Pounding the Rock

by Marc Skelton

  Sometimes it helps to have the true callousness of a cantankerous food critic. The kale salad with cannellini beans has too much lemon, the feta on the lamb burger looks like toothpaste, the chocolate fondant tastes as if it was cooked in an autoclave.

  Cris’s favorite player was the former Knick and current Cavs shooting guard, J. R. Smith. They shared the same predictable unpredictability.

  “Play some defense, Cris,” I remember hearing a sympathetic teammate in the huddle tell him. Cris was guarding Mark Morgan, the Hitman, on the left side of the perimeter. The Hitman set him up with a series of slow, pounding dribbles. He started to drive with his left and Cris mirrored him, and then the Hitman landed one, a nasty crossover that sent Cris flying almost into our bench. The crowd enjoyed the stumble more than the made jump shot.

  Cris shook it off. He was unfazed. Of all the survival skills Cris possessed, his ability to play defense after the hit was most admirable. He heeded the advice of his teammates and started playing even better defense.

  At the end of the first quarter, we were down 13–7. But in the second quarter, we fought back with a few orthodox uppercuts that seemed to stun them. Ali, SBP’s center, picked up his third foul and inexplicably picked up a technical foul for cursing. Having four personal fouls was crippling. With Ali out we attacked them afresh. Charles had a dunk against their full-court pressure. It looked like he could fly better than he could walk.

  Later in the second quarter, Rucker drove to the hoop and was raked across the face by Cris. At the foul line he told Cris to stop pinching him.

  “You better stop or I’m going to beat you up,” Rucker said.

  “Eat me,” Cris replied.

  With Ali on the bench, Rucker was not only going to have to win this game alone, he was going to have to do it angry. This simple fact transformed the championship game into more of a private feud. We had their best player looking to settle a score instead of scoring buckets.

  Remember when Kevin McHale clotheslined Kurt Rambis in the 1984 NBA Finals? This was like that. Cris didn’t need to cantilever anyone. Nobody knew what was happening except Cris and Rucker. You have to understand that Cris makes Charles look loquacious. And Charles is stoic 99 percent of the time. I think Cris said six sentences to me all season. I spent the first three-quarters of the season begging him to practice quicker so the games might not seem as fast. And now he was playing the role of the enforcer.

  At the end of the second quarter, we had the ball with about thirty-three seconds left. The shot clock was off. We would settle for the last shot of the first half. Like all pure shooters who think they are always open regardless of time, situation, or spot on the floor, Tyree inexplicably launched a twenty-seven-footer, with twenty-eight seconds on the shot clock. Frankie, as all great captains do, cleaned up the mess, and for the next twenty-five seconds dribbled east, west, north, and south. Rucker aimed to get a steal, but Frankie’s poise so counterbalanced his aggression, Rucker walked away from Frankie with seven ticks on the clock. A bruising power forward relieved Rucker to guard Frankie on the baseline. He tried to dance with Frankie, who immediately saw his mistake and backed up a few steps. Wrong move. Swish. Buzzer. Halftime.

  We were up 25–21, and Tyree’s jump shots and Shamar’s layups were not dropping. I felt good. In the stands a series of red poster boards were held up. It looked like an Olympic opening ceremony. Seven different letters spelled FRANKIE. They shook with excitement. Like any oracle worth his weight in fortunes, Frankie had his followers, his crew, his admirers, his faithful, his ensemble, his family, and his mom.

  “How many possessions?” I asked. “How many missed free throws?”

  “Ten!” Gaby answered the second question and not the first.

  “Wow.” I felt better.

  We had held the highest-scoring team in the city to 21 points in a half. My halftime speech went something like this: “They are going to make a run. Let’s make it a short jog, not a sprint,” I said. “They will eat our mistakes for lunch. No nonsense,” I warned.

  You could hear the 6 train rumbling near us as we left the subterranean locker room. I don’t think there was anything I could have said differently.

  South Bronx Prep came out like a runaway 6 train. I think they had an 8–0 run. It felt like a 16–0 run. The relentless vortex of pressure circled around us. How can we escape this run before this game is out of control? I didn’t want to be like Ishmael, alone in the water as all his shipmates are eaten by hungry sharks, drowned, or otherwise lost at sea.

  I called a time-out. I screamed at Frankie, “I don’t care how many people are here to see you or how many damned signs there are in this gym, keep your head up when you are dribbling!”

  Frankie was playing well. I couldn’t yell at Shamar or Tyree anymore. I rarely yell at Frankie, and he took it on to correct everyone else. He demanded that Ty, Shamar, Walfri, and Charles get to their spots on the floor faster. He was the cynosure of the moment, and there was plenty of time left to win this game.

  Cris threaded a no-look pass to Charles for an easy layup. Cris wouldn’t score a point in this game, but it didn’t matter—he was doing the things we asked of him. The second-quarter play when he got crossed over so hard his knees buckled hadn’t fazed him. I’ve seen lesser plays on lesser stages ruin players. His play, however perilous and unorthodox, was a great lesson of temerity and personal drive. He wanted to be on the floor. We might have been a little awkward, but you could not question the vitality of our spirit and the power of our will. We were outscored 23–13 in the third quarter and trailed 44–38 at the third buzzer. Was our will going to be enough?

  Being down by six to start the final quarter wasn’t even the worst news. Frankie, Tyree, and Walfri all had four fouls entering the fourth quarter. The game was clearly slipping away. Yet we kept pushing the ball, hoping for opportunities. In a strange sequence of events, Cris looked to have an open layup, but then he hit the emergency brake and skidded at the free-throw line. Panthers and Cougars rushed by him, and he found Charles on his flank for a basket plus the foul.

  “Great pass, Cris!” Mack yelled from the bench.

  After the game the Walton High School coach came up to me and said, “When the light-skinned kid had the contested layup and decided to jump-stop and make the pass, that was the play of the game. Every kid I know would have shot that.”

  “Glad he didn’t,” I said.

  South Bronx Prep called a time-out. The coach’s game plan or visual is never mapped out in one time-out, even though there are recognizable patterns. We have only sixty seconds and try to make the most of every one; sometimes a classic player-and-coach clash unfolds, or we switch defenses, or we make a substitution, and we try to offer encouragement with levity.

  “Now in the fourth is when we make our free throws,” I said. “Let them beat themselves with hero basketball and we will win with team basketball.”

  With five minutes to go and us down 47–40, Walfri reentered the game. He grabbed a rebound and threw what looked like a touchdown pass to a wide-open Shamar—only Rucker somehow intercepted it. Roberto Duran launched a three-pointer just like the one he hit in January, but this time he missed. Walfri got the next rebound and gave it to Frankie. It was our chance to run the show. The Cougars switched to man-to-man defense and we called “G-5,” our pick-and-roll play for Shamar and Charles. Shamar blew by his defender. Frazier moved in to block the shot. Shamar lifted it a little too high off the glass, but Walfri played the carom perfectly. He grabbed the offensive rebound for the bucket and the foul. He missed the free throw.

  South Bronx Prep seemed to panic and drove the lane without a plan and without a pass or a score.

  Our next possession had six passes. Tyree came off a Shamar screen. He caught the ball, gave a slight head fake, and drove down the middle for a gorgeous teardrop. Up 49–47. Unfortunately, Tyree wou
ld foul out on the next possession on what can only be called a phantom call. Rucker would tie the game with both free throws.

  South Bronx Prep refused to take the press off. Frankie got the ball and found JB wide open for a layup. He was fouled hard. He missed the first one. And then South Bronx Prep called a time-out.

  “Coach, JB keeps talking during free throws,” I heard someone say as we gathered.

  He had just missed three free throws in a row.

  The warm huddle buzzed. I could see the crowd shifting in their seats, their eyes begging for access. I was close enough to examine the geography of their chapped lips, the pea-shaped snot pinned to Charles’s cheekbone, the wing of skin falling off Frankie’s knee. Ty was rubbing his right arm, the one from the accident; it had started to stiffen up a little. I needed to iron the defiant wrinkle from JB’s brow. I noticed the dry-erase markers had stained my palm like wedding henna.

  “Not now! JB, stop talking trash and make your free throws. This is not the time to be screwing around.” His face said, Who snitched? Then he missed his second free throw.

  On the next possession with three minutes remaining, in a tied game, Coach Radar handed his players the poison chalice of the stall. The same one we had seen against Wingate. In 1977, the legendary Dean Smith, coach for the University of North Carolina, lost a national championship game versus Marquette using the stall. Seconds ticked away and minutes remained. It was an error of judgment. With ten seconds on the shot clock, we knew a player would run the baseline, but this time he wouldn’t be open. We got the stop we planned for. We got the stop we needed.

  The intensity started to pick up. The ball was deflected near our bench. The ref quickly gave the ball to Walfri. He quickly got the ball to Charles. Walfri recognized nobody was guarding him and cut to the hoop, and Charles delivered a perfect give-and-go.

  One minute remained and we were up by three. South Bronx Prep had the ball. In a flash Rucker drove the middle against Shamar and Cris, and the ball came loose. Walfri picked it up, and in a sequence we practice every day, the ball moved quicker than the dribble. Here lies the art of coaching: I have a strong conviction that a team that plays together will beat hero ball. And if one play could dispose of the Leviathan, this was it. The ball sped ahead to Cris. He moved it back to Walfri. Walfri found Shamar at half-court. Shamar took one dribble and saw Charles pointing to the sky. That’s where Shamar threw the ball. Charles found the ball floating in the air and ferociously threw the ball back toward earth with two hands. The indelible dunk. Anyone who saw it will never forget it.

  In the iconography of The Indelible Dunk, the quietest kid had the loudest, most iconic play of the season, of my coaching career. He was up in the heavens wrestling with angels. On his return to earth Charles let out a vengeful scream. Gaby and the crew jumped out of their seats. It was the play of the game, of the season, of our lives. The dunk disabused not just the Fannie Lou fans but anyone in the gym of any notion that we weren’t going to win: the refs knew it, the crowd knew it, Ms. Jackson, our beloved school safety agent, knew it. The dunk was the fatal blow. The harpoon to end the hunting season. The whale was dead.

  In essence, the game was over. We were up five with forty-five seconds to go. South Bronx Prep immediately called a time-out. The teams intersected as they walked to the benches, the Fannie Lou players looking like bubbles floating in the air bumping into each other, the South Bronx Prep kids walking like the kids whose parents are forcing them to leave early from the park. They were a stove-in team in the wake of Charles’s dunk.

  I calmly grabbed my clipboard, and we switched defenses to a half-court 2–2–1. We needed a stop, but Rucker was too fast to be corralled by this defense and soared through it. South Bronx Prep scored.

  It was 54–51 with thirty seconds left. Frankie found a cutting Walfri, who was fouled. This was not good. Free-throw shooting had been a constant unsolvable problem all year for him.

  They think they fouled the right guy. But I know they fouled the wrong guy. In a move of total redemption, Walfri nailed both free throws to put us up five again. As calculating as a vengeful librarian, he looked at the South Bronx Prep bench with his right finger to his lip, directing a sibilant “Shhh” toward the silent Cougars bench. Just like Rucker did to our bench in January. His eyes said, Now it’s your turn to be silent, and he trotted back on defense. If Charles’s dunk was the highlight of the season, Walfri’s cold-blooded gesture was the ribbon it was wrapped in.

  After Shamar’s two free throws put us up for good, I whispered, “Off the Radar,” punching my own hand as though to punctuate the season. Frankie looked up, observed the time and score, and began hopping, skipping, and prancing. He had an astonishing capacity for the big stage.

  When the buzzer sounded, the guys ran to hug each other. It allowed the team to celebrate more, and a tidal wave of black jerseys ran off the bench to engulf each other. It was as if a dozen penguins were welcoming one another home. Ty was in tears. My eyes were watering, a dampness I could barely control. I was afraid that if any one of them grabbed me, I would have collapsed in a cascade of tears. If the game in January was Raging Bull, this one was Rocky II. Instead of yelling “Adrian,” I found Nina running down the bleachers into my arms. Jess waved to me with a sleeping Salome in her arms.

  Over on the other side of the gym, I saw the Cougars: gone were the displays of arrogance; tears swelled in players’ eyes, and one of them looked as if he was mummified on the floor, multiple white towels wrapped around his upper body.

  This was the reward for our toil. We didn’t yield. We didn’t blink. Tensions washed away like street chalk in the rain. The players were eager to share the ball all season, they stretched themselves like elastic on defense, handled the stress of winning, solved the problem of the only team that beat us all season. For a moment winning a city championship transcends any personal pain and etches a historic place in your heart. Seasons are written in chalk in October. They are not tattooed until March. I see Michael Castillo, captain of the 2013 team, who always reminds me that he was the most yelled-at player ever. He always said, “Fannie Lou basketball is like a family. My best three friends for life I made on the team.” He was sitting next to Ariel Sanchez, one of four 1,000-point scorers in school history, both smiling, enjoying the success of their alma mater. He was right: there was a sense of community in that gym. The former principal Nancy Mann and her husband were there, as were Tony and Steven, the school custodians. People I have worked with for over a decade. We loved the support.

  Jessica found me at last. “That was a little stressful. You started winning when Sallie fell asleep. I tried to keep her asleep the rest of the game.”

  Gaby and I took a selfie with “61–55” sandwiched between our enormous grins.

  Each of our last three games, we gave up 55 points. Strange, I thought. Frankie and I hugged and did a one-arm embrace, snapping our fingers.

  “Let’s do this again next year,” I said.

  “I got you,” he said reassuringly with a triumphant grin.

  Coach Paul sat on the chair, immovable. After the last game, all that is with you dies that day. You can’t eat. Tears return when no one is looking. You go back to the cold, somber locker room, where only the death rattle of the season can be heard. I’ve been there. Paul had done a remarkable job building a program from scratch. We were in the same business of trying to turn boys into young men.

  A paroxysm of happiness continued at half-court. I was smiling, wiping my eyes, pointing at friends, former players, and coworkers. I have never seen a bunch of kids so happy. They celebrated as if they had landed on the moon. I have never seen a person perform a gambade like Cris. It was as if the chemistry in the air had changed. The air was lighter. Cris was floating like the old man in Mary Poppins when he starts to sing, “I love to laugh.”

  I love to win, I thought. Everyone became lighter. I
was about to start floating away until I grabbed Salome and Nina. We embraced and they anchored me to the floor. This was not like winning the first title. This feeling was like nothing else I had felt in my life. This is the feeling coaches chase.

  HEADWINDS

  Winning doesn’t soften the blow of poverty. We would like to believe a championship would defeat it. We could drink from the cup of overflowing confidence to become anything we want. But in this life nothing is promised, even as we try to make basketball a sanctuary, however brief. It has allowed me to escape a dysfunctional family and avoid economic determinism, but sometimes a drunk mom will stumble in and change your life.

  Living without hope is like gears without a lubricant. We can’t live without hope.

  After meeting with reporters and friends, a PSAL official grabbed my arm.

  “They are going to drench you when you walk in,” she warned.

  “Huh?” I didn’t quite understand.

  They wanted to pour water on me because that is what you do when you win. There it was again. Water. I wanted to tell her, “As everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.” But it seems I am always explaining to people how important Moby-Dick is to me. In the city we can forget we are on an island. We are surrounded by water. Instead of drowning me in water, we took pictures of the trophy, hugged, laughed. Tears (water) flowed like rivers.

  “Team ball beat hero ball tonight!” Tyree said.

  “One, two, three, Panthers,” we said in unison one last time. “Four, five, six, together.”

  “Everyone get home safe,” I said.

  “You too, Coach.”

  Everyone was embracing; it was deeper than acute intimacy, and it was fulfillment of a shared dream. We took more pictures. I examined the crew after this long journey, with our medals around our necks. I looked heavier, older, and crazier, and they looked thinner, happier, and stronger. And just like that another season ended.