In the Paint (11 page)

“Here's what I want you to do today then,” the principal continued. “I want you to take these NBA standings from the paper. They show each team's wins and losses. I have cut out the columns that show winning percentage and games behind the lead. That's your job. I want you to figure those numbers out.”

Matt's heart soared. This wasn't math, this was basketball. This was more like it. There was just one problem. He didn't know how to do what the principal was asking him to do.

“I'll show you one and then you can do the other twenty-nine teams,” the principal said. He then took the Los Angeles Lakers' record of thirty wins and twenty-five losses as an example. The Lakers had played a total of fifty-five games and had won thirty of them. Principal Walker showed Matt how to determine that this amounted to a 54.54 winning percentage. “The NBA lists that at .545,” Principal Walker explained.

Matt had never realized exactly what the .545 had meant in the NBA standings. But now he did, and not only that, he understood how to figure it out. Next, Principal Walker showed Matt the mathematical formula for determining how many games trailing teams stood behind the leaders in each division.

“The rest is up to you, Matt,” he said. “Give me a complete set of standings before school starts.”

Matt set out to work. By the time the detention ended, he had a set of standings, complete with a “games-behind” column. He checked it against those listed in the paper and, except for a couple of small mistakes, it matched. It felt good to do something right when it came to math.

On Friday, Principal Walker used National Hockey League goals-against and shooting percentage figures to show Matt how those were computed. By the time his final detention of the week had ended, Matt was almost sad to see it end. Almost.

“Matt, I'm going to give you an early birthday present,” Principal Walker said with a smile as the detention ended. “You've worked so hard this week, that you don't have to come back Monday morning for your fifth detention. Just make sure we don't have to have another of these little sessions, okay?”

Matt shook his head in agreement. His birthday wasn't until August, but he wasn't arguing with the principal.

Walking down the hall toward advisory, Matt suddenly had the feeling of a man freed from a jail sentence. Not only was detention over, but so was the wait for the semifinal match-up against Manning.

He and the rest of the Stingers felt ready. Practice had gone well all week. The team was confident it could break the Manning zone defense. There were no major injuries to speak of, only the bruised knuckles on Matt's right hand. But that had bothered him less and less every day this week.

It seemed like the entire school came out to the noon-hour pep rally. Coach Stephens thanked the students for their support and said his team would try its best to earn a spot in the city championship game.

“We're ready,” Captain Dave Tanner promised the cheering crowd. “We've been ready for this game since last Friday.”

The atmosphere in the locker room was relaxed as the Stingers dressed in their white home uniforms with the maroon piping. Matt slipped on his number ten jersey, wearing a maroon T-shirt underneath as he had all season. He laced up his black and white high-top Air Jordans carefully, making sure, as was his superstition, to tie the left before the right. He grabbed a ball from the wooden bin and dribbled it on the locker room floor as he waited for Coach Stephens to address the team.

“People,” the coach began, “you've worked hard all year. You've worked hard all week. You are ready, and now it's just a matter of continuing to work hard over the next forty minutes. Let's go earn ourselves a spot in the city championships!”

There were more than four hundred people in the packed South Side gym. As the Stingers emerged from the locker room, the crowd erupted in a huge cheer. Matt felt a surge of adrenaline as he took his first lay-up of warm-ups and surveyed the packed bleachers.

Up behind the South Side bench, Matt saw his mom and Mark, just as they had promised. They waved and he waved back. His eyes wandered around the gym, picking out some of his friends and their families and even Miss Dawson in the stands. But he stopped abruptly when his gaze picked out the dark-haired boy with the bandage across his nose sitting under the far basket. It was Grant Jackson.

Matt hadn't seen Jackson since the incident at Phil's store a week earlier because the older boy had been suspended from school. Obviously, he was back. No time to think about that now though. There were more immediate things to deal with than a jerk like Jackson.

The buzzer sounded twice to remind players that there were only two minutes left until the game started. The Stingers headed to their bench. The players circled their coach and put their hands together in a pile of fingers and wrists. “One-two-three,” Dave Tanner yelled, followed by the entire team in unison: “Stingers!”

From the opening tip, Matt knew this game would be different than the two South Side had played against Manning during the regular season. The Minutemen looked like a whole new team as they lined up on the court. They were bigger than the Stingers and they had a newfound confidence in their eyes. South Side was in for a fight.

Tanner lost the tip and the ball went to Manning. Matt tightly defended Travis Green, the grade seven Minutemen point guard, and he seemed to have Green in trouble near the top of the key. But Green simply pivoted, looked inside to six-foot-five post Kenny Forshaw and lobbed the ball up toward the basket. Forshaw leapt above Tanner, caught the ball and flipped in a lazy hook shot for a two to zero lead.

Matt raced the ball downcourt before Manning could properly set up its zone. Green was a step off him and Matt went up for a jumper. Forshaw left Tanner inside and attempted to block Matt's shot. But instead of releasing the ball at the peak of his jump, Matt deftly flicked it inside to Tanner for the open lay-up. It was two to two.

The game see-sawed back and forth, with neither team going more than a half-dozen points up on the other. Manning's height was making it difficult for South Side to work the ball inside consistently, so the Stingers had to rely on the outside shot and the running game. Meanwhile, South Side's foot speed and quickness allowed the Stingers to “front” the taller Minutemen on defense, denying easy passes inside.

With less than a minute left in the game and the score tied fifty-four to fifty-four, Green again found Forshaw in the middle of the key with a perfect pass. Tanner had good defensive position, but the big Manning center caught the ball, turned and tossed the right-handed hook over Tanner. It bounced softly once on the rim and dropped through. The Minutemen held a two-point lead with just twenty-five seconds left. The crowd packed into the bleachers in the South Side gym, which had been loud and boisterous all game, suddenly went quiet.

“Time-out!” Coach Stephens yelled from the bench. The Stingers hustled across the hardwood to their coach. They huddled around him, hands on knees and eyes fixed on the long, experienced face in the middle.

“Okay, guys,” Coach Stephens said calmly. “This is what we practise for. We are in good shape here. This is our last time-out, so I have to set up the rest of the game right now.”

Coach Stephens diagramed a pick-and-roll with Matt and Dave Tanner for the next possession. It had been working nicely all game, so Matt was confident it could work again.

“After we score, we need a stop,” Coach Stephens continued. “I want you guys to go right into our full-court press. It should catch them by surprise. Nobody can afford to go to sleep here, okay? Once we score — and I just know we're going to score — jump right into that press. Everybody know their position in it? Okay, let's go.”

The Stingers broke their huddle. Matt took the inbounds pass from Pete Winters and headed up the court. The clock was ticking down, and Matt waited for Dave Tanner to work himself into position.

Tanner made a quick move to the top of the key, where he stopped to the right of the free-throw line. Matt faked Green left and then dribbled hard to Tanner's right. The pick worked perfectly. Sensing that Matt would shoot, both Green and Forshaw lunged out at him, leaving Dave Tanner alone underneath. Matt found him with a bullet bounce pass. Tanner laid it in softly. The game was tied up with just ten seconds left. Manning called a quick time-out, sending the players back to their benches. All of the Stingers grabbed water bottles and towels to dry the sweat from their arms, hands and faces. Coach Stephens still looked calm. “Listen up,” he said. “Our plan is the same. Let's press them right off this time out. Let's get that ball back. But be careful. We don't want any fouls.”

The players nodded. They headed back onto the court as the home crowd cheered. This was just the kind of dramatic game that Matt had only ever watched on TV. It all seemed slightly unreal, as if even now he was watching it instead of actually playing in it.

Green took the ball out of bounds from the referee. He looked down the court, but no one was open. Matt could sense Green was beginning to panic, so Matt purposely fell a step off the player he was guarding. Green saw the space and fired the inbounds bounce pass toward Matt's man. But Matt had anticipated the reaction. He shot out his left hand, stabbing at the ball and getting just enough of it to deflect it away from his check. Anticipating Matt's movement, Pete Winters bolted forward and intercepted the ball in the backcourt. Winters saw Matt open near the free-throw line and fired a hard chest pass toward him.

Matt reached out and caught the ball with two hands, just as Forshaw crashed into him, catching his right hand with a hard elbow. The pain seared through Matt's bruised knuckles, but he held onto the ball as he was jolted backward a couple of steps.

The whistle blew. The crowd hushed. Everyone looked toward the referee, who was signaling a foul against Forshaw. South Side was in a double-bonus situation. “Two shots!” the referee yelled.

Matt was stunned. He was going to the line with a chance to win the game, but his right hand hurt worse than anything he could ever remember. The Manning coach used his last time-out, trying to freeze Matt at the free-throw line.

The Stingers headed back to their bench once again. Andrea took an ice pack from her trainer's kit and put it on Matt's right hand. That made it feel a little better, but Matt knew that shooting wasn't going to be easy.

There was nothing for Coach Stephens to say. They simply drank water and rested. Matt knew what he had to do. Nothing the coach said now was going to make any difference. He was still going to be all alone at the free-throw line.

The buzzer sounded. Every one of the South Side players patted Matt on the head or shoulder. “No problem, man,” Phil said as he winked at Matt.

Matt's knees were weak, and he felt slightly dizzy as he made his way to the free-throw line. The court had never seemed longer than it did now with hundreds of eyes watching him walk its length from the South Side bench. He had always imagined himself in this kind of situation, but never had he known how it felt until this very moment.

Both teams lined up along the key. The referee was just about to hand the ball to Matt when a familiar voice rung out across the gym. “Hill, you suck!” Nobody seemed to notice where the taunt originated, but Matt had no doubt. It was Grant Jackson, sitting just down the baseline from the basket where Matt was about to shoot the two most important free throws of his life.

Slightly unnerved, Matt took the basketball from the official and bounced it twice, as was his usual routine at the line. Try as he might, he couldn't erase Jackson's taunt from his mind, even though he knew he should be concentrating solely on the rim. He bent his legs and began to go through the shooting motion that he had practiced thousands of times before.

Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Principal Walker talking to Grant Jackson, leading him away from his seat. Jackson shook his elbow violently, as if he was literally trying to shake the principal off him, and headed for the door. Nobody else on the floor seemed to notice the drama, but it was impossible for Matt to concentrate while all this was going on.

All these thoughts were whirling through his head as Matt released the free throw. And as soon as it left his fingers, he knew something was wrong. It simply wasn't hard enough and it was badly off line. The ball clanged off the right front edge of the rim and the crowd groaned. Or at least that's the way it seemed to Matt.

“One shot!” the referee shouted, handing the ball back to Matt.

One shot. The Stingers' season had come down to one shot. Matt knew that he couldn't let his team mates down. He drew a deep breath, bounced the ball twice again on the floor and bent his legs. The jam-packed gym had gone completely still.

Matt began his free throw motion. He flicked the ball from his right hand, waving his right wrist goodbye as he released it. This time the ball traveled upward in a perfect arc, coming down through the middle of the twine. It was good. South Side had won the game.

The crowd erupted. The South Side players jumped off the bench and mobbed Matt near the top of the free throw line. Eleven other players were hugging and jumping around him and Coach Stephens was looking at him with a huge grin on his face. Matt glanced up into the stands where his mom and brother beamed proudly. He was pretty sure nothing had ever felt quite this good.

chapter fifteen

Phil whistled as he carefully surveyed the score sheet in the din of the South Side locker room. “Nineteen points, nine assists, no turnovers,” he yelled across the room to Matt. “Not bad, bud.”

“Nineteen and nine? I had no idea,” Matt replied, trying to sound nonchalant but feeling his cheeks glow nonetheless. It had been his finest game of the year and it couldn't have come at a better time. South Side was going to play for the city championship, and Matt was a big reason the team was headed there. Still, being singled out in the locker room, even by Phil, was a little embarrassing.