The Final Four (2 page)

7:15 P.M. (CT)
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Announcer: Welcome back to
Sports News ’Round the Clock
. Tonight we are truly all things Final Four. Just moments ago, Michigan State freshman Malcolm McBride, who all year has declared himself to be “one and done” as he awaits entry into the NBA, buried a clutch shot at the buzzer, sending the first semifinal game at the Final Four into overtime. The dramatic basket kept the Spartans’ hopes for another national title alive and put another inconceivable celebration by the underdog Trojans of Troy on hold.

It has seemingly been all about Malcolm McBride for the past thirty-two hours or so. Now, in case you missed it, here are selected highlights of yesterday’s question-and-answer session with the media and a trio of Michigan State players. Nearly all of the questions, of course, are aimed at the outspoken McBride. His lightning-rod responses have since drawn a thunderstorm of criticism from defenders of the current college basketball system and a swift counterstatement by his school. And that thunderstorm continues to reverberate tonight as he leads the Spartans into overtime in the Superdome.

On screen, Malcolm McBride sits between two of his teammates, John “Grizzly Bear” Cousins and DeJuan “Baby Bear” Wilkins, at a long
table on a raised platform. Each player has a microphone set before him and a folded piece of cardboard displaying his name. The young men are framed by the backdrop of a blue curtain embossed with
NCAA
in large white lettering.

Reporter: Malcolm, you’ve previously stated that you only chose college because of the NBA’s current rule of not allowing players to enter the league until a year after their high school class graduates. As I recall, you even referred to it once as “being held hostage.” But now that you’ve spent a season at Michigan State, have you grown from the college experience? And will you be back next year, or will this truly be a “one and done” situation for you?

Malcolm: I basically came here a grown man, with all I’d seen and been through. No school is going to teach me more than that. I guess a year out of the projects helped to keep me alive. But my parents still live there. So my plan is to go pro as quick as I can, enter the NBA draft, and cash that fat paycheck for me and my family.

Second Reporter: Mr. McBride, when people hear you talk about the money, should they be turned off? I suppose what I’m really asking is, do you have any respect for the term “student athlete,” or are you and other “one and done” players just using the college system to eventually line your own pockets?

Malcolm: To tell you the truth, I think the system is using
me
to
make money. I play here for free. I don’t get a nickel. My parents even had to pay for their own hotel room in New Orleans. And there’s always some NCAA investigator wanting to make sure that anybody looking to become my agent didn’t slip them fifty bucks for gas money to drive here. But I heard that the NCAA makes something like seven hundred million dollars on this tournament, and that my school could make fifteen mil. I know part of that number’s off my back, my sweat. That’s like slavery. I could blow out my knee on any play and lose my career. Then I’d be left with nothing.

Malcolm’s teammates on either side of him are looking at each other now, nervously shifting around in their seats.

Second Reporter: You don’t think that free tuition and board at a major college is worth something?

Malcolm: No, it’s not. That’s like McDonald’s giving you a free hamburger because you work there. Big deal. They had the patties, buns, and pickles ready to sell anyway. The professors and the school buildings are already there, right? What does it cost them to add one more student into the mix—nothing? But how much money do I bring in? At least at Mickey D’s they pay you minimum wage. Here, they lean on that student athlete stuff to stiff you, and keep you poor. They want you hungry, so you’ll play harder and put on a better show. They use the NBA as your Kids Meal toy to get you in the front door.

Third Reporter: I’d like to hear something from Malcolm’s teammates. John, how do you feel about competing for your school under the current system?

John (Grizzly Bear):
(Tapping the microphone before he speaks)
I’m proud to do it, to compete as a Spartan. I don’t even go to McDonald’s anymore
(with a small laugh)
, not since I was a little kid.

Third Reporter: And DeJuan, what about you?

DeJuan (Baby Bear): I’m just following my dream: to play college ball at a high level and impress NBA scouts. That’s all.

Third Reporter: So Malcolm, wouldn’t everyone involved have been better off, and you less abused, if you’d spent the year playing professional ball overseas? You’d have gotten paid for your work there, right?

Malcolm: I don’t see why I should be forced to leave my own country to earn a decent living. Because I’m not nineteen yet? That’s age discrimination. I can vote. I can join the U.S. army. But I can’t play pro ball. Why? Because NBA owners wasted hundreds of millions on too many high school kids who couldn’t cut it in the pros before? That’s not me
(running his right hand back over his close-cut hair)
. Maybe I should go to work with my father in the auto plants for a year. Oh, that’s right—I can’t, because him and lots of other people got laid off from the assembly line. So that’s two jobs I can’t have.

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

7:18 P.M. [CT]

T
he 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, one 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.