by Nina Revoyr
There are certain times when a basketball game becomes a contest between two people. Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell in the NBA Finals. Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird anytime. That was what was happening between Raina and me now. Our teammates, sensing this, stepped aside and let us go at each other, helping us when they could or when we'd let them. I still played Raina tightly on defense, jockeying for position, getting her elbows in my chest or shoulders before she cut out to meet a pass, bending my knees and keeping my feet ready to move when she got the ball and squared up to the basket. I couldn't seem to stop her, though—she scored on nearly every possession—and she wasn't doing any better with me. Raina wasn't actually guarding me—they were still in a zone—but I tried to challenge her directly as much as I could. She made sure that I knew she was there. She bumped into me whenever I passed, blocked me out whenever a shot went up, and I'd feel her hips and shoulders press into my side; feel the rough material of her uniform against my hands.
My team had whittled the lead down to three. There was a minute and a half left, and everyone was tired—we took longer to get to our spots when the ball was dead, and all of us, in the universal sign of basketball exhaustion, were leaning over and grabbing the bottoms of our shorts. Raina and I were both gasping for breath, and we knew it was now that we'd each see what the other was made of. A player's character is most evident in two situations: when the game is on the line, and when she's exhausted. It's easy to play well when you're feeling rested and there's nothing at stake, but the truly great players step up and take the game into their hands; the truly great players reach down and draw things out of themselves when they think they have nothing left. Raina and I had both been in—and shone in—the first situation many times, but I don't think either of us had ever been as tired as we were in the fourth quarter of that game. We had used all our strength; we were barely able to stand, and when I lifted my feet to move, it felt like there were fifty-pound weights in each of my shoes. Worse, I was dehydrated, and I began to feel the twitches in my calves that were always the precursor of cramps. There was only a minute and a half left in the game, though. I prayed that I would make it.
Raina's team got the ball out of bounds after their last time-out, and they came down and set up their offense. Raina got free of me—my mind moved with her but my body refused to follow—and Jamelle hit her with a pass on the right wing. By the time I got to her, I was a sitting duck, and she went past me and headed on toward the basket. Then Q, who'd been guarding Diane on the weak side, somehow managed to swoop across the key and leap into the air just as Raina was going up for the layup. Raina was past her, but Q reached over Raina's body with her left hand and swatted the ball, from behind, clear out to the sideline. It was a spectacular block, but we didn't have time to celebrate. I saved the ball from going out of bounds, and passed it to Telisa, who took off downcourt on a fast break. I filled the lane, barreling down the left side of the court, and she hit me with a bounce pass ten feet from the hoop. Jamelle was there, but I blew by her, and then encountered Keisha in the middle of the key. I started toward the left side of the basket but then spun backward toward the middle; then Keisha's hand came down hard on my left arm as I put an underhand scoop shot in with my right.
The noise from the crowd almost blew the roof off. My teammates clapped me on the shoulders and whooped and yelled. Both refs called the basket good, and Keisha was hit with the foul. I walked to the free throw line and then bent over to grab my calves; they were twitching even more now and I knew the cramps were likely to hit at any moment. I tried to put that possibility out of my mind. The ref handed me the ball, and I bounced it three times, then took a slow, deep breath and shot. It went in. The game was tied. There were fifty-eight seconds left.
We sprinted back on defense, and picked up our players, but they weren't in any hurry to shoot. They set screens and passed the ball around—over to Raina, in to Diane, over to Keisha, back to Raina. Then, with eight seconds left on the shot clock, Raina rubbed me off on a pick from Jamelle. She got the ball about three feet above the top of the key—a good twenty-three feet out and probably well beyond her range—and everyone in the building knew that it was time for her to shoot. And in that moment when I was fighting through the pick, a strange series of thoughts went through my head. First, I thought about how desperately I wanted her to miss, so that we could go down and make the basket and win the game. But then I realized that I fully expected her to score, and that this was the way it should be. Raina was basketball to me, with all the hope and pain and passion that the sport had come to entail. She was the person I loved best and the only thing I believed in, and I did not want her to falter.
She hesitated for a moment, and I was sure she was waiting for me to rush out at her so she could leave me in the dust. I pulled up two feet short, so she couldn't drive around me, and just as I stopped I realized my mistake. She actually was within her range—I remembered seeing her shoot from the same spot in the park in September—and now, as if to remind me, she let fly. The ball hit nothing but net. There was no three-point line yet in high school play, so the basket only counted for two. But that still put us down by two points now and there were thirty-four seconds left.
Coach Fontaine called our last time-out, and I sat down and massaged my calves while he talked.
"Okay. What we're gonna do is this," he said, drawing a diagram on his clipboard. "Telisa, you take the ball down and pass it off to Celine on the right wing. Q, you're gonna be over on that side too, and Pam you'll be down on the baseline. Nancy'll be alone on the left wing. Then Celine will reverse the ball to Telisa, and you, Telisa, will kick it over to Nancy, and at the same time, Q, you'll cut across on the low post. Their guard and forward are gonna jump out to cover Nancy, and Nancy, Q's gonna be wide open so you can dump it in to her. And then you just score it, Q. Everyone's gonna be expecting Nancy to shoot, and they're gonna leave you all alone. You've got the last shot, and you sink it, Q, and that'll send this game into overtime."
Everyone was silent. Q, who normally would have been thrilled to get the call, just raised her eyebrows at him.
Coach Fontaine looked around at all of us, and sighed, and then he did something he'd never done before—he capitulated. "Okay, fuck it," he said, laying his clipboard down. "Just get the ball to Nancy."
We went back out on the floor, and Celine threw the inbounds pass to Telisa, who brought the ball up uncontested. When she crossed half-court, there were twenty-seven seconds left on the shot clock, and thirty-one seconds left in the game. I was lined up on the right baseline, Celine was at that wing, Pam was on the left wing, and Q was in the low post on the left side. Raina was even with the free throw line and next to Pam. Telisa passed it to Pam, and she held the ball for a moment, and then passed it back to Telisa. Twenty-three seconds left on the shot clock. Telisa swung it over to Celine, who passed it down to me, and I faked over to Q, and then gave it back to Celine. Seventeen seconds left on the shot clock. Then Celine made a near-fatal mistake—she threw it over the top of the key, but telegraphed the pass so badly that Raina got a hand on it and would have stolen it if Pam hadn't stepped up to meet the ball. Pam quickly kicked it out to Telisa, to get it away from Raina's grasp. Thirteen seconds left on the shot clock. Telisa dribbled the ball once, and then passed it back to Celine, and just as Celine caught it, I cut hard across the baseline, using a double screen from Pam and Q to break open on the left wing. Celine reversed the ball to Telisa, who threw it over to me. The pass was a bit late, though, and Raina arrived at the same moment. I pivoted a couple of times, but Raina was a flurry of arms and legs—there wasn't an inch on either side of her and it was impossible to shoot. Pam had cut across to the other side, so I dumped it in to Q; there were seven seconds left on the shot clock and eleven seconds left in the game. We both knew that she was not going to shoot. Keisha collapsed back on Q, though, leaving an open space in the corner, so I jabbed straight at Raina and then cut hard toward the baseline. Q held
the ball up, held the ball up, and then hit my outstretched hands, and I got off a fadeaway jumper just as Raina came and waved her arms in my face. She was too late—the shot was launched, and it was good. There were six seconds left in the game when the ball went through the hoop, and they couldn't stop the clock now because they'd already used their last time-out. There were four seconds left by the time Raina picked the ball up and stepped out for the inbounds pass.
She didn't have to put the ball in play. You're allowed five seconds to make the inbounds pass, and she could have just waited for the clock to run out and let the game go into overtime. That would have been the wise thing to do; that would have been the choice she made ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
But for some reason, just then, she wasn't thinking. She tried to pass the ball in to Keisha, not seeing that I was still lurking nearby and hadn't run back with my teammates on defense. I was a good five feet behind Keisha, but she was standing near the top of the key, and the soft, floating pass that Raina threw hung in the air just long enough for me to run over and slap it away. Keisha didn't see me coming, so she didn't step up to meet the ball, nor could she react quickly enough to grab it once I'd knocked it out of her hands. I picked it up just inside the free throw line, and took two dribbles toward the hoop. There I met Raina, and when I went up for the shot, she hammered me to prevent the sure basket. And as I left the ground, my calves finally locked up with cramps, and I hit the floor yelling in pain.
I don't think my teammates understood what was happening; my yell had been obscured by the sound of the buzzer. They all swarmed around me as I lay on the floor, and Telisa thumped me hard on the shoulder.
"You are it, girl!" she yelled. "You are it! Hit one of these free throws and this game is over!"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Raina walking around, fingers locked behind her head and face twisted into a pained grimace. She squatted for a moment and rocked back and forth, and when she stood again, and turned away from Keisha's offer of a hug, I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
When my teammates had calmed down enough to notice my expression, they finally realized that something was wrong. By this time, I'd rolled over onto my back, grabbed a calf in each hand, and stuck my feet up into the air. Telisa called for our coach. He ran onto the court, yelling at everyone to give me some room. Then he extracted my legs from my hands, sat me up, and massaged my calves vigorously, one after the other. I felt various pats on my back and shoulders. I heard the voices of the refs, and was vaguely aware that they sent all the players back to their benches. Coach Fontaine rubbed and rubbed, and I squeezed my eyes shut and swore and howled, until finally, after several minutes, the cramps began to loosen. We stayed there for a few minutes, he pulling my toes up toward my knees to stretch the muscles. Every time I brought my toes back down, though, so that my feet were at even slightly more than a right angle with my legs, my calves twitched and the cramps threatened to return.
"It's gonna be a bitch to shoot," I commented solemnly. "I can't extend my feet at all."
"It'll be okay," he comforted. "Even if you miss them both, we'll just go into overtime."
He didn't say what we both knew—that if the game did go into overtime, my team would play without me; I'd be doing no more running that night.
After another few minutes, I was able to stand. The crowd clapped happily when they saw I was all right, and then yelled out in earnest when I walked to the free throw line. All the players milled around at their benches; since time had expired, they didn't take their normal spots at the key. I glanced over at Raina before I lined up to shoot. She wouldn't meet anyone's eyes, and she looked like she wanted to jump off the nearest pier. I wanted to tell her it was all right, but it might not be. I had two free throws coming, and there was no time left on the clock, and the score was tied at seventy-three. Two misses would send the game into overtime. One make would end their season, and Raina's high school career.
The ref handed me the ball and backed away. I bounced it three times, spun it backward in my hands. But then, because I was afraid that the cramps would return, I tried to shoot without going up on my toes, which is nearly impossible. There was no strength behind my shot, and the ball just skimmed the bottom of the net. I turned away in disgust. The crowd groaned, and a few people in the visitors' section heckled and laughed. I walked around a bit to try to get a grip on my nerves, and when I got close to our bench, Telisa stepped out and slapped me on the butt. "Come on, girl," she said. She looked pissed, although I knew she was just trying to encourage me, and I nodded in reply. I went back to the free throw line, and the ref handed me the ball. And as I stood there and bounced it my usual three times, I felt the strange convergence of feelings again. Raina waited there, behind me, and if I made this shot, the game would be ours. And I wanted to win—I wanted to win very badly—but in my heart I did not want to beat her.
In the end, though, this was just a game, a playoff game in the closing stretch of the season of our final year. And I was not going to blow a chance at victory because I was afraid of a little pain—or, for that matter, because of Raina. I emptied my mind of all thought. I took a deep breath, and bent my knees, and prepared for my calves to lock. Then I went up with the shot, and yelled in pain as it left my hands, and hit the floor clutching both of my calves again so I did not see the ball go through the hoop.
The crowd exploded. I was mobbed by my teammates. They came and smothered me, jumped all over each other, shouted and laughed as tears streamed down their faces. The cramps were not so bad this time, and I was yelling for joy now as much as from pain. Telisa got down and rubbed my calf muscles, and in a minute I stood up and joined the celebration. What I saw around me was madness—there were people swarming onto the court, whooping, people jumping up and down in the bleachers. I raised my face to the ceiling and let out a roar. My teammates were pumping their fists in the air, and when I looked at Q and Telisa, I saw in their faces the same thing that I felt—we did it, we meant something, we won. A reporter pushed her way through the crowd and tried to get my attention.
"Nancy, how do you feel about this victory?"
"Holy shit!" was all I could think of to say.
Telisa, who had her arm around me by then, threw her head back and laughed. "Girl, your shit is holy now, far as I'm concerned."
It was the happiest moment of my life—the happiest, and also, the most heartbreaking. For I had outdone Raina—I'd finished the game with thirty-seven points and she with thirty-three, and more importantly, my team had won. But I wanted more than anything for her to be able to share my joy. I wanted to bring her into the winners' circle with me; it was her example that had enabled me to get there. But she'd disappeared from view, and she wouldn't have been able to join me anyway. And I felt an odd pain as I stood there, because I realized, suddenly, that things were more complicated than just my having beaten Raina. It was as if, in defeating her, I'd also defeated a part of myself. And so later, when things had calmed down a bit—after we'd accepted congratulations from fans and talked to our parents and gotten a wrap-up speech from our coach; after we'd shaken hands with our opponents and I'd met the full force of Raina's eyes with their pain and loss and pride—I left my teammates whooping in the locker room and went into a bathroom on the other side of the gym. And I locked the door and covered my face and cried.
CHAPTER 19
That game against Raina's team turned out to be the last victory of my high school career. The next Wednesday we played Buena, which was the number-one ranked team in CIF and the eventual state champion. We didn't have a chance—they had a relentless full-court press, and twelve robot-like players whose programming did not allow for errors. And in contrast to their perfection, we seemed to have expended all of our energy and emotion during our game against Raina's team. My team was as flat as stale champagne. We didn't embarrass ourselves—the final margin was eight points, and Q and I both scored over twenty—but we had nothing special left to show a
nyone. It had taken a tremendous conflation of hunger and will to reach the heights we'd achieved the previous game, and there was no way that we—or I—could have duplicated that effort. Despite our respectable statistics in the loss, the difference was apparent to everyone.
"I wish you'd played like that against us," Raina joked after the game.
I smiled. "It's because we played like we did against you guys that we played like that against them."
Raina had been quiet for the first two days after we'd played each other. That night, she'd gone out with her teammates, and then they'd all stayed over at Keisha's. On Sunday she'd come home and dragged around the house, staying in her room most of the time and occasionally appearing at the table to be fed, or in front of the television to be distracted. She kept to herself, which was understandable, and I tried to stay out of her way. There was a sadness about her I thought I recognized—the sadness of having lost, of course, but also, the sadness of knowing you were responsible for the situation which was making you sad.
Claudia was quiet too, although there was, about her quietness, a certain peace. And while no one talked about this, I thought it might have had something to do with what had happened after our game against Raina's team.
By the time I'd come out of the locker room that night, the gym was almost empty. The custodians were pushing the bleachers back against the walls and sweeping up the trash that had fallen beneath them. There were two clumps of parents—one from Raina's team, one from mine—standing close to the door; Diane and Q were talking to reporters. I looked around for Raina, but couldn't find her. Claudia was leaning against the wall on the far side of the gym, and, a few feet away from her, my father was talking to Pam's dad.
