Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  Moments later, Demetrius got his hand on a pass inside to McDonald and bounced the ball out to Gary, who beat two players downcourt for a layup and a 46–41 edge. On the War Eagles’ next possession, however, Demetrius went for the steal again and found himself out of position. Rather than let McDonald have the basket, he gave him a slight push. The gym fell almost silent after the referee blew his whistle. Aaron was close enough to McDonald that it wasn’t clear which of Team Cal’s two stars was finished for the day. The referee walked to the scorer’s table and announced, “The foul is on two-three white,” and the War Eagles crowd, numbering almost 2,500, cheered louder with each step Demetrius took toward the sideline. He plopped down next to Rome, Sr., and put his hands to his face, his long fingers stretching well up his forehead. He started to cry, and Rome, Sr., rubbed his back. “Don’t worry, D, your teammates will get it done.”

  McDonald made one of two free throws, cutting Team Cal’s lead to 46–42 with 2:42 left, and the crowd rose, urging the War Eagles to get a stop on defense. Barbara, Carmen, and the rest of Team Cal’s parents climbed down from the bleachers and snaked to the far end of the court. They would watch the finish from there. Win or lose, they could reach their sons the minute the game ended.

  Gary brought the ball up and slowed the game down. The War Eagles were in a tight man-to-man defense, and Gary might have been able to drive again, but he smartly held the ball, milking the clock, waiting until two minutes remained before feeding the ball to Rome on the left. Rome held the ball, waiting as Roberto fought through defenders from across the key, cutting along the baseline until he got free in the corner, where Rome passed him the ball. McDonald moved out to guard him, and Roberto stood with his left foot forward, sizing him up. McDonald was expecting him to drive to the right, into the middle of the court and away from the baseline, and he shaded that way. Roberto gave a head fake and, when McDonald stepped toward him, Roberto put the ball on the floor and slithered around him, going along the baseline. It wasn’t an explosive move, more like a sly trick. Another defender rotated over as Roberto pushed past McDonald into the key, and Roberto jumped to a stop and pumped as if he were going to shoot. When that defender jumped, he calmly ducked under his reach and rolled the ball up and in, a cheeky little shot that you’d expect to see in a game of H-O-R-S-E but not in the finals of Nationals.

  The War Eagles panicked on their next possession. A guard forced a pass that Roberto deflected, which ended up in Justin’s hands for a breakaway layup. It put Team Cal up 50–42 with only 1:12 left, and the crowd fell silent and a few fans moved toward the exits. The War Eagles tried to get back into the game by fouling, but Gary made four free throws in the final minute.

  When the final buzzer sounded, the Team Cal players, coaches, and parents streamed onto the court. They met Justin, Rome, Gary, Aaron, and Roberto after a few steps and they mashed into a group hug, with Keller in the middle. On the outer ring were the parents, including Rome, Sr., and Gary, Sr., who embraced every parent or kid who came within reach. Carmen finally found Justin, and he hugged her and lifted her off the ground for a moment, which made her blush. Aaron and Demetrius embraced, and as they broke free, Aaron put his hand out. Demetrius took it, and then he pulled Aaron close and they hugged again.

  Keller made his way to midcourt, to an AAU official who was setting up a table to present the crystal-bowl trophy to Team Cal. He grabbed the trophy before the presentation even started and held it in the air with his right hand. He then turned toward the section of War Eagles fans and thrust the trophy in that direction. He abruptly turned around, as if an alarm had gone off in his head, and pushed the trophy into Demetrius’s arms.

  “What the hell are you all doing?” he yelled at the team. “Get in the cars! We’ve got to get to the airport!” Keller looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. He caught Violet’s eye and mouthed, “Get to the car,” and then he ran out of the gym.

  As Team Cal loaded into cars and sped toward the airport, Harris pulled his team around him in a quiet locker room. Some of the boys were crying, and as Harris began to speak, Calvin Duane said, “Coach, we let you down. I’m sorry. We wanted to win this one for you.”

  “No, no, you didn’t let me down,” he said. “You boys helped me get through one of the toughest weeks of my life. Thank you for that. Thank you. I love all you boys.” Then he led them in a prayer.

  Between sorting out tickets and returning rental cars, it was improbable that Team Cal would catch its flight. The parents had checked bags and retrieved boarding passes earlier in the day, but there were so many people to keep track of that most of the group were still hustling through the security line more than fifteen minutes after their scheduled departure time. Yet it was such a large party that Northwest Airlines held the plane, and they made their flight.

  Once the plane was airborne, Tom gave a flight attendant $200 and told her to give the parents and coaches whatever they wanted to drink.

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it,” Justin said over and over as his mom sipped white wine. It was the first time he’d seen her drink alcohol.

  Gary, Sr., and Gary reviewed Gary’s drives to the basket in the second half. Rome, Sr., and Rome talked about his release on those three big baskets early in the game.

  Demetrius was in a chair next to Keller, the glass-bowl trophy in his lap. He was the quietest boy on the plane, the one most ready for the celebration to stop, for the lights to dim, wanting most of all to put on his headphones and let the music bring him sleep. But Keller wouldn’t allow it, not yet. He grabbed a flight attendant and explained why the team had been so late. She took the news to the cockpit, as Keller had hoped she would, and a few minutes later one of the pilots made an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got some very special guests on board with us tonight: Team Cal. They just won the Thirteen-and-Under national championship. Congratulations.”

  As the rest of the passengers applauded, Keller urged Demetrius and the other players to stand. One by one they rose—Demetrius was the last to his feet—and then Keller stood, and he and Demetrius and the rest of Team Cal took a bow.

  PART THREE

  Assigned a Number

  18

  Demetrius Walker posing in 2005

  In the fall of 2004, Karl Taro Greenfeld, a writer for Sports Illustrated, called Keller. He had seen Demetrius’s name atop the Hoop Scoop rankings of eighth-graders, he said, and wanted to do a story on the young phenom. Keller had long courted media attention for his star, but an article in Sports Illustrated was beyond his wildest dreams. In his business of promoting Demetrius and himself, Sports Illustrated was the perfect vehicle. If the magazine called Demetrius the best player in the country, that news would reach nearly 3.5 million subscribers in every corner of the United States. Demetrius had helped Team Cal win Nationals, and Clark Francis had ranked him number 1 in his age group for two years, but there remained some skepticism about his ability. The Hoop Scoop’s dubious rankings alone would not convince rival coaches and players, especially those in hotbeds like New York City or Houston who had never seen Demetrius play. If Sports Illustrated tabbed him the next big thing, however, his potential would be gospel, and the brushfire of hype Keller had stoked for years would rage.

  Putting Demetrius in Sports Illustrated had a downside. Every good player who lined up against him would look to inflate his own profile by diminishing Demetrius’s, and the coaches of those players would rip him publicly and privately because it was in their interests to do so. Otherworldly acts would be expected each time he took the floor, an immense burden for a boy so young. If he had a bad game or missed a dunk, fans would shake their heads and say, “That kid’s the best player in the country?” This had already happened on a smaller scale. In a tournament shortly after Francis ranked Demetrius number 1, two boys stayed in the gym after their game to watch Demetrius face a squad from Utah. As the referee tossed the ball upward for the opening tip, Demetrius hesitated—he hadn’t expec
ted the referee to throw the ball at that moment—and he was late getting off the ground. The center for Utah reached the ball first, which prompted one of the young observers to remark, “Man, you can’t lose the tip if you’re the number one player in the country!”

  Keller foresaw this consequence and wavered on whether to go forward with the article. It would do wonders for Keller’s profile, particularly with Adidas; it would announce his importance in the same way that the Adidas contract did, only more publicly. Team Cal and the Jr. Phenom Camp, his two brands, would be in the spotlight, which could lead to more sponsors and money. But Demetrius could get a big head and stop working hard, thinking he had already made it; he could be humiliated by opponents gunning for him and fear later challenges; he could be derailed by the rush of people looking to attach themselves to a rising star or by the “haters” jealous of his success. Appearing in Sports Illustrated would not help Demetrius get a college scholarship or make the pros. There was no potential gain to him other than the one he keenly noted to Keller: “A lot of girls will hear about me being in that article.”

  Sports Illustrated had previously highlighted three basketball phenoms. In 1994, the magazine put Felipe López of New York on the cover before his first college season. In that same year, a writer profiled sixteen-year-old Schea Cotton of Santa Ana Mater Dei, calling him the kind of player who could bring college coaches “job security; bring them a better job and a more lucrative sneaker deal; bring them to the Final Four.” In 2002, the magazine put LeBron James on the cover and coined his nickname: “The Chosen One.” James was a high school junior at the time, and the article announced his arrival as a future superstar. It opened the floodgates to more features in Sports Illustrated and other publications, and ESPN televised some of his high school games. Sports Illustrated helped make him a global brand before he was drafted into the NBA, and it boosted his appeal to Nike and Gatorade, who signed him to lucrative sponsorship deals after he declared for the draft the following year. López was entering college when the magazine profiled him, and although he enjoyed a solid college career at St. John’s and a brief stint in the NBA, he was widely viewed as having never lived up to the potential of a Sports Illustrated cover boy. The same was said of Cotton, who was a sophomore in high school when he appeared on the cover. He eventually played two seasons at Alabama but never stuck in the NBA.

  The failings of Cotton and López were blamed partly on the spotlight that found them at too young an age. They crumbled under the scrutiny, people said. Cotton was one of Barrett’s protégés, and Keller knew well his struggles dealing with the pressure. “Being in Sports Illustrated changed my life. I lived in a fishbowl from there on out,” Cotton said. “Not only was I a marked man by the opposition, but as far as the public was concerned, I was always being scrutinized. The biggest thing was, nothing was ever good enough. I’d have a game where I’d score twenty points, and people would say I should have scored more. I’d have a game that, because of injury or whatever, I would play so-so, and the critics would lay into me. … It forced me to grow up faster than a teenager should, because I was a national figure at fifteen or sixteen years old. … Pat tried to prep me for it, but it was never talked about that we wouldn’t do [the article]. It was good exposure for him, for the program. It would bring notoriety to him, and that would bring more talent.”

  Keller had no choice but to involve Kisha in his deliberations—Greenfeld would surely want to talk with her—and her instinct was to turn the article down. “I don’t know if I am ready for all this,” she said. “All the attention. I don’t know if I can handle it. … And little D, everyone is going to be coming after him. It’s like putting a big target on his back.”

  The decision was ultimately Keller’s to make, and his concern moved from what the article might do to Demetrius to what it could expose about him. He had recently held Demetrius—and Terran—back a year in school; they would repeat the eighth grade, which would put them in the same class as Rome, Roberto, Justin, and the others. Both boys were young for their grade, and holding players back in school was common. But Keller enrolled Demetrius and Terran in the same homeschooling program in which he had placed Aaron, and then he did nothing to assure that they did any work. Demetrius and Terran slept in late at Demetrius’s home, played video games until the afternoon, and then went to practice or the mall. Neither Kisha nor Keller nor any other adult supervised them, and their repeat of eighth grade amounted to a yearlong summer break.

  Keller also worried that Greenfeld would focus on any number of criticisms common in articles written about young basketball players, such as their exploitation by coaches and the shoe companies. During phone conversations with Kalish and Pickett at Adidas, Keller weighed the pros and cons of an article and ultimately concluded that even if Greenfeld focused on the negatives—if, for example, he took Keller and Adidas to task for going after middle school kids—the boost it would give to the profiles of Demetrius, Keller, and the Jr. Phenom Camp was worth it. “All of that stuff has been written before, so no one is going to care,” Keller said. “To get me and D in Sports Illustrated, and if the article talks about the Jr. Phenom Camp, it will be worth it.”

  Greenfeld reported the article over several days and it was published January 24, 2005. The grassroots grapevine would say that Demetrius was on the cover, and technically he was. The cover photo was of New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, but on a small banner on the bottom right corner there was a picture of Demetrius dribbling a ball and the headline:

  MEET DEMETRIUS WALKER.

  He’s 14 years old.

  You’re going to

  hear from him.

  Inside, the article carried the headline:

  The Fast Track

  The next LeBron? Some say 14-year-old Demetrius Walker is on the express to the NBA. Others say he’s traveling too quickly, too soon

  It began:

  “You see?” Kisha Houston storms across the Rialto High basketball court, waving a blue, filigreed document—her son’s birth certificate. “You see? Demetrius Walker is 14 years old. Say that. Write that. Tell them D is 14. Stop all this about his being 16, 17, people lying, saying we held him back. He’s the right age.”

  She holds the document up for inspection. “That’s his birthday right there,” she says. And sure enough, Demetrius Walker, or D, the best eighth-grade basketball player in the country, is only 14 years old. But that man out there on the court, 6′3″, 175 pounds, built more like an NFL tailback than a junior high school point guard and with enough game to be running the point for a Division I program—how can he be 14? It doesn’t seem possible, but deal with it: This kid is 14 going on LeBron. I shouldn’t be writing this. You shouldn’t be reading it.

  The larger points raised in the article were far from original but worth considering: Should we be focusing attention on kids so young? What damage does it do to kids to tab them for stardom in their prepubescent years? Greenfeld quoted Houston Rockets star Tracy McGrady, who went straight from high school to the NBA, as saying: “Fourteen? That’s too fast. That means you don’t even get a chance to be a teenager. At least I got to be a teenager for a while. Now they’re gonna take that away too?”

  But the article spent as much time praising Demetrius as it did scrutinizing those who would steal a fourteen-year-old’s youth, glowingly describing one of his drives from the basket and quoting Keller comparing him to Tyson Chandler and Clark Francis saying, “If he grows, it’ll be scary; if he doesn’t, he can still make a lot of money at this game.”

  The people touting Demetrius as a future NBA star were the same characters—Keller and Francis—but the forum had changed. Appearing in the hallowed pages of Sports Illustrated, their remarks came across more like facts than propaganda. Keller also told Greenfeld that Team Cal hadn’t lost in two and a half years, 160 straight games, that Demetrius was homeschooled by a tutor, and that Keller checked to make sure he did his homework. He said he had Demetrius on a
special diet and vitamins and that Soderberg had been with Team Cal for five years, among other embellishments. Keller was most pleased with the section on his expectations for Demetrius, in which he said: “As long as he graduates from high school, I don’t care if he becomes a ballerina.” He also loved the ending:

  “I know how this looks,” says Keller as he backs the truck out of the driveway. “I know you are going to say that what is going on here is weird. People are going to say it looks bad, like I’m manipulating this kid. Like I’m trying to take advantage. But I’m not going to get a thing out of this. My only hope is that maybe, one day, when Demetrius is in the NBA, he can come back and sponsor my team. We’ll call it the Demetrius Walker All-Stars. If he wants to do that, great. If not, that’s fine. I’m doing everything that’s right for the kid, and right now, what he wants, what I want, what his mom wants—we all want the same thing, and that’s for Demetrius to succeed and grow and graduate and do all those things he is supposed to do.”

  How could that be bad for him?

  “Of course that is all bullshit,” Keller said when I called him on his comments. “If Demetrius quit basketball, I’d kill him and myself. But it looks good, me saying that shit.” Keller’s only criticism was that Greenfeld described him as having a potbelly. “Other than that, that article couldn’t have been better if I wrote it myself.”

  The article was not a puff piece; it raised legitimate questions about how young basketball talent was cultivated and, specifically, whether Keller and Adidas would do more harm than good to young Demetrius. But smart yet subtle criticism of the grassroots machine had as much impact as spitting into the ocean. Only the broadest strokes of Greenfeld’s analysis would spread: Demetrius was special; he was the next LeBron; and Keller was an emerging basketball titan.