Summer Ball (21 page)

Rasheed just sat there. Nick, answering a question Rasheed hadn't even asked, said, “He beat you to the spot.”

Rasheed just shook his head, stayed where he was, arms folded across his knees. Chillin'. Even now.

Danny put a hand down to pull him up. Before Rasheed reached up to take it, he looked at Danny and said, “World's full of danged floppers, you know?”

“I thought it was on him this time,” Danny said and pulled him up.

“Yo,” Rasheed said. “Now you all got to pick me up in more ways than one.”

Danny grinned at him. “Don't worry, dog,” he said. “I got you.”

Kareem chased down a loose ball with forty seconds left, turned around and made a truly outrageous three-pointer to put the Bulls ahead by one. Will missed a wide-open three at the other end, first shot he'd missed since Coach Powers put him in. As soon as TJ got the rebound, David Upshaw fouled him.

Twenty-two seconds left.

Coach Powers called their last time-out.

He said they were going small: Danny, Tarik, Will, Cole, plus David. Coach said that if TJ made both free throws, putting the Bulls up three, to look for Will at the other end, out beyond the arc.

If they only needed a two to tie or win the game, Coach Powers said for them to spread it once they got over half-court.

“Spread it for who?” Danny said.

“You,” Coach Ed Powers said.

“Got it,” he said, like he always ended up with the rock with the game on the line.

TJ, who could do everything on a court except shoot free throws, missed them both. David Upshaw got the rebound, Danny pushed the ball hard over half-court then put the brakes on, passed it to Will and got it right back.

He put the ball on his hip and checked the clock.

Ricky Hartmann was eyeballing him, in a defensive crouch, looking as if he really might try to tackle Danny as soon as he made a move.

Danny started his dribble with ten seconds left. Ricky got right up on him. Danny dusted him with a crossover that was up there with Rasheed's best. Then he broke into the clear at the top of the circle.

TJ Tucker came over from the corner, covering about twenty feet with about two long strides.

It had come down to Danny against TJ again, the way it had when Danny shot the air ball.

TJ Tucker, whose arms were even longer than broom handles.

Danny slowed up just slightly at the free throw line, pulled the ball in, went into his shooting motion, hands in perfect position.

TJ, with those amazing ups of his, went
way
up, like he wasn't just trying to block the shot, like he wanted to be another guy catching one of Danny's shots.

Small problem.

Danny didn't shoot it.

He sold his fake, though, sold it as well as he'd ever sold a fake in his life.

Then he waited for gravity.

What goes up, he thought, must come down.

When TJ did come down, like he was falling out of the sky, Danny leaned in and waited for the contact he knew was coming, then right before TJ landed on top of him, he fired the ball at the basket.

He landed hard.

But rolled like a champ.

The way Nick Pinto said little guys had to.

Then Danny got up, tucked his jersey back into his shorts, went to the line, knocked down the two free throws that put the Celtics into the second round, the whole thing becoming official once Kareem missed a wild heave at the very end.

Danny was at half-court when the horn sounded. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around.

“Glad you hung around this place?” Nick Pinto said.

T
HEY WENT INTO
C
EDARVILLE AFTER THE GAME,
N
ICK
P
INTO DRIVING.
Even after everything that had happened at Right Way, it still seemed to Danny as if it were just the other day that Nick had driven them to camp from the Portland airport.

“Sure am going to miss that hooptie bus,” Tarik said. “The 4 train doesn't shake like this when it comes into the Yankee Stadium stop.”

Nick dropped them in front of Pops and they went right for their favorite booth, where everybody ordered milk shakes, except for Rasheed, who said the only way to celebrate was with a root beer float.

“Hooptie,” Will said, shaking his head. “Another cool word.”

“Maybe you should have been keeping a diary on stuff Tarik says,” Danny said. “In case you forget some of them when you get home.”

“Get home and deal with your general heartbreak on not being black,” Tarik said.

Will had ripped through his milk shake, now made a loud sucking sound as he finished it. “You have to keep throwing that in my face,” he said.

Ty wasn't with them—his coach had scheduled a nighttime practice to get the Cavs ready to play the Celtics in the semis tomorrow night.

Will said, “We should have T-shirts made when we get home, saying, ‘I Survived Basketball Camp.'”

“On the back you can put ‘Barely,'” Danny said.

Tarik and Rasheed said they were going to walk down to the dock and buy some taffy. Will and Danny said they'd wait for them in front of Pops, on one of the benches near the front door.

Just the two of them for a change, not surrounded by the other campers at Right Way.
Now, this felt right,
Danny thought, felt like all the other times when it was just him and Will Stoddard.

“What?” Will said.

“I didn't say anything.”

“But you want to,” Will said. “You forget sometimes that I know you as well as Tess does.”

There was a piece of paper near his sneakers, some kind of flyer somebody had dropped. Danny picked it up, crumpled it into a ball, tossed it into the wire basket near the curb without it even touching the sides.

“Money,” he said.

“I'm good with that,” Will said, grinning. “Because I am willing to pay you to find out what's bothering you all of a sudden.”

“I've been thinking about something since the game ended,” he said. “If we win, which means I win, that means Coach Powers wins, too.”

“Only you want him to lose,” Will said.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I want there to be some secret formula where we win and he loses.”

“Because if we win the camp championship, he gets the only thing that matters to him,” Will said, “even though he did everything possible to drag us down. Basically, it's like dealing with our parents. There are times when they know they're wrong about something and we know they're wrong, but they'd never admit that in a million trillion years.”

“I want him to admit he was wrong about me,” Danny said.

“First we win the game,” Will said, “and then we worry about the rest of it.”

“You do sound like Tess sometimes.”

“I'm going to take that as a compliment,” Will said, then gave him a sideways look. “She definitely can't hang around for the finals if we make it?”

“She's out of here tomorrow on JetBlue,” Danny said. “Her mom wants her back.”

“So we call her after the game and tell her all about it,” Will said.

Danny looked at Will Stoddard, the best friend of his life, and said, “You think we're gonna win this game?”

Will reached out so Danny could bump him some fist.

“We always have,” he said.

 

They beat the Cavs the next day, beat them by six points finally, beat them because of what became a one-on-one game between Rasheed and Ty, and Rasheed was better on this day. Maybe it would have been different the next day. But today is the only one that ever matters in sports.

It wasn't that either one of them was hogging the ball or being selfish, because neither was that kind of player. They hadn't suddenly morphed into being Lamar. It was just that Rasheed finally took over for the Celtics, and Ty took over for the Cavs, and the two of them guarding each other and getting after each other was the way this game was supposed to end. It was like an old-time play-off game that Richie Walker had taped for Danny off ESPN Classic once: Larry Bird and the Celtics went up against Dominique Wilkens and the Atlanta Hawks, matching each other basket for basket, until Wilkens started missing at the end and the Celtics won.

Even the coaches seemed to get what was happening. Maybe that was why Coach Powers finally let Rasheed guard Ty and Coach Tom Rossi put Ty on Rasheed at the other end and then both coaches pretty much stayed out of the way after that.

Rasheed scored the last ten points for the Celtics. Ty was on his way to doing pretty much the same thing until he missed a couple of open jumpers. Danny knew why, even if nobody else in the gym did, knew what happened to Ty's shot when his legs got tired. He stopped elevating enough, started firing line drives at the basket.

Ty even missed the front end of a one-and-one with forty seconds to go. After that, Rasheed made six straight free throws and the Celtics were in the finals against the Lakers, who had blown out the Knicks, biggest blowout of the whole camp, somebody said, in the first semifinal game.

When the Celtics–Cavs game was over, Rasheed went and found Ty at half-court, gave him what Tarik called the “brother snap.” They shook hands by locking their thumbs, pulled close together and bumped shoulders, backed away, shook hands again with the tips of their fingers, snapped their hands away to finish.

Then Danny heard Ty say, “You were better.”

Rasheed said, “Nah, I just had more legs than you at the end.”

“You're the best I've ever played against,” Ty said.

“Today,” Rasheed said. He knew. It was always about today. “Next time it would probably be you.”

“Hope there is one,” Ty said. “A next time, I mean.”

They all heard Lamar then.

“Don't come to me looking for a big hug when we whup y'all's butts in the finals,” he said in a loud voice. Everybody in the gym looked at him now.

Which, Danny knew, was the point.

Rasheed just calmly stared at him, without saying a word. Stared for what felt to Danny like five minutes. You could see how uncomfortable it made Lamar.

“Got nothin' to say, 'Sheed?” Lamar said.

Rasheed just shrugged.

Lamar stood there, nervous now, cracking his knuckles, the scene not playing out the way he intended. “Well, we'll see what you got to say Saturday night. You and your little boy there.”

Now Rasheed smiled.

And Lamar gave up.

“That's right, give me that big spit-eating grin now,” he said. “Till I wipe it right off your face on Saturday.”

He walked out of The House.

Danny said to Rasheed, “That was the coolest trash talk of all time.”

“I didn't say anything,” Rasheed said.

“That's why,” Danny said.

 

On Friday night they watched Zach's team win the eleven-and twelve-year-old championship, win it so easily Zach didn't even have to play the last five minutes of the game.

He was the smallest kid on either team, and it didn't matter. If you knew anything about basketball—and maybe even if you didn't—he was the only player on either team you were interested in watching. Mostly because he was playing a different game than the rest of the kids, even the ones who were a lot bigger than he was.

It was as if he knew something the rest of them, even his own teammates, didn't.

When the game was over, before the trophy presentation, Danny saw an ending to this kind of game he had seen before, watched a couple of the bigger kids put Zach up on their shoulders and carry him around like he was the trophy.

Danny waited until the celebration was over before he went over to Zach, carrying the bag with the gift inside.

He handed it to Zach now, and Zach opened it up to find the same indoor/outdoor ball Lamar had wrecked on him. Danny had spotted it in the window at Bob's Sports in Cedarville.

“You didn't have to get me anything,” Zach said. “I'm the one who should be getting you something.”

“You were great tonight,” Danny said. “Awesome, dude. I mean it.”

Zach looked down. “I wouldn't have made it without you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Danny said, “you would have. My father always tells me something about sports.” It was amazing how many times he quoted his dad. Even now, when his dad wasn't speaking to him. “He says that the guys who aren't any good, they're the ones who always find excuses. But the guys who
are
good enough, they always find a way. It just took you a little time to find your way here.”

Then Danny said he'd see Zach back at Gampel later, there was something he needed to do right now.

Go someplace and play.

Danny cut across the lawn and made his way to the bad court. The lighting on it was as bad as the playing surface—the best light actually came from the end nearest the parking lot, where there were a couple of old-fashioned-type streetlamps.

Danny had picked up a ball along the way, one lying near the court outside Staples. And had stopped in the mess hall to get a folding chair. Something to use as a target for his passes, just like in his driveway.

So he had a ball and a chair and a court all to himself. When it was like that, there really was no such thing as a bad court.

He went through all his stuff now. Dribbled the length of the court with his right hand, came back with his left, then up and down again, this time switching hands as he went.

Free throws, outside shots, driving layups with both hands.

Hitting the chair with two-hand chest passes, then bounce passes, even a couple of no-looks, knocking the chair over and picking it up and then hitting it again.

Then he started moving the chair around. Drive and pass to one corner, then the other. Move it out to the wing and hit it there.

Getting ready for the game the only way he knew how.

He started driving hard to the basket, pulling up, shooting his high-arc shot over an imaginary tall guy, Danny imagining arms that stretched to the stars. He kept taking that shot until he could make it three times in a row.

It was late now, and he should have been tired, but he wasn't, even working himself like this. Mostly because this wasn't work, not to him.

He didn't know how much he'd get to play against the Lakers. Coach Powers had talked a lot at practice today about how big the Lakers were, even in the backcourt. But Danny knew this: He was going to be ready, no matter how little his name got called. His mom was going to be there tomorrow. He was
not
going to stink up the joint in front of her.

Or Josh Cameron.

When he finally stopped, out of breath, sweating, he felt like he'd just finished playing a game.

It was then that he turned and saw Coach Powers standing over near the woods, at the start of the path that took you back to the coaches' cabins.

Standing there like some kind of ghost.

Danny wanted to say something, call out to him. But there was nothing left to say. Nothing he could say at this point that was going to change anything between them.

So Danny just stood there, in what felt like the most natural pose in the world to him, ball on his right hip. Coach Powers stayed where he was, hands in his pockets. There was just the night between them.

Then he turned and walked into the woods. If Danny hadn't heard his slow steps on the gravel path he would have wondered if he really had seen a ghost, would have wondered if the coach had even been there at all.