Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  “I’m out here getting shit done,” Keller said gleefully after the meeting, forgetting for a moment that his star player was not.

  ————

  When Keller and Gerry arrived at the complex for the morning games, they grabbed chairs along the baseline of Court #4. The teams warmed up before the 10:30 a.m. scheduled start, but Keller barely glanced at the players. He and Gerry were looking at the event program, sizing up the players on the team Demetrius would face and also G.J.’s opponent in his game an hour later. More than five minutes passed before Keller looked up from the program and, after scanning the floor, said, “Where’s D?”

  He stood up and craned his neck from side to side, looking around at the players, who were huddled near their respective benches getting last-minute instructions from their coaches. He thought Demetrius might be lying on the ground behind the bench, stretching.

  “Is he in the bathroom?” Keller asked. As the game started, he walked over to the bathroom, went in, and then quickly came out. He looked toward Gerry and held his hands up. He next called Demetrius’s cell phone but got not answer. He tracked down Aaron, who was sitting with Mullens, watching another game.

  “Where is D?”

  “Isn’t he playing right now?”

  “No, he’s not with his team. Did he get up with you this morning?”

  “When our alarm went off around eight a.m., he got up. I saw him get up. I brushed my teeth and got dressed and left, and I figured D was coming down too.”

  “Jesus Christ, Aaron! You couldn’t have made sure he left on time? If he misses a game, he can’t make the all-star game.”

  Keller found Taylor standing between two courts with his arms folded. They discussed the ramifications of Demetrius’s absence, and Taylor mentioned that Demetrius might have also missed a session of one-on-one drills a day earlier. Taylor had heard that from another player, but he could not confirm it because no one tracked attendance. It was assumed that a player wouldn’t miss a workout, because it was such an honor to be invited to the camp.

  Keller went back to Aaron and asked about the one-on-one workout.

  “I don’t know if D was there or not. I can’t say,” he said. “I didn’t see him there, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

  Eventually, Demetrius called Keller’s cell phone and claimed that he had overslept.

  “D, how can you oversleep? Do you know what this means?” Keller shouted into his phone.

  Keller scurried back and forth between Kalish, Pickett, and Taylor. They discussed kicking Demetrius out of the camp and putting him on an earlier flight home, which Taylor said would teach a valuable lesson about responsibility. They settled on a penalty they knew would resonate with Demetrius. SLAM magazine had scheduled a photo shoot for that afternoon, featuring the top players at the camp. In part because of the Sports Illustrated article, Demetrius had been asked to pose. Not only would he now miss the shoot, Aaron would go in his place. “You always say I give D stuff. Well, I take it away as quick as I give it,” Keller told Aaron.

  Taylor delivered the news to Demetrius outside a ballroom at the hotel and scolded him in the same way he had Keller in the car in Las Vegas. When told his penalty, Demetrius began to cry. “No, no, no,” he said, and he pleaded with Taylor to reconsider.

  “No, you deserve this,” Taylor said.

  Demetrius was alone in his room when Aaron stepped in front of a camera in a ballroom that SLAM magazine used for the photo shoot. He was given a spongy basketball a little smaller than a tennis ball and was told to put it near his face and squeeze it in his fist, as if crushing it. The photographer and his assistant kept asking Aaron to look meaner. “Try to make a face like you are crazy,” they said. But Aaron couldn’t do it. The kid who had always felt second to Demetrius suddenly had the spotlight all to himself. He couldn’t act mad. Heck, he couldn’t stop smiling.

  After Demetrius struggled in his Thursday-night game, Keller mentioned his knee injury and said something about his back, but no amount of shadowing could hide his blemishes. To be fair, his team had no chance against a group that featured Gordon and Duke-bound Gerald Henderson. His team went down so quickly that Taylor had the scoreboard operator turn a 54–21 deficit into a 54–41 margin so as not to embarrass Demetrius’s team. When Demetrius said after the game, “My teammates aren’t even helping me get my own shot,” he was right. But he also played without passion on defense and sat slumped in a chair when he wasn’t on the court. He followed that with another lackluster showing in his only game on Friday morning. It got so bad that Keller turned away from the action several times. He couldn’t bear to watch.

  “Jesus Christ,” Keller said. “D picks this week to play like he’s got his thumb up his ass.”

  Taylor sat in on the final round of all-star deliberations. G.J.’s name never came up, he said, and when Kalish asked the coach of Aaron’s team who from his squad deserved to make the all-star game, he didn’t mention Aaron. Demetrius’s name was floated at one point, but the loud lobbying for other players drowned it out. There were eight freshmen-to-be in the camp—Demetrius, Aaron, G.J., Roger, Derrick Favors, Noel Johnson, Shawn Williams, and Zheng Zhun, who played for a team of international kids called the Global All-Stars. None of them was picked for the all-star game, and rightfully so. Some had played well in spots, but none shone all four days. Yet, at the end of the meeting, someone from Adidas (Taylor did not remember who) remarked that they should be careful not to insult these young players, as that might lead them to switch to Nike or Reebok. “We’ve got these great kids going into the ninth grade. We need to keep them happy so they will come back next year,” he said. That spawned an idea both brilliant and ludicrous. Why not hold a game for the freshmen-to-be before the underclassmen’s all-star game? That there were only eight kids that age in camp didn’t seem to matter, as someone suggested they could fill out the rosters with two older kids.

  Keller learned of the arrangement on Friday afternoon, and at first he tried to act disappointed, but only because Gerry was so against the game. “What’s the point?” Gerry said. “It’s better if the boys leave knowing they have to work harder if they want to make the all-star game next year.” Keller pretended to agree, but he also liked that Adidas had created a game to keep him and his players happy. It proved that he was important and also offered Demetrius a chance at redemption. Put on the court with kids his age—two who he played with regularly—Demetrius was bound to shine.

  Most fans were still finding seats in the stands at the Northview High gym when the game announcer introduced the starting lineups for what was billed as the Junior Superstar Showcase Game. G.J. and Aaron were on the white team; Demetrius and Roger headlined the blue team. On the stands opposite the benches, two dozen college coaches (including Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt) waited, having arrived early enough for the scheduled all-star games to witness the impromptu freshman version. Only twelve minutes were put on the clock, which kept running even when the ball went out of bounds. In all, they would play the equivalent of seven minutes of basketball, making it seem as if organizers were rushing the game to its end.

  The game announcer attempted to get the crowd to stand up for the start, but most people remained seated as Aaron hustled down the wing and was rewarded with a pass he finished for the game’s first basket. Two possessions later, Aaron executed a drop step and up-and-under move to make the score 6–2. Back at his more familiar center position, Aaron was as dominant as ever.

  Aaron’s two quick baskets woke Demetrius. He scored on a fast break, then a possession later was fouled while swooping in for a layup along the right baseline. It was an impressive move, his leaping ability and body control on display, and he drew confidence from it. After Aaron broke free for a dunk, Demetrius answered with a 3-pointer, the first he’d made the entire week. Two minutes later, Demetrius missed a 3-point try, but he atoned by collecting a steal on defense that led to a breakaway layup.


  It was a glorified game of pickup, wide-open with minimal defense, and that fit Demetrius’s strengths. He could get out and run and finish in transition, and none of the other players was as developed athletically as he was. But it was boring to watch. By the time Demetrius scored on a late layup for a game-high 10 points, few people in the stands were paying attention. When Roger dunked at the buzzer to give the blue team a 44–29 victory, there was only a smattering of applause. The game announcer tried to elicit more cheers, but the fans ignored him, and the players left the floor quickly, as if they were embarrassed.

  “It was … okay,” G.J. said when Gerry asked him about the experience. “It wasn’t really a game.”

  For Keller, it was a delight. “MVP. Demetrius was the MVP!” he shouted. He repeated the line several times, as if saying it enough would make it true. Told that no MVP award would be given, Keller adapted. “If they gave out an MVP, Demetrius would have won it.”

  He strutted over to a far wall of the gym where Taylor was seated alone.

  “Team Cal representing,” he boasted, and Taylor shook his head.

  “Like everyone else, I wasn’t watching, Joe. That game was bullshit. No one cared.”

  No one but Keller. Matched up with players his age, Demetrius scored more points and looked more athletic than the others, Keller pointed out. Taylor reminded him that it was a ragtag game with no defense, that three of Demetrius’s scores came on uncontested layups, but Keller wouldn’t hear of it. He felt vindicated, even more so later that night when he spoke to Kalish outside the hotel. “Demetrius is still the future,” Kalish said.

  Keller and Adidas could keep the hype rolling.

  24

  The next generation at the Jr. Phenom Camp

  When the phone rang, Aaron was at the kitchen table of the house his mother had recently rented on the western border of Fontana. He had returned home after playing basketball at the park, cooked himself some macaroni and cheese, and reached for the phone just before taking the first bite.

  “Is Aaron home?”

  “This is Aaron; who’s this?”

  “It’s Tyson Chandler.”

  “Man, you didn’t really just say it was Tyson Chandler. Come on, who is this, really?”

  “Aaron, it’s really Tyson Chandler. I got your number from Coach Otis.”

  “No way!” Aaron said.

  “How you doing? I’m out here for a wedding and wanted to give you a call.”

  “Why would you want to call me?”

  “About going to Dominguez.”

  The coaches at Compton Dominguez High had first noticed Aaron earlier in the summer, in a showcase event run by the Pumps that included some of Southern California’s best high school players. The following day, Victor Clark, who acted as something of an unofficial assistant to head coach Russell Otis and also had ties to Barrett, called Aaron’s home. “Coach Otis would really like to meet you,” he said.

  It was before the Superstar Camp, and Aaron remained loyal to Keller. He immediately called him to tell of Dominguez’s advances, but Keller did not answer his home phone or his cell. The following morning, Aaron called Keller again, and he continued to call him almost every hour from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. Keller practically slept with his cell phone; Aaron knew that if he didn’t answer it meant you weren’t important enough at that moment. “I wanted to go meet Coach Otis, but I wasn’t going to if he told me not to,” Aaron said later. “But then he never answered his phone. That made me mad.”

  Aaron and Barbara met Otis at an Applebee’s in Corona the following afternoon. Otis had a bushy mustache and spoke in a higher pitch than you would expect from a tall black man. He was in his early forties and wearing gear from Reebok (the company that sponsored Dominguez that year), and his manner, when contrasted with Keller’s eagerness, was almost stately. He acknowledged Dominguez’s shortcomings in a serious tone—an academic reputation worse than even FoHi, gang infestation, its distance from Aaron’s home—but he mostly talked about Chandler, how he had also hailed from the Inland Empire, and how Dominguez had been his springboard to the NBA.

  Near the end of lunch, Otis asked Barbara to allow Aaron to play a few games with the Dominguez varsity players in an exhibition tournament in Orange County. Consider it a trial, he said, to see if Aaron was comfortable with the team and his coaching style.

  Had Keller still been intimately involved in Aaron’s life, he would have told him that Otis was unlikely to make him a featured player on the Dominguez team, particularly with star point guard Brandon Jennings there. At the “trial,” he might get to shoot as much as he wanted, but during the season Otis would play him in the post and use him primarily as a defender and rebounder. At most, he’d be a role player. Soderberg, on the other hand, cared about him and would make sure he got the minutes and shots he needed at FoHi. But Keller was busy with his camps. He hadn’t held a practice in more than a month, and many players, even Demetrius, complained about being unable to reach him. Keller was divorcing himself from the team, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.

  The following week, Aaron suited up for Dominguez in a tournament at Whittier College. He started all three games and played four different positions, every spot but center; he even ran the point for a quarter. Otis’s offense, at least for that tournament, was freewheeling. He encouraged everyone to attack the basket. The only time Otis criticized Aaron was to tell him that he passed too much.

  “Mom, I was doing all this stuff that Coach Joe never lets me do,” Aaron told Barbara afterward. “I was shooting threes; they were running the offense through me. And Coach O, he’s calmer. He doesn’t yell at you for unnecessary things. As long as you’re playing hard, he won’t say nothing.”

  Two days after the tournament, Otis asked to meet with Barbara again to discuss enrolling Aaron at Dominguez, but she refused. It was Keller who’d paid the $2,000 security deposit on their Fontana house and who gave her $1,000 a month toward the rent, she reminded Aaron, and that meant he was going to FoHi. A week later, when Aaron left for the Superstar Camp, he was resigned to a future tied to Demetrius.

  After returning from Atlanta, convinced more than ever that he was a superior player to Demetrius, Aaron looked into getting a job that would pay $1,000 a month, enough to cover the rent lost if he didn’t go to FoHi. “I have nothing against FoHi or anything, but the main reason I don’t want to go is, I don’t want to be part of the, like, the Demetrius Walker era. I want to be part of my own era,” he explained. He concluded that he couldn’t work enough hours to make that much and still go to school and play basketball, but he hoped that some compromise with his mom could be reached. The Dominguez coaches kept in touch, and Otis also arranged for a guest membership for Aaron at a nearby fitness center, so he could work out on his own. “I am thankful for Dominguez,” Barbara said. “If not for them, my kid would be sitting around, doing nothing.”

  Still, she was not going to give up Keller’s money.

  A few days later, Tyson Chandler called.

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I will say that Dominguez was a great place for me,” Chandler said. “It is nationally known and a great place to play, because Coach Otis makes it fun.”

  Aaron mentioned that his mom and Keller were pushing FoHi.

  “You can go to Fontana and get twenty to twenty-five [points] a game, but people will say you don’t play anybody,” Chandler said. “The most important thing is playing with and against good players and having fun. That is what’s going to make your career, competing and having fun.”

  Aaron explained that Keller paid some of his rent and how that influenced his mom. Chandler said it was possible that he or someone else affiliated with Dominguez could match that deal. Aaron should talk to Coach Otis about it.

  “I was in the same situation as you once. I know what it is like,” Chandler said at the end of the conversation. “If you ever need to talk, give me a call.”

  When Keller finally g
ot word that Dominguez was after Aaron, he sent Soderberg to see him. Soderberg spent three hours explaining to Barbara why FoHi was a better fit, but Keller didn’t communicate with Barbara or Aaron directly.

  In late July, Keller was in San Diego preparing for the Jr. Phenom Camp when Barbara sent him a text message. He had forgotten to send August’s rent money. Keller responded that she’d have to drive to San Diego to retrieve the check, as he was busy setting up for the camp. She couldn’t miss work, however, so she continued to text him over the next few days, trying to set up a meeting closer to Fontana. She could stall her landlord for a few days, she said, but not too long. Keller promised several times to call with a place and time when they could meet, but he never did.

  “Do you think Coach Otis will give you the money?” Barbara asked Aaron.

  “Maybe, if he knew I was going to Dominguez.”

  “Call him,” Barbara said. “Whoever pays the rent is who you are going to play for.”

  Within a few hours, Otis dropped off $1,000 in cash. He told Barbara that if Aaron ended up attending FoHi, she could pay him back when she was able.

  Later, Barbara negotiated with Otis to match Keller’s contribution—$1,000 a month—in exchange for Aaron enrolling at Dominguez, and she got $2,000 from him to repay Keller’s security deposit. “Aaron’s going to Dominguez,” Barbara said when the deal was done. “Joe dropped the ball.”

  He likely dropped it on purpose.

  “I am so happy to be done with Barbara,” Keller said. “Aaron, he’s a good kid, but I feel sorry for him, because his mom will just use him and use him. Going to Dominguez with Otis, that’s the worst possible thing for Aaron.”

  Playing for a winning program and an experienced coach like Otis, getting out from under Demetrius’s shadow and Keller’s apathetic guidance, netting $1,000 for rent—these were all good reasons for Barbara to choose Dominguez. But there was one giant reason why she should never have considered it, and this was what Keller meant when he said there was no place worse for Aaron.