Boot Camp (13 page)

I tossed the ball in to Jamal, and he started to dribble down the court. I ran to get into position under the hoop.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Johnnie looking down at his watch. I knew what that meant. We were almost out of time.

“Hurry up!” I yelled at Jamal.

He dribbled around his man, stopped, squared up just outside the three-point line and shot. The ball went up, a beautiful arc, and hit the rim and bounced off! I jumped up, grabbed the rebound
and went to shoot when I was smacked hard on the hand. The ball went up and somehow dropped.

“And one!” Johnnie yelled out. “That's a foul!”

I rubbed my hand. He had really given me a good shot.

“Nice basket…are you okay?” Jamal asked.

“I'm good. How much time is left?”

We looked at Johnnie, who had heard the question.

“None,” he said.

“None?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“That's perfect!” Jamal exclaimed. “You make the shot and we win, simple as that.”

“Yeah, simple.” I walked over to the line, and Johnnie handed me the ball.

“And since time is up, everybody go back to your benches,” Johnnie said.

I stood there, waiting, while every player on both teams retreated to the sidelines. I was standing there all alone. Then I looked farther down the gym. The other game had ended. It wasn't just the two teams watching, it was every-body—all the players and all the coaches.

I had to just relax, not think about the audience around me. I went through my regular,
foul-shooting routine. I spun the ball ever so slightly in my hands, bounced it twice, took a deep breath and…it wasn't helping. My stomach did a flip.

This wasn't the usual situation, so I needed to do more than just the usual. I thought about what Jerome had talked about out there on the go-cart track. I needed to visualize the ball going into the hoop. I closed my eyes and pictured the whole thing in my mind, the ball in my hand, bringing it up, pulling it back and then letting it fly, up and into the net. Perfect.

I opened my eyes and shot the ball. Up and in, nothing but net!

A cheer went up from the crowd, and as I raised my hands in celebration I was knocked over from behind as my entire team tackled me and piled on top. I felt like I was being smothered by bodies.

We finally disentangled ourselves, and Jamal helped me back to my feet.

“That's what I'm talking about!” he screamed. “I knew you were going to make it, I just knew it!”

I looked over at the other team. They looked shocked and sad and disappointed. I always hated that there had to be a loser in a game that was that close.

“Come on,” I said. “We have to congratulate them on a good game.”

I walked over and started shaking hands with the players on the other team. Every player, without exception, offered their hand and congratulated us on winning, a couple of them telling me how well I handled the pressure of taking that last shot. They were being good losers, and I wanted to make sure we were good winners. That game could have gone either way at any time.

“Five minutes to the next game!” Sergeant Push-up yelled out. “Five minutes!”

I turned to Kia. “Who are we playing?”

“I don't know.”

We looked up at the big board. The third place team had been beaten by the sixth place team. We were playing a team we'd beaten this morning!

“That's fantastic!” Kia screamed. “We can take them, and they know we can take them.”

“Let's not be overconfident,” I warned. “We just beat a team that beat us before.”

“That was before we became a team. All we have to do is play our game, our way, and we're going to win,” she said.

I didn't argue because I thought she was
right. All we had to do was play within ourselves, play together, and we could beat them.

The game started just the way we thought it would. We played confidently: passing, shooting, hustling and working like a team. We'd taken an early lead and just kept building it little by little. By three-quarters time we were up by fourteen points. The game was ours to win and the only way we could lose was if we got stupid, and that wasn't going to happen.

Just after half we'd started to slow the game down. That was always a good thing to do when you were winning, but it was now even more important. We had another game to play, and while we'd been running around all afternoon, the team we'd be playing had been resting. Resting and waiting and watching.

When it was my turn to sit down, I had one eye on the game and a second on our opponents for the finals. They were sitting together, watching, talking—one guy was even taking notes. There was no way that they wouldn't know our game inside and out. They'd be watching for the inside lob to me, Jamal dribbling and then pitching it
back out to Kia for a three-ball, and Kia and me using a pick-and-roll to free one of us up. This was going to be a hard game to win. Actually I'd almost given up on the idea of winning. I just wanted to make sure we could make it a game and not get blown out.

The music came on loud to signal a substitution. I got up off the bench reluctantly. I really was tired and could have used a few more minutes of rest—not a good sign with another game still to come.

Sergeant Kevin blew his whistle to signal the end of the game. We all came together to congratulate each other. Funny, it was a lot more low key than the last game. I guess that was partially because this game had really been over for a while and partially because we knew what winning meant. We had one more game, the finals, against the best team in the place, a team that hadn't lost to anybody and had blown us away— a team that had been resting most of the afternoon while we were wearing ourselves out to try to get this far.

We formed a line at center court and walked past the other team, tapping or shaking hands,
offering comments. They were pretty good about losing and more than half of them wished us good luck.

We walked over to the bleachers and sat down together to rest for a few minutes before the next game started.

The other team was already out on the court at the far net, warming up. They'd been sitting so long they needed to warm up. Not us. We needed to lay down, maybe have a nap.

“How are you guys feeling?” Jamal asked.

“Good,” Kia said. “A little tired.”

“My leg is hurting,” Brandon said.

“You play ball, you get hurt, you play through it,” Jamal said. “Right?”

Brandon nodded his head dutifully. My left leg was sore as well, but I wasn't going to mention it.

“We played pretty amazingly just to get to here,” I said. “We're short a man and we've still managed to win six straight games today.”

“Six down and one more to go. Seven wins and we're the champions. I really want that game jersey,” Jamal said.

“Yeah, that would be great if we could get them,” I agreed.

“What do you mean,
if
? We win, we get the jerseys, right?”

“Yeah…of course,” I mumbled. “I just know it's going to be a hard game.”

“Nobody said anything about easy.”

“They're really good,” I said.

“And like we're not?” Jamal questioned.

“Yeah, we're good. It's just that they're good and rested.”

“That just means we're going to have to dig deeper,” Jamal said.

“Yeah,” Kia agreed. “Just listen to what our captain has to say and we'll be fine.”

He reached out and gave her some props.

“It's simple,” Jamal said. “We'll just have to keep doing what we've been doing and we'll win.”

Keep doing what we've been doing…suddenly it hit me.

“No,” I said, “you're wrong.”

“What do you mean, I'm wrong? You don't think we can win?” Jamal questioned, and that familiar scowl returned to his face.

“No, I think we can win, but we won't if we keep doing what we've been doing. We have to do it differently.”

“What do you mean?” Kia asked.

“They've been watching our last two games. They know what to expect. We have to surprise them by being different than what they expect. We have to do something new.”

“What do you have in mind?” Jamal asked.

“We have to start off with a press, a full court press.”

“But if we're already tired, a press will make us even more tired,” Kia said.

“Then we have to do what our captain said and dig a little deeper. Thirty minutes and then we can rest for the whole weekend.”

“We can dig deeper, but we haven't practiced a press,” Jamal said.

“We'll just go simple. You and Kia double on the ball carrier, and I'll lay back at half to look for a bad pass. We won't do it much, just to start the game and then a few times during the game. Do you think they've been figuring we'll put on a press defense?”

“Why would they?” Kia said. “Nobody has put on a press during any of the games.”

“That's my point. Let's just try it.”

Jamal slowly nodded his head. “We can
try. Besides, once we get back we can rest a little when we get into zone coverage.”

“Okay, that's another thing. We should start with man-to-man.”

“Are you crazy?” Kia exclaimed. “Are you trying to burn us out before the first quarter is over?”

“I'm not talking about the whole quarter. Just start man coverage to go with the press. Then go back to a full zone. Just mix it up so they don't know what's coming.”

Jamal started laughing. “That will drive them crazy.”

“That's the idea. They expect us to come out and do the things they've been preparing for. They also expect us to be tired, and they're hoping they can run us into the ground. Instead we're going to run them into the ground.”

“Do you know what they also expect?” Jamal asked. “They expect us to roll over and play dead. They figure that we'll just be happy to get to the finals and that we don't expect to beat them.”

I suddenly felt guilty. That was how I was feeling.

“I could have lived with losing to any other team here except these guys. Look at them,” Jamal said, pointing down to the far end of the
court. “They figure the game is over, they have the better players, they know us better, they're better rested, and that even
we
believe we can't beat them.” He paused. “Forget it. I didn't come this far to lose, to have them rub it in my face one more time. If we don't beat them, there was no point to any of this. We might as well have lost all our games if we don't win this one. I'm not going to let them win.”

“There's one more thing,” I said. I turned directly to Jamal. “You know all those great passes you've been making, the way you've been setting people up and not taking shots?”

“Yeah,” he said proudly.

“You have to stop.”

“What?” he exclaimed.

“You have to stop. You need to take that ball, drive the hoop, put up shots and keep doing it.”

“But we got this far playing as a team,” Kia said.

“We're still going to play like a team. We need Jamal to be the best player out their, drain their defense, make them double and even triple team him. Then, and only then, does he pass off. And then the rest of us are going to beat them. Okay?”

Jamal didn't answer.

“To help our team win you have to be the best player out there on either team. Your team needs you to be a star, and I know you can do it,” I said.

He smiled. “I can do it, and then I can put the ball back into other people's hands.”

“That's what we need,” I said. “Now, hands in. Let's show ‘em how to play ball…on three… break.”

The stands were packed. All the other teams and coaches, except for Sergeant Push-up and Sergeant Kevin, were in the stands. The two of them stood at mid-court. They were the refs for this game. A lot of parents, including my mother, Jerome's mother, his wife and all his girls, were also there. It was crowded. I was feeling nervous as I paced the sidelines, waiting to be introduced. That was another change from the other games. Each one of us was being introduced individually by Johnnie, standing up on the stage, microphone in hand.