by Mike Lupica
In the morning Nick said that he and Bo had talked it over after Danny and the guys had finally gone to bed and decided they weren’t going to report them to Mr. LeBow.
“There’s some holes in the little guy’s story. You know that, right?” Nick said before leaving for breakfast.
Danny didn’t say anything.
Nick smiled then. “I did the same thing one time, but there was a girl involved.”
“She must have been worth it.”
When Nick was gone, Danny waited for Zach to come out of the shower—he was one of the guys who actually did shower in the morning—and asked if he’d rather play basketball than eat.
Zach said, “You even have to ask?”
Zach grabbed his trusty ball, and Danny showed him the way to a court set way off by itself, on the far side of the tennis courts, past the dirt parking lot they only used when parents came to visit the third weekend. Danny had found it the other day because he had heard a lot of noise coming from that direction on his way to the mess hall. The reason for the noise was that a bunch of counselors were using it for a street-style hockey game, tennis balls replacing pucks.
It was far and away the worst outdoor court at the camp, with a couple of holes near mid-court, and a net that was hanging by its last couple of strings.
But it was by itself, hardly any chance of anybody seeing them, unless a coach happened to come riding by in a golf cart.
“I’m skipping Froot Loops to play here?” Zach said. “And this is because…why?”
“You are a Froot Loop,” Danny said, “coming up with a story like that in front of Pinto.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Pride in his voice. A lot of pride. As if he’d earned some kind of merit badge last night. “I knew I had him when I gave him my sad face.”
“I know the face,” Danny said. “Remember?”
Zach was carrying his ball. Danny was carrying a broom he’d borrowed out of a storage closet at Gampel.
“Now that I see this court, I can see why you brought that,” Zach said, pointing to the broom.
Danny took the ball from Zach, handed him the broom now.
“I’ve gotta sweep?” Zach said. “After I backed your play last night?”
“Backed my play?”
Zach looked embarrassed. “I always sound like a nerd when I try to talk like Tarik, don’t I?”
“Don’t worry, we all do,” Danny said. He put his hand to his fist, like he was speaking into a walkie-talkie. “Calling all units,” he said. “White boys trying to sound black.”
“Yeah,” Zach said.
“The broom’s not for sweeping,” Danny said. “It’s for defense. I need you to be Ollie Grey.”
“Ollie the shot catcher?”
“Him,” Danny said. “Get over there and hold that sucker up, and I’ll see how much space I need to shoot over it.”
“My dad does this with me sometimes,” Zach said.
“Mine, too.” He started doing this drill when he turned back into a dad, Danny thought. And when he started trying to turn me into him.
“All dads do it for little guys,” Danny said. “Or when they’re trying to teach big guys to get more air under their shots.”
He had Zach set up on the baseline, about ten feet from the basket to start. He told him to block any shot he could.
The first time Danny came dribbling hard from the right corner and pulled up, Zach swatted the shot into the grass. Like Will had that day at McFeeley.
“Sorry,” Zach said.
“Don’t be.”
The next time, he came in, up-faked Zach while he still had his dribble, felt like he was shooting the ball as high as the backboard and watched it drop through the net.
“It’s like one of Steve Nash’s teardrop shots,” Zach said.
“Yeah,” Danny said, “except I want to use it to make big guys cry.”
They stayed there an hour, switching off sometimes so that Danny had the broom—he told Zach that he might as well start putting this shot into his game now. No sad face on Zach now. Just determination.
Like looking in a mirror, Danny thought again.
“Were you really going to leave?” Zach said near the end, when they were taking their last break.
“Yeah,” Danny said, “I was. I was going to do the same exact thing I told you not to do.”
“And that girl changed your mind?” Zach said.
“No,” he said, “she just made me see what a loser I’d be, and then I changed my own mind.”
They went back one last time to the rim with the good net. Zach in the lane now, holding up the broom to Ollie height. Danny drove at him like he was driving to the basket, leaned in, stepped back, put up the teardrop again. The ball seemed to spend more time floating through the air than a kite.
And fell through.
Danny looked at Zach and made the sideways peace sign Tarik had shown them.
“He’s baaack,” Zach said.
“Not back,” Danny said. “Just a little less whack.”
16
THE REAL GAMES, THE LEAGUE GAMES, BEGAN LATER THAT DAY.
From now until the end of camp, they were scheduled to do only two clinics in the morning, have a one-hour practice with their teams after lunch, then play games all over the grounds starting at four o’clock.
According to the schedule posted outside The House, the Celtics’ first game was at The House, against the Bulls.
“Aw, man, that’s sick,” Tarik said.
“Good sick or bad sick?” Will said.
“Bad,” Tarik said. “They got two Brooklyn guys I played against in AAU last year.”
Zach was with them, checking his own schedule. The younger kids played their league games at two-thirty.
“What’s AAU?” he said.
“Amateur Athletic Union. Like travel basketball plus. In New York City, it’s like the NBA of kids’ ball. You make your chops in AAU. It means you’re going places.”
“Who are the Brooklyn guys?” Danny said.
“Kareem Dell is one,” Tarik said. “TJ Tucker’s the other. Both of them are fifteen, but they look like they’re going on twenty. Both 6-3 already. Both got those long arms going for them. Both got ups.”
“We talking ups like Ollie Grey the shot catcher?” Ty said.
“Dog,” Tarik said, his voice sounding sadder than if his own dog had died. “Compared to them, Ollie jumps like Will here.” He put his hand on Will’s shoulder as he said the last part, before adding, “No offense, dude.”
“My legs accept your apology,” Will said.
“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Danny said. “Not that it’s going to matter much to me personally, if I’m not in the game.”
“Hey,” Zach said, “what about that new attitude you were telling me about?”
“That’s right,” Tarik said, raising his voice up to what he liked to call preacher level. “Don’t be backslidin’ on us now, baby. Don’t be backslidin’ now. Especially now that you got your lady across the lake.”
Will, Ty and Zach had told Tarik the whole Tess story at lunch.
“My attitude’s gonna be fine from now on,” Danny said. “But it’s like my dad always says, you gotta be realistic.”
Kareem and TJ were as good as Tarik said they were. For the first half of the game, the Bulls coach, Tim Pedulla, from Hofstra—Danny knew him because Hofstra had nearly made the Final Four a few months before—seemed to run the same basic offense every time, the Bulls’ guards pounding it inside on one side of the low post or the other, then watching as Kareem or TJ abused whatever big guys Coach Powers had guarding them, Ben Coltrane or David Upshaw or Alex Westphal.
Boys against men, Danny thought.
On the bench Tarik said to Danny, “First offense I ever saw with no weak side.”
Just then, even with Rasheed dropping down and trying to help out, TJ Tucker faced up on David and got so high on his jump shot that Danny had this picture in his
head that TJ had shrunk David to Zach Fox’s size.
Danny and Will and Tarik didn’t make much of a difference when they got out there in the middle of the first half. Danny thought he had played all right, a few assists, no turnovers, no shots attempted. But if it hadn’t been for Rasheed getting hot right before halftime, the Bulls would have blown them right out of the gym already.
Bulls 40, Celtics 24 at the break.
They were playing sixteen-minute halves. Eight minutes into the second half, because Coach Pedulla went to his bench a little more, it was 52–42.
That’s when Cole Duncan dove for a ball and went sliding into the bleachers like he was sliding into home.
Coach Pedulla got a butterfly bandage on the cut above Cole’s eye, explaining that the skin on your forehead split pretty easily—it had happened to him a few times when he was playing.
Cole, who had started to cry when it happened—when a guy cried, especially in front of a bunch of other guys he didn’t know, you knew he was hurt—was sitting up by then, holding an ice pack to his head, his eyes still red. He kept telling everybody he was fine, really he was. But they had already called for Dr. Bradley by then, who showed up and said he wanted to take Cole up to the infirmary. Just a precaution.
When Cole stood up, everybody on both teams started clapping. Then both coaches got their players back into the huddle. When the Celtics were around Coach Powers, he stared off into space for what felt like a long time, tilting his head to one side, then to the other, like he was having some kind of debate inside his head.
Finally, he turned and pointed at Tarik. “Get in there for Cole.”
Danny, standing next to Tarik, saw him immediately bend one leg behind him from the knee, then the other, a little stretching thing he did right before he went into the game.
“No,” Coach Powers said now, “I meant Walker.”
Danny was as surprised as any of them.
“Me?” he said.
“Is there another Walker on this team?”
“No sir.”
“And let’s mix it up a little once in a while,” Coach Powers said. “Walker, you give Rasheed a break once in a while and play some point. Okay?”
Danny said he was good with that.
He didn’t care how many plays he got to run. He was a point guard again, with the big boys this time.
Danny and Rasheed played as if they’d played together before, as if the game in North Carolina hadn’t ended the way it did, as if Rasheed wasn’t still hacked off about what he thought was Danny’s flop, as if he hadn’t leveled Danny just a couple of days before. It was as if he and Rasheed, for this one game, had thrown out everything except this:
Winning the game.
The Bulls were still bigger, but Kareem and TJ weren’t making all their shots now, maybe because the guys up front for the Celtics—Ben, David, Alex—were playing bigger, fighting harder.
The rest of the time, Danny and Rasheed did their best, even in Coach Powers’s offense, to turn it into a guards’ game.
The way God intended, as Richie Walker liked to say.
With three minutes to go, it was 58 all. The Celtics weren’t running every play the exact way Coach Powers wanted in practice, but they were moving the ball so well, passing it around so cleanly on just about every possession, that he didn’t seem to mind.
Will came off the bench to make a three. Tarik was getting as many rebounds as anybody on their team. Danny lost count of how many jumpers Rasheed made to get them back into it. With half a minute left, the game was still tied, 64–64. Kareem Dell was at the line about to shoot the front end of a one-and-one.
Coach Powers called time-out.
“If he makes both, we run ‘Carolina,’” he said. “If he misses the first, or makes the first and misses the second, run that variation of ‘Carolina’ where Rasheed comes down the baseline and curls around Tarik for a jumper.”
Rasheed nodded, as if Coach Powers was really only running the play past him.
“Don’t start it too late, Mr. Walker,” Coach Powers said. “If they double or triple on Rasheed, he can throw it back to you. Put it on the floor like you’re going to make a dribble drive, then get it back to him.”
Danny clapped his hands together hard, answering him that way: Let’s do this.
He wanted to show everybody how fired up he was, not even give them a hint at how tired he was. This wasn’t clinic ball or scrimmage ball. This was real ball. The real thing. For the first time in a long time, being into every possession this way, every play, every pass, every shot. There were times when Danny was so into the game he was afraid to take a breath.
Until he was out of breath.
He saw Will looking at him in the huddle, like he knew. Just because he knew Danny could usually go all day in basketball without ever getting tired.
Wordlessly, Will handed Danny the plastic bottle of cold water he was about to drink himself.
Danny glanced at Rasheed now, who not only wasn’t breathing hard, he wasn’t even sweating, as hot as it was in The House, even with the walls pulled back on the lakeside.
Kareem made the first free throw, missed the second, Tarik got the rebound, Danny came and got the ball. Bulls 65, Celtics 64.
Rasheed ran to the right corner, waited there. TJ Tucker was on that side and wasn’t even watching his own man, Ben Coltrane. He was watching Rasheed. Danny was watching the clock. Twenty seconds now. Rasheed sprinted down the baseline, hand up, faking like he was waving for the ball. Tarik dropped down, set the pick where he was supposed to; Rasheed came around it.
Danny threw him the ball.
The guy guarding Rasheed was named Phil, Danny’d heard them call out his name a few times. He was Rasheed’s size, blond and quick. Just not as quick as Rasheed. It was why Kareem Dell came over to help, TJ covering the lane behind him.
For the first time, Danny saw Rasheed Hill change expression.
He smiled.
Smiled like he was saying he still had the Bulls outnumbered, even if it was their two to his one.
He smiled and put the ball on the floor and did two lightning crossover dribbles—the double that made Danny’s own double crossover look like something that belonged on training wheels. The move he used when he wanted to dust somebody and drive the ball to the basket.
Neither one of them bit.
Phil held his ground. So did Kareem.
Even Tarik’s man came over.
Ten seconds now, and they had Rasheed surrounded.
He threw the ball back over to Danny, who’d been prepared to watch Rasheed win the game like everybody else.
He wasn’t expecting to get the ball back, but managed to catch the pass at the top of the circle. Too far to even think about shooting it himself, if he was even thinking about it. But there was open space in front of him, the way Coach Powers imagined there would be if they sealed Rasheed.
Dribble drive, Coach had said.
Danny did, expecting TJ to come up. He didn’t right away. Danny was a step inside the free throw line then.
Now TJ came up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that everybody had stayed home on Rasheed, even as Rasheed was calling for the ball.
Pass or shoot?
Danny’s only shot against TJ Tucker was the one he’d spent most of the morning practicing against Zach Fox.
The one over the broom.
Three seconds.
He planted his foot, stepped back just enough as TJ’s right arm went straight up in the air, got the ball over him nice and high, making sure to keep his own right arm going straight at the basket to keep the shot on line.
A rainmaker of a shot if there ever was one.
Danny didn’t hear anything, which meant that he’d gotten it off in plenty of time.
He watched it come down now.
About six inches short.
Air ball.
17
RASHEED DIDN’T MOVE WHEN THE HORN SOUNDED. HE
JUST STOOD there on the left wing until Danny looked over at him. Then Rasheed said, “I’m still open,” before he turned and walked out the doors facing the lake.
Danny was about to go after him, apologize for losing the game, when he saw Coach Powers walking toward him from the bench area, gesturing for Danny to stay where he was.
“You did hear me say that even if he gave it to you after the first screen, you were supposed to give it right back,” Coach Powers said. “Right?”
Danny looked down at this beautiful basketball floor, imagining up a hole for himself to crawl into. Knowing he was right back where he started with this coach, which meant in jail. “I didn’t think there was time,” Danny said.
“Too long an answer, son,” he said. “All you needed to say was ‘I didn’t think’ and leave it at that.”
Then Coach Powers walked out of the gym in the exact same direction as Rasheed, as though they planned to meet up and talk more about how they gave Danny a chance to prove himself and how he’d screwed everything up.
“Yo,” he heard from behind him.
Will.
Tarik was there with him.
“Before you say anything, I’m gonna say something, and it’s that you played good,” Will said. “And you know it. And the reason you know it is because you know more about basketball, and have more basketball in you, than that mean old man ever will.”
“Scoreboard,” Danny said in a small voice. Small as he felt.
Usually guys said that when they won. But to Danny, “scoreboard” always meant that however the game came out, that was the way it was supposed to come out.
“Wouldn’t even have had a chance to win the game if you didn’t play the way you did down the stretch, dog,” Tarik said.
“I should have given it back,” Danny said, not wanting to talk about this anymore, not wanting to be here anymore. “I don’t agree with Coach about much. But the way Rasheed was going today, he could have made that J with his eyes closed, whether he had to rush it or not.”
Will said, “Then maybe Rasheed shouldn’t have given the ball up in the first place.”
Then Will said they should go try to find Ty, maybe his game wasn’t over yet and they could catch the end of it. Danny said, yeah, let’s do it. Then he noticed the game ball sitting under the basket where somebody had left it.