“Yo, coach, put me back in!” I knelt down in front of House. “I can bring us back.”
House nodded toward the scorer’s table, and I went and checked in. When Ruffy fouled one of their guards, I came in for Ricky. They weren’t in the bonus yet and brought the ball in from the sideline. I found my man and just started pushing him around the court.
The brother I was holding was about six feet and an okay ballplayer. He was thin and dark-skinned, and he had a few nice moves but set up plays more than he shot unless he was wide open. I pushed him away from the sideline, putting my body against him and leaning with my hand on his waist.
They brought the ball in and set up a pick behind the foul line in front of the key. Their forward came out, ran Ruffy into the pick, and took the J. The ball bounced off the rim and straight up. I went in from the side of the lane and grabbed the ball. Our guys started downcourt. I handed the ball off to Ernie.
“We’re not blocking out,” I said to him. “They’re getting up in the air with no fight.”
I went downcourt and started yelling at the guys to block out under the boards. I didn’t care if the other team heard me, because I figured we were stronger than they were. None of them had any real size and they weren’t even close to cut.
I knew blocking out strong would get us back into the game. For some reason we were just standing up straight and jumping for the rebounds when we needed to be leaning on some bodies. Ruffy started to catch fire and use his big body and strength to dominate.
We started controlling both boards. I fed Tomas and he worked the moves that Fletch had shown him, hitting four shots in a row.
The mo changed big-time and their coach called a time-out.
“He’s going over to the refs, asking for fouls,” Fletch said.
House saw their coach talking with his palms up, copping a plea. House went over to talk for us.
“Keep feeding Tomas inside!” I said.
“He’s playing too deep! He’s playing too deep!” Ruffy wanted Tomas to get away from right under the basket.
Tomas was good under there because he collected all the garbage and went right back up on offense and held on to the ball on the defensive boards. But Ruffy was right. He had to come out some, because it was taking too long to set up our stuff with him being in too deep.
When we were on the court again, I talked to Tomas.
“Come out a step, maybe two,” I said.
“Don’t tell me how to play,” he came back.
“If we lose, I’m going to punch you in your face after the game,” I said.
He gave me a look, but he moved outside a little. And I figured him to be a better player when he was mad.
The ref started calling fouls on us but that was okay, because we didn’t have any from the first half so nobody was in trouble. We caught Mercy with three minutes to go. Then they just folded, whining to the refs about how we were pushing them and fouling them. We were pushing and there were a few fouls that weren’t being called, but they were using that as an excuse to lose the game. Good.
The game ended 68–64.
House said something stupid about us finally learning the game. Fletch came over and gave everybody five. He didn’t have to say anything else.
Relax. Everybody was talking about relaxing, but we were all up way too high.
“This is big-time, man! This is big-time!” Ernie was running around the locker room, scoping out the rubbing tables, refrigerators filled with soft drinks and water, and whatever else he could get into.
House got us together after a while, and we went out for lunch. Some people in the restaurant were looking at us, and a kid came over and asked us were we the Nets from the NBA.
“The Nets can’t play with us,” Abdul said. “We’re too good.”
The kid gave Abdul a look that said he didn’t believe a word he was saying, but he still asked him for his autograph.
Then everybody was talking about why the kid had picked Abdul to talk to and get his autograph. Abdul said it was because he was a Muslim and his inner beauty was shining through.
“Even kids recognize what a beautiful person I am,” he added.
We finished our lunch and went for a walk, with House and Fletch guarding us like we were precious. I dug that. We were all feeling good, but we had another game coming up.
Roosevelt didn’t have as many fans as Our Lady of Mercy and hardly any white folks, but the bunch of kids who did come were noisy. They brought only eight players—all wide dudes who looked like they should have been digging ditches or something. They all wore do-rags during warm-ups, which I thought was tough, and they were joking around like they had already copped the win.
“Whatever game you got, you have to leave it on the floor today,” House said. “We don’t want to lose because we didn’t put out.”
When we lined up, my man put his fist up and I hit it. He tried to hold it firm and show off his manhood. The sucker was cut, but he looked a little funny because he had a long body and short legs. He was my height, though, and I figured him to be strong. The way it turned out, he wasn’t just strong, he was like King Kong’s little brother. I expected the dude to start pounding his chest and going chee-chee-chee or something.
They won the tap and brought the ball down, and my man took me in deep and called for the ball. When he got it, he started backing me in toward the basket, and I knew he was stronger than me. I held him out the best I could, waiting for some help. Tomas came over and King Kong went up and blew the layup. As he came down, I boxed him out and got the bound.
I passed out to Ernie and we came downcourt fast. Ernie’s man stopped the ball, and Ernie passed it to me. I saw Tomas open on the left side and got the ball to him on a bounce as he moved, and he made the easy deuce.
Their starting five were all big, all strong, but they didn’t know a thing about playing ball. On defense they were in a loose zone and just beat on whoever was near them. It got so bad that the refs were calling only the worst fouls. It was like in the school yard—no blood, no foul. On offense it was like they had never been in a gym before. Whoever had the ball did his thing, and everybody else just stood around. Man on man they were good. They were real good. They moved well, they could leap, almost fly through the air. They had good hands, great bodies. At any moment they had five brothers with dynamite reflexes and bitching nice moves on the wood, but you can’t beat a team going one against five.
At the end of the half we were up by eleven and it wasn’t even that close. House said they would get their game together in the second half, but I didn’t think so. The way they were playing, rapping and joking around with each other, it was as if they didn’t know what was going on.
I wanted to win bad, but I felt like I should have stopped the game and asked those brothers if they knew what kind of game they were in. We were on the court living out our lives. I was playing my heart out, trying to get over—what were they doing? Had they been fooled? Did they think that the game was going to do for them whatever they wanted? That it didn’t matter how they played as long as they performed the way they wanted? When House took me out at the end of the third quarter, I mentioned that Roosevelt didn’t seem serious.
He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. He was looking for a win for us, for himself. What the guys on Roosevelt were doing was off the screen.
The way Roosevelt played bothered me. I wanted the win as much as House did, as much as anybody did, but the fact that brothers were goofing when they had business to take care of was just wrong.
I played more. It was my game and Tomas’s game and Sky’s game and the team’s game. Everything we had done in practice came in. We ran backdoor plays, overloads, and trey kickouts until we were tired. When House took me out again, he pointed up at the score clock. We had 70 to their 58 with fifteen seconds to go. I flopped down on the bench and took the water some girl was handing me. I didn’t drink it, just held it in my hands with my legs stretched out in front of
me.
“How you feeling?” Fletch called over to me. He was wearing the biggest smile I had ever seen on him.
“I feel good.”
Mom had floured some chicken in the morning, and when we got home, she deep-fried it and we had it along with some homemade French fries and green peas.
“Everybody was just looking at you and hanging on everything you did!” Mom said. “You don’t know how proud of you I was.”
“Didn’t I tell you that Drew is the man?” Jocelyn had a chicken wing in her hand as she talked. “When he came out on the court for the second half, I could see he was going to take care of business. What did you think, Pops?”
“He was okay,” Pops said.
“What you mean, okay?” Mom put her hands on the tops of her thighs. “You think he was just okay?”
“Drew, I don’t know that much about ball playing,” Pops said. “But I was sitting in the stands and watching all the people watching you, and it was like…a real good feeling. You did some play and this man sitting next to me got all excited…”
Pops started tearing up.
“You okay, Pops?” Jocelyn asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Pops said. “You know, I never had nothing like that in my life. People cheering. Some people cheering for the other team. What you were doing was important. I was thinking about you going to college and all, and it means a lot to me. You being my boy and all.”
“How about me?” Jocelyn asked. “I don’t count because I’m a girl?”
“No, you count, honey,” Pops said. “But—you know, you’re smart and everything.”
“Yo, you mean I’m not smart enough to go to college?” I put on a mean face.
Pops looked at me and started to say something, but then he got choked up and just gave my arm a little push.
After supper I went to my room and called Ruffy. His mom said he was in the bathroom and he’d call me back. I had just hung up when Jocelyn knocked and, before I could tell her to come in, had framed herself in the doorway.
“You want me to stand here and adore you or anything?” she asked.
“Hey, you’re looking pretty good today,” I said.
“Yes, I know. As soon as you go off to college, all the boys are going to be chasing me like anything,” she said. “I’m going to be like a defenseless little girl running across the ice to the promised land, and they’ll be after me like those mean old hounds, sniffing out my beautiful self.”
“You know, you really ought to take some self-confidence lessons,” I said.
“If you feel as good as you look like you’re feeling, you ought to put it in a bottle or something and sell it on eBay,” she said.
“I feel like going outside and telling everybody about the games.”
“So why don’t you?” Jocelyn’s eyebrows came together. “They need to hear some good news in this neighborhood.”
I felt a little stupid taking the elevator downstairs just to tell somebody how good I felt, but I did anyway. There were two guys on the stoop, but I didn’t know them. One of them looked sleepy, or maybe even high. Just seeing him started me coming down off my good feeling.
“Yo, Blood, I got them CDs you been looking for, man,” he said. “I got some DVDs, two smoking iPods, and a whole lot of watches. What you need today?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Don’t need nothing.”
“You know I ain’t selling nothing but some bargains,” the guy said. “All the latest jams…”
“No, I’m good,” I said again.
The dude nodded, and he and his boy stepped down from the stoop and started up the street. The tax-preparing place hadn’t been open for a week, and the guys standing in front of it had started a small fire in a trash can. It wasn’t that cold, but there was a slight chill in the air.
The two guys from the stoop stopped to talk with the others, and I watched as they showed them the CDs and stuff they were selling.
What I wished was that they were all into playing ball and wanted to hear about how Baldwin had won the games and how well I thought I had done. But that wasn’t what was going down. What they were doing was getting on with their lives, dealing with the corner business, dealing with whatever they had to sell or buy on their market to get money for whatever they needed to be doing, or thought they needed to be doing, with their lives.
In a way it was like a bunch of guys in a game. They were falling behind every minute that passed, but they had lost interest in the score. It was as if they were just a ton behind and had given up on the win. And maybe deep inside they didn’t want to peep the score, maybe they knew what was happening but just didn’t want to think about it anymore. I could understand that. I had played enough ball in my life, and was deep enough into my game to know I had to be in the hunt for a win or I could lose who I was. And once I lost who I was, my inner me, then all the CDs and all the iPods and all the bling in the world wasn’t going to make it right.
The strange thing was that everybody was feeling the same thing, that there was a huge game going on, and that the game was going to decide who was a winner and who lost. But so many of the brothers on the corner didn’t have a play. They were out buying their uniforms, their gold chains, and the fancy clothes like they were real players, but they knew better. Even when they angled into their best gangster lean, it was just a pose. There was never going to be a jump ball. I could feel for them because they were just like me in most ways, thinking that everybody should have a number, everybody should have the same playing time, and knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
I thought about Tony. I wondered—when he was sitting in his room at night, in the darkness and alone with his thoughts, did he think he still had a win? I wondered if he thought back to the time when he was playing ball and thought about what might have been. People checking out Tony, the lawyers, the police, all figured he had just blown his chance. The game had been on the line and he had been all by himself and blown the layup. But for most of the people in the hood it wasn’t like that at all. It was about the mystery of the game and not figuring out the rules until it was too late to cop the W and too late for the big comeback.
When we got to the arena the next day for the final playoff game, I was about as nervous as I could get. To make it worse, there was a television crew there and a whole section of photographers. Tomas’s mother had come, and she stood up and waved to me. Across from the television cameras there was a big banner that spelled out L-A-N-E.
Everybody knew Franklin K. Lane High School. Little kids in Brooklyn who wanted to play ball would hang around their school yard to show off their stuff. You had to play good team ball to stay with their squad, and you always had to look over your shoulder to see who was sneaking up on your position. I had even thought of going there, but Ruffy didn’t want to play in Brooklyn and both of us had wanted to play at the same school that Tony had done his thing in.
“There aren’t any dragons on their team,” House said. “Nobody who’s going to eat us up. But every player on their team has talent, and we’re going to have to play both ways—offense and defense—if we’re going to walk away with the championship. Nobody brought us here but our own efforts. Hard work and talent got us here, and it can take us to the next level. So let’s get it done!”
When the teams came out, the refs had us all shake hands. The dude I was up against had fat clammy hands. He was younger than me, but he was big.
Ernie got the tap, brought the ball up to the midcourt line, and got double-teamed right away. I came over, got a jump pass, and made a quick move to the basket. My man stayed with me as I passed the key, but he didn’t react when I dished the ball in to Ruffy deep. Ruffy took the ball up, got away with a push-off, and made the deuce.
Their point guard brought the ball down really fast, and our guys were hustling to get back. My man ran me into a pick, but I recovered and got to him. The ball came in to the man who had picked me, and he made an easy two.
We brought t
he ball down again, with them stopping the ball really high. We ran a play along the baseline with Ruffy trying to pick Tomas’s man, but their center slowed Tomas down with an elbow and then stole the pass when Ernie tried to hit Ruffy again. Okay, they were sharp.
The Lane players were flat-out good. They played like they were going to business. All they needed were some attaché cases.
At the quarter they were ahead 19–14. Fletch said they had used nine guys in the first quarter.
“They’re outhustling us on offense,” House said. “They’re bringing the ball down faster than any team we’ve faced. On defense they’re solid, but nothing special. We need to tighten up our defense and keep them off the boards.”
I hadn’t thought much about the boards, but we were only getting one shot most of the time.
Ernie hit a trey to start the second quarter, and when they got a backcourt violation, he hit another one. We were up by a point, but they came back and started the same routine.
“Come on, let’s get it going! Let’s get it going!” Abdul had come in to give Sky a breather and was trying to pump things up.
I remembered the last game. I wanted to take it on my shoulders, but I didn’t want to showboat or nothing. I went after my man hard on D, ragging him wherever he went. I pushed him when I caught him standing still, and talked to him whenever he got the ball.
“Give it up, fool! Give it up!”
He looked at me like I was crazy, and one of their players, a forward, told me to keep my mouth shut.
“Why don’t you come and shut it?”
The next time I got the ball, he came up on me too close and I brought the ball between my legs, faked putting it through his, and when he took a half step back, I made a move toward the basket. I got a step on him, but the other guard cut me off. I moved between them, and when my man tried to recover with a lunge in front, I dished it out to Ernie.
Game Page 11
