Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  Soderberg’s basketball credentials were unimpeachable. He played under Lute Olson at Marina High in Huntington Beach in the 1960s and then for Adolph Rupp at Kentucky. After college, he played in France, Italy, and Switzerland for nine years, then returned to Southern California and was an assistant coach at Marina High, Riverside Community College, and most recently at Mater Dei, the area’s most dominant high school program. Beyond his knowledge of the game, Soderberg had no investment other than wanting to see the boys learn and succeed, and he wasn’t afraid to tell Keller when his actions threatened those goals.

  When he approached Soderberg about the job, Keller told him, “I have this group of kids, and I think we have more talent than anybody, but we’ve failed at Nationals a couple times. Help me figure out what is going wrong.”

  After watching four practices, Soderberg concluded that the boys were in fantastic shape, worked hard, and could probably dominate most teams because of their raw ability. “Their athleticism is going to be enough until you meet another athletic team, and then when your athleticism is negated, it will come down to who is more fundamentally sound,” he told Keller. “It will come down to what coach can get their five kids on the floor acting as one.”

  He saw immense room for improvement, particularly on defense. The “gimmicky” defenses Keller ran, such as Fist, “were just a bunch of athletes doing their thing,” Soderberg said. “We’ve got to teach them how to guard man on man, teach them proper positioning on defense.”

  There were other issues—the boys struggled against some zone defenses and watched Demetrius too much on offense—but Soderberg considered those fixable. He also looked at Keller as a rehabilitation project. “Joe, we’ve got to separate ourselves from the usual AAU riffraff and mentality,” he said. “You’re with Adidas now, and you’ve got to start projecting an image that Adidas would want representing them.” It was Soderberg who suggested Keller dress more nicely on the sidelines and who also got him to temper his sideline antics by threatening to videotape him during a game and show him “what a lunatic looks like.”

  Soderberg looked like a holdover from the 1960s, with a thick brown beard and a red Volkswagen bus. Watching him squeeze his six-foot-ten frame behind the wheel was a constant source of amusement to the boys.

  “Coach Mark, you need a newer car,” Demetrius told him after one practice as Soderberg slowly packed his legs into the driver’s seat.

  “Are you kidding? This is a classic,” he said, patting the window frame. He tried to explain how popular the car was back in his day, and his long-winded response made him an even more comical figure: a fifty-four-year-old trying to tell a twelve-year-old what was cool.

  The players instantly recognized his knowledge of the game, but what appealed to them most was how Soderberg spoke to them and not at them. Demetrius, for one, had never had a coach who offered measured instruction, who took the time to explain how his teachings would lead to success on the court.

  Unbeknownst to Demetrius, he was at the center of an ongoing argument between Keller and Soderberg. Because he had no stake in Demetrius’s future, Soderberg wasn’t motivated to showcase him. He recognized that he was the best player on the team, but for the team to improve, other boys had to be more involved on offense. The more scoring threats the team possessed, the harder it would be for defenses to key on Demetrius. But it was difficult for Keller to see the bigger picture, and he battled Soderberg on this point.

  “It’s a bad analogy, but I am trying to wean Joe off of the heroin that is Demetrius,” Soderberg said. “He’s got to remember, there are other great kids on this team who can also get it done.”

  On a Saturday afternoon at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Sports Center, Team Cal was preparing for the start of practice when a new boy and his father entered the gym. The boy was about five foot ten, a few inches shorter than Demetrius, and had a medium-high Afro. Keller introduced the new player to the team as “Roberto Nelson from Santa Barbara,” but when Roberto stepped onto the court for a drill, Demetrius said, “I’ve got Puffy.”

  Neither Keller nor Soderberg had seen Roberto play; he was invited to a practice on the recommendation of a former Team Cal parent, who had seen him hold his own in a tournament in Santa Barbara against Jrue Holiday and Jerime Anderson, two top guards who were a grade older.

  Roberto was a quarter Mexican and had lighter skin than most of the boys. He also had a blank look and a quiet demeanor that led Keller to say, “He might be stupid.” He was not stupid, but he was uninformed about what he was up against at his first practice, and that ignorance served him well. Most of the players Keller recruited got his attention because of how they played against his squad, so they deferred to Demetrius upon joining the team. Roberto had never played against Demetrius, and as he lined up next to him for the opening drill of practice, his mind-set was: I’m the best player on the floor. Time to show it.

  Roberto first touched the ball on the left side of the court, and Demetrius stood between him and the basket. Bent at the knees, moving sideways to shadow Roberto’s movements, Demetrius looked like a crab. Roberto stood on the tips of his toes, leaning forward in an exaggerated fashion. He walked that way all the time, an awkward dawdle that made him seem uncoordinated. Roberto flashed the ball as if he were going to go up for a shot, and Demetrius moved his weight forward in anticipation. At that moment, Roberto drove past him, getting to the rim so quickly that no other defenders had time to rotate over.

  The other players were so taken aback—they had never seen a player abuse Demetrius like that—they looked to Keller for how to react.

  “Go again!” Keller shouted, and the boys reset the play.

  Roberto got the ball on the left wing again, and Demetrius was more aware now, primed to stop him. Roberto made the same move, but Demetrius didn’t fall for it. Roberto still pushed toward the rim, and Demetrius slid with him as if he were attached to Roberto’s right hip. Most players would have aborted their drive, but Roberto kept going to the rim. Then, about ten feet from the basket, he moved even closer to Demetrius and used his hip and butt to nudge Demetrius at the same moment he jumped to a stop. Roberto’s sneakers screeched as he halted, and in the same motion he rose up for a jump shot. Demetrius tried to stop and contest the shot, but the nudge Roberto had given him prevented him from setting himself. He was flat-footed as Roberto’s pull-up jumper found the net.

  In subsequent possessions, Roberto scored in a variety of ways, showcasing an offensive arsenal more complete than any of the boys’. He could shoot from mid-range like Rome, was able to slash to the basket like Demetrius, and, if necessary, grind away for points inside à la Terran. He was thick for a wing player, and his explosiveness was not on par with Demetrius’s, but as a pure scorer he exceeded him.

  At Roberto’s second practice, Demetrius walked up to him and announced, “You’re not scoring today.” He guarded him the entire session, and, true to his word, Demetrius held Roberto without a point. Keller reveled in seeing the two boys square off, and in the workouts that followed, he pitted them against each other at every opportunity. Some practices, Demetrius’s superior athleticism would carry the day; in others, Roberto’s refinement would win out. At first, these battles seemed to benefit both boys; they were such different talents that they had much to teach each other. Then Keller got in the way. Roberto showed up Demetrius too much for his liking, so he began rigging the contests in Demetrius’s favor. He let his star get away with elbows and holds but would call Roberto for the slightest touch. If Roberto complained, Keller made him run a Rambo.

  During one session, Demetrius banged into Roberto so forcefully, leading with his elbow, that it sent Roberto flying into the wall underneath the basket.

  “And one!” Demetrius shouted as the ball rolled in.

  Keller called a foul on Roberto.

  “Oh, man, this is bullshit,” Roberto yelled, and he jumped to his feet.

  “That’s right. That’s right,” Demetrius sai
d tauntingly.

  Roberto moved toward him, but Terran and Justin got between them. Roberto turned and walked out of the gym.

  Most kids would have quit the team after that, but Roberto continued to show up. On a subconscious level he seemed to understand that being cheated by Keller and Demetrius would make him better in the long run. He also respected Soderberg and liked the other players, who after seeing him play dropped the “Puffy” nickname and called him “Berto.”

  But Roberto never acquired a taste for Keller. The favoritism he showed Demetrius was part of it, but Roberto also disagreed with almost every instruction Keller offered. Roberto’s father, Bruce, had played at Santa Barbara City College and at Cal State Hayward; he then coached Dos Pueblos High, north of Santa Barbara, to the 1995 Southern Sectional title game. Going from his dad to Coach Joe was like being sent back to kindergarten after years in graduate school. “Coach Joe knows just enough to think he knows what he is talking about,” Roberto told his dad.

  At one practice, Roberto’s refusal to follow orders led Keller to make the other boys run. Afterward, Justin pulled Roberto aside and pleaded with him to humor Coach Joe.

  “Look, that guy just doesn’t know shit,” Roberto told him.

  “I know. I know. We all know,” Justin said. “Don’t do what he says for him. Do it for us, for the team.”

  Roberto could get behind that. He listened to Keller a bit more, but only enough to keep his teammates from having to run.

  At a tournament in Las Vegas, in a game against an Arizona team a grade higher than Team Cal, Roberto repeatedly broke out on fast breaks, ignoring Keller’s orders to back the ball out and set up the offense, and he charged into a defender on three consecutive possessions. To the unknowing eye, he was out of control, and after the last of his rushes Keller pulled him from the game and lectured him. Roberto looked past Keller as if he weren’t even there, knowing that he’d seen the forest while his coach was lost in the trees. The defender he kept charging at was Arizona’s best player, a spindly forward with a distinct height advantage, and Roberto’s mad rushes to the rim had saddled him with three quick fouls.

  As Keller rigged practices against Roberto, as he pulled him from games and yelled at him for no good reason, as Demetrius taunted him, Roberto stared at the road ahead, expressionless. After one brutal practice, during the 133-mile drive back to Santa Barbara, Roberto rubbed his arm where Demetrius had hit him with an elbow and said to his father, “D, man, he’s good. But I’m going to be better.”

  13

  Aaron Moore and his mother, Barbara Moore

  Your son is going to be in the NBA someday. He’s going to make you millions,” the coach said, and Barbara Moore reached for a cigarette.

  It was a hot late-summer day, and Barbara sweated under a thin blouse. Ovals of flattened chewing gum, dropped by kids exiting the nearby gymnasium, were stuck to the concrete at her feet. The gum—polka dots of blue, green, and red—glistened under the intense sun, adding a hint of color to the drab concrete buildings of the middle school.

  “But there are sacrifices you are going to have to make, sacrifices Aaron is going to have to make,” the coach continued.

  Barbara took a long drag on a Marlboro, then another. She was not so much smoking as rushing the cigarette to an end.

  “Aaron will stay with me during the week but can come home on the weekends and stay with you. He won’t be far.”

  Barbara had a long, hooked nose and squinty blue eyes and red hair with big bangs that looked sticky with hairspray. She was an imposing woman, more than six feet tall, but was unsteady listening to the coach.

  “You shouldn’t worry,” he said, wrapping up his pitch. “Aaron will be like a member of my family.”

  That last word, family, rang loudly for Barbara. Hers had not felt much like a family lately. She and Aaron, the middle of her three sons, had been fighting more, loud screaming matches that often ended with Aaron in tears as he bolted out of the house. Micah, her youngest, had a seizure disorder that appeared to be worsening. Barbara was an emotional woman, and her ability to manage life depended entirely on her stability at that moment. When she was not worried about a guy she was dating or the security of her job, she was the most involved parent imaginable. If a dilemma arose regarding Aaron, she took a stand instantly, delivering her verdict in one fiery pronouncement. “No, my son will not be doing that.” But if she was distracted, the choice lingered in her mind far too long, and Aaron was left to make decisions best suited to a parent. It made her seem alternately a great mother and a very bad one.

  It’s unclear why Barbara struggled financially, despite a steady job managing the health insurance of students at the University of California at Riverside. Like many Americans, she may have simply spent beyond her means. Joe and some people on the team felt that she partied too much and was quick to trust men who took advantage of her generosity. Her divorce from Micah’s father a few years earlier had left her riddled with debt, and paying for the basics—food, rent, electricity—was a constant struggle.

  She considered the coach’s offer while standing outside the middle school and later while smoking a cigarette in front of her home in Rubidoux. The rented house sat at the end of a dirt road on the side of an east-sloping hill, across from a field where nothing grew, no matter the season. At night, the neighborhood had an almost pastoral feeling, save the noise of cars rushing along nearby Highway 60.

  As she smoked, Barbara glanced out across that rocky acre of land that no one bothered to farm. She eventually turned and looked back at her house, with its cracked white paint and faux-stone trim around the garage, and wondered what Aaron was doing at that moment. He could be watching television or playing NBA Live on his PlayStation or wrestling with Micah. He was into his teenage years, but there were moments when he acted like the playful child she affectionately called “Yellow Boy.” An African American father and fair-skinned mother had produced a child with skin the color of a “big pencil.” The operative word was big. Aaron was six feet tall by his eleventh birthday. Near the end of 2002, when he was still only thirteen, he stood six foot five. He played soccer growing up and thus went unnoticed by the area’s AAU coaches. But then the father of a boy Aaron knew from school recommended him to the coach, and now the grassroots machine had him in its crosshairs.

  How can I send my son to live with a man I barely know? That was the question at the crux of Barbara’s dilemma. She discounted the coach’s talk of needing Aaron close by to further his development toward an NBA career. Who could possibly say that an eighth-grader was destined for the NBA? The coach promised to secure Aaron a scholarship to a parochial school, and she liked that. He’d attended a private school before they moved to Rubidoux, and his grades and attitude had been exemplary. But he was also doing well at nearby Almeria Middle School. She settled on a concern that had been lingering for a long time: Was Aaron at a point in his life when he needed to be around men? He gravitated toward older boys in the neighborhood, some of whom had done time in jail, and Barbara wondered if time was running out to surround him with positive male role models.

  In the past, Barbara’s choice of paternal figures for Aaron had produced disastrous results. His father left shortly after he was born, moving out of state and cutting off all contact. She married Micah’s father, but then divorced him when Aaron was nine. It wasn’t until after the divorce that Barbara learned that the man she’d encouraged Aaron to call “Dad” had been molesting him since he was four years old. She didn’t have a clue until Aaron told her about it around his tenth birthday, when he finally was old enough to realize the man’s behavior was not normal but immoral.

  Barbara often told people she’d just met that Aaron had been sexually abused, and it came across as a ploy to gain sympathy for him and her. It made Aaron feel used and further cracked his delicate psyche. His nervousness was constant. He bit his fingernails voraciously, moving from finger to finger until there was nothing left to bite.
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  Given her history choosing father figures for Aaron, Barbara couldn’t send Aaron to live with the coach. If she turned down the offer, on the other hand, nothing would change, and somehow she feared that more. Standing outside her house, smoking that cigarette, she slowly talked herself into it. It would be one less mouth to feed. He would be going to a good school. Perhaps he had a future in basketball, and this would help him get there. She wrapped her reasoning up with a tidy bow—“I wanted Aaron to be part of a family”—but her decision was little more than pushing her son’s life onto the felt and rolling the dice.

  Call me ‘Dad,’ ” Mark Jefferson said.

  It was a few days after Aaron had moved into Jefferson’s home in Cypress, and Aaron was helping Jefferson clean the floors of the Warrior Center, a basketball facility in Orange County that he managed.

  “That’s okay,” Aaron said. “I like ‘Coach.’ ”

  “No, call me ‘Dad,’ ” he urged. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  Jefferson first made that request right after Barbara informed him that Aaron could move the fifty miles to his home in Cypress. At that time and when Jefferson repeated the line later, Aaron nodded but continued to call Jefferson “Coach.” Barbara may have seen Jefferson as a father figure for Aaron, but Aaron saw him solely as the means to an end.

  When Jefferson said Aaron could one day play in the NBA, Aaron believed him, and he saw the move to Cypress as the first step toward the goal. “I am living in Orange County. It’s good for my basketball development,” he told friends who asked why he wasn’t enrolled at Almeria Middle School anymore. He was parroting one of Jefferson’s lines, which he repeated to kids at his new school, Brethren Christian in Huntington Beach.

  Jefferson was a portly forty-something African-American with heavy eyes. His home in Buena Park was a brown one-story with a dry lawn and a two-car garage stuffed with so many boxes, old sofas, and other junk that there was not enough room to park a car.