  In unison, the players repeat it, breaking the huddle.

  Then Malcolm gives some instructions of his own.

  “Grizz, I want you to knock that Red Bull dude senseless with a hard screen. I can’t have him hawking me everywhere without consequences.”

  “Done,” says Grizzly, through the growing shadow of a sandpaper beard.

  “Leave it to me. I’ve got fouls to burn,” says Baby Bear. “I’ll knock that Euro-boy’s dome clean off.”

  Grizzly, a mountain of a senior, is one of the biggest centers in all of college basketball. And his immense size is the only reason the smaller, six-foot-nine, 260-pound DeJuan Wilkins could ever be referred to as Baby Bear. All year long, the pair had growled over Malcolm, a freshman, barking out orders. But with the Spartans’ entire season now resting on Malcolm’s ability to score, Grizzly and Baby Bear apparently decide to put their pride aside.

  Nearing the end of regulation, a pair of pivotal Michigan State players had fouled out of the game. So Barker now points to Michael Jordan, who removes his warm-up top and gets ready to take the floor.

  This isn’t the Michael Jordan who won the NCAA Championship with North Carolina, six NBA Championships with the Chicago Bulls, and two Olympic gold medals. Not Air Jordan, with his “Jumpman” silhouette on his own brand of basketball shoes.

  No, this is the junior benchwarmer of the same name, whose jump shot sometimes makes it look like he’s applying for work as a bricklayer.

  “Hey, MJ, play like the man you’re named after. Not like you usually do,” demands Malcolm, tugging him in close with a firm grip on the waistband of his shorts. “That means don’t screw things up. Just get the rock to me.”

  “I hear you loud and clear,” answers MJ, in an unsettled voice. “No heroics, just steady play. I got it.”

  Before he walks onto the court for overtime, Malcolm’s piercing brown eyes settle on a girl in the Michigan State band. He hears the pounding rhythm of her snare and watches the drumsticks in her hands moving faster and faster, until they become a blur.

  AUGUST, TWO YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS AGO

  The mercury had hit ninety-six degrees that sweltering summer day, and the sun baked the red brick of the Brewster-Douglass Houses.

  It was nearly five thirty in the afternoon as Malcolm headed home from the asphalt courts, bare-chested, with a sweat-soaked T-shirt dangling from a belt loop on his cutoffs.

  He pounded a basketball against the concrete, in rhythm to his steps.

  Right-handed.

  Left-handed.

  Right-handed.

  Left-handed.

  The heat from the sidewalk came up through the bottoms of his kicks, until the soles of Malcolm’s feet felt like they were on fire.

  “Hey, Malc,” called a voice from a circle of teens on the opposite corner, in the shadow of a liquor store on St. Antoine Street, o
ne where a sheet of bulletproof glass separated the customers from the guy at the register. “It’s too hot to be balling. Come chill with us.”

  They were dudes who Malcolm was tight with from his hood and school, mostly dressed in tank tops, shorts, and sneakers with no socks. And there were two open forty-ounce beers on the ground beside them, on either side of a metal pole from a parking meter.

  They were hanging out, looking for a good time.

  But there was a pair of guys with them, wearing heavy cargo pants with more pockets than you could count. Those dudes were doing business.

  Malcolm threw a hand up to wave.

  “My mama’s birthday dinner’s tonight,” he hollered back, without breaking his stride. “I gotta go.”

  “Don’t party too hard with the old folks!”

  Malcolm wasn’t an angel. He’d been involved in his share of drama during his first two years of high school. He wanted junior year to be different, though.

  He’d been suspended for fighting the semester before, after a beef he had on the basketball court carried over into a classroom. And his father had to pick him up once at the station house when cops nabbed him on the street for underage drinking.

  But Malcolm didn’t have any real interest in watching other kids screw around, drink, or get high. He’d seen too many sweeps by the Detroit PD, who’d bust anyone within fifty feet of dudes dealing drugs. So Malcolm didn’t even cross over to the other side of the street.

  A half-block later, Malcolm passed another group of guys camped out around a bench. They were a little older and more serious about business. Malcolm recognized them, too. Only this time there weren’t any greetings, just an exchange of hard looks.

  At the edge of the four identical fourteen-story project buildings, younger kids were splashing in the spray from an open hydrant. Nearby, middle school girls were spinning ropes, making their own cool breeze. They were jumping double Dutch, popping out rhymes.

  Call the army, call the navy,

  Maya’s gonna have a baby.

  Wrap it up in tissue paper,

  Send it down the elevator.

  Boy, girl, twins, triplets,

  Boy, girl, twins, triplets.

  Without noticing, Malcolm had changed the rhythm of his dribble to match their cadence.

  Over it all was the sound of rap, hip-hop, and R & B mixed together, filtering through the air. Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross, two of his mama’s favorite singers, grew up in these projects. Malcolm knew that was the music she’d want to hear at her birthday dinner. And he was already thinking about putting on the CD of Smokey’s “My Girl,” just to hear his father sing to her—Talkin ’bout my girl. My girl.

  As Malcolm started for Building 302, his sister, Trisha, came bounding through the front doors and headed down the concrete path towards him.

  She was dressed in a gray T-shirt that read M.L.K. CRUSADERS MARCHING BAND, with five interlocking rings beneath.

  “Think fast, sis,” said Malcolm, sending her a chest-high pass.

  Trisha was going to be a senior in September at Martin Luther King High School, where Malcolm was about to become a junior.

  “What, you think ballers are the only ones with quick hands?” Trisha shot back, after cushioning the ball to a stop between her fingertips and palms. “Just remember who was the first McBride to play in front of a packed stadium—me.”

  The summer before, she’d taken her snare drum and gone with the band to perform at the Olympics in Beijing. They were one of a hundred high school bands invited from around the world. Trisha even played on the Great Wall of China and toured the Forbidden City, where Chinese emperors once lived.

  The school raised three hundred thousand dollars in donations to make it happen. Plenty of people from the projects who couldn’t afford it donated five or ten dollars out of pride, to see teens from their neighborhood do something like that.

  When she got back home, the first question Malcolm had asked her was about how good the Chinese food was over there. He was disappointed as anything to find out that Trisha hadn’t seen any fried rice, egg rolls, or spareribs on the whole two-week trip. Instead, she ate dumplings, roast duck, and baby octopus.

  “Dinner is all ready. I made meatloaf. It’s in the oven and just needs to be heated up,” said Trisha. “Here’s your job: set the table after you shower, and sign Mama’s birthday card. And I don’t mean just print your name. Write something nice in it and make sure you use the word love.”

  “Here’s your job,” Malcolm parroted her. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m doing a favor for Ramona—watching little Sha-Sha in the water while she goes to the store.”

  Ramona had been Trisha’s best friend since grade school. When Ramona got pregnant at fifteen, Malcolm’s parents put Trisha under lock and key for a while. But so far, Trisha still seemed to have more interest in school and band practice than running around with boys.

  “I’ll be back in about a half hour. Now, take a gut check,” Trisha said, shoving the ball hard into Malcolm’s stomach.

  A breath of air popped out of his lungs on impact. “Lucky you’re a female, or I’d knock you flat with the next pass.”

  “You just make sure Mama keeps out of the kitchen while I’m gone,” Trisha said from over her shoulder, walking away. “I don’t want her waiting on you or Daddy, not on her b-day.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not your slave either,” said Malcolm. “I see that you doing favors for other people puts more work on me.”

  “Deal with it, baby bro!” she called out, without ever looking back. “It’s not always about you!”

  In a single leap, Malcolm took the three steps leading up to the building’s entrance. Going through those double glass doors was like walking into a furnace, with the air inside almost too thick and heavy to breathe. He draped his T-shirt across the back of his neck and hit the buzzer to apartment 1204.

  “Who’s there?” asked his mama over the intercom.

  It was the last time Malcolm would hear her voice that carefree.

  “Me, Mama,” he answered.

  Malcolm felt the returning buzz in his hand and heard the lock click as he grabbed the burning-hot door handle.

  Inside, his eyes scanned the rows of mailboxes built into the wall, and the new bulletin board postings—

  EARN 50K A YEAR WORKING FROM HOME!

  LOSE 40 LBS. FIRST MONTH, NO EXERCISE.

  SATURDAY NIGHT HOUSE PARTY WITH DJ SCRIBE.

  REDUCE HYPERTENSION NOW!

  Then Malcolm rode an elevator alone to the twelfth floor. On the way up, he dribbled the ball one time, and the harsh echo off the metal walls pounded back at his eardrums.

  When the elevator doors opened, Malcolm heard a growing commotion in the hall. From around the bend, there was loud banging on a door, and snippets of panicked voices.

  “Those were gunshots . . .”

  “A drive-by, I think . . .”

  “Hurt . . .”

  “Shot . . .”

  “Oh, God no! God, let me be wrong!”

  “I have a first and a last name. I’m not just some passerby. I know that some people don’t like this, but they have to understand, no matter how miserable it makes them. There’s room for Europeans (in U.S. basketball).”

  —Dražen Petrovic, one of the first European players

  to succeed in the NBA, elected to the Hall of Fame

  posthumously after his death in a 1993 car accident

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROKO BACIC

  7:20 P.M. [CT]

  “One, two, three—teamwork!” echoes inside the circle of Trojans as coach Alvin Kennedy, a tall slender black man in his late thirties, breaks the huddle at their bench.

  Then, junior Roko Bacic feels a hand on his shoulder.

  Kennedy pulls him aside, looks him square in the eye, and says, “This is your time. We thrive on your energy. An extra five minutes is nothing for you. Be that Red Bull.”

  “If I�
��d stopped McBride on that shot, we’d be celebrating right now, cutting down the nets,” says Roko, shaking his head in disgust. “That’s on me.”

  “You couldn’t have played any better defense. Just let it go,” says Kennedy, gently shoving Roko onto the court. “You’re the only one that’s got an answer for Malcolm McBride so far. Don’t let him think he’s got something over you. And don’t you believe it, either.”

  Walking onto the court with Roko is senior center Crispin Rice and senior forward Aaron Boyce.

  “I forget under all this pressure—isn’t basketball supposed to be fun?” Crispin asks in a serious tone, glimpsing his fiancée, Hope Daniels, in the middle of a dance routine. She’s a Troy cheerleader, a stunning blonde with jade eyes and a sleek athletic body.

  Before Roko can respond, Aaron, a native of New Orleans, who has more than thirty relatives and friends attending the game, points into the stands and says, “Nah, it’s their job to have all the fun. We get to sweat it out under the microscope.”

  “I’m with Aaron. His family practically owns this Superdome tonight,” Roko tells Crispin. “Just play loose. Your stroke will come back, C-Rice.”

  Then Roko swallows hard, before letting go of a long belchhhh.

  The night before, Aaron’s mother had the entire Troy team and coaching staff—nearly twenty people—over to her house for dinner. She served crawfish, gumbo, and red beans and rice. For some of the players, including Roko, it was their first taste of Cajun cooking.

  “Son, what’s your teammate writing down in that little notebook of his, my dinner menu?” Roko had heard Aaron’s mother asking about him.