Five years earlier, one of Otis’s former players, a seventeen-year-old identified in court papers as John Doe, accused him of sexual assault. Otis was tried on four charges, including sodomy and oral copulation, and during the trial another former Dominguez player testified that Otis had molested him as well. No charges were filed in that case, as the alleged acts had occurred in the 1980s.
The trial divided Compton. Some felt Doe was a gold digger. (His family filed a civil suit against the Compton school district.). Others believed Otis used his power as coach of a nationally recognized basketball program to molest young boys. Otis was ultimately acquitted and later returned to coaching Dominguez, but that did little to close the divide. The parents of some top players ruled out Dominguez, believing that Otis had benefited from a friendly jury and the difficulty in proving sexual-assault cases. Others felt that their hometown hero, a Dominguez graduate who built a program that instilled great pride in the community, had been wrongly accused and vindicated in a court of law.
Barbara fell somewhere in the middle, as that was the position that fit her needs. She was aware of the accusations against Otis, and they troubled her, but not enough for her to pass up $1,000 a month. Asked if she was worried about sending Aaron to play for a man accused of the very crimes he had been the victim of as a young boy, she said, “I told Coach Otis, ‘I don’t have blind faith in you.’ I will keep my eye on things.” But how vigilant could she be from fifty-five miles away? Worse still, some days Aaron would have to ride to and from school with Otis, who lived in nearby Corona.
“I don’t like how Coach Otis got in trouble for that stuff,” Aaron said. “I heard it was bad, what they said he did. He got off. I know that. But people get off all the time for stuff they really did. I don’t know. It makes me think about what kind of person he might be. Like I thought Coach Joe was this great guy. But then you play with him for a while and you learn he has this other side. You learn that he’s not a good person.”
If there was a player best positioned to see the totality of the tumult that had befallen Team Cal, it was Gary Franklin, Jr. He had been away from the team for most of the last twelve months rehabilitating the broken arm he suffered the previous fall. His recollection of the team, his memory of the players and Keller, was imprinted during the halcyon days at Nationals in Memphis, when ten selfless boys worked together for a common goal.
At the Ontario airport on the final day of July, Gary saw a team that only faintly resembled that bunch. Enlisted by Keller to fill Justin’s spot on the roster for the 14-and-Under Nationals in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Gary entered the airport and saw the division before hearing about it. Demetrius sat alone off to one side, headphones on, a hoodie covering his head. Roberto and Aaron sat together as far away from Demetrius as they could and still be in the same gate area. Rome was seated near his father, Terran sat by himself, and the others were spread out as well. If the boys hadn’t been dressed in identical Adidas gear, you wouldn’t have assumed they were traveling together.
Waiting with the team to board the flight was like watching a familiar movie with the sound turned off. Carmen was not blabbing into her Bluetooth; Terran wasn’t snickering at Demetrius’s jokes; Justin wasn’t explaining where his mom planned to take him sightseeing; and the most noticeable absence of all: no Keller. Preparations for the Jr. Phenom Camp would cause him to miss pool play.
After landing in Orlando, half the players went to one condo and half to another. The condos Keller had reserved were several miles from each other, which had the effect of splitting the team in two. It made it impossible to organize team breakfasts and dinners. Other than for games, the entire squad never gathered in one place.
But even when they were together, they were not a team.
Demetrius sat away from the rest of the players at the gym, and if Aaron or Roberto or Gary or another teammate tried to engage him, he usually reached for his Sidekick and started typing. “Who is he texting?” Roberto asked before one game. He and the rest of the team stretched while Demetrius pecked away on his Sidekick. “What’s so important he’s gotta say it right now?” Demetrius continued his ritual of warming up separately from the team, in his weighted vest, jumping rope while his teammates shot. Fans approached him and he smiled as he signed autographs, but when one of his teammates got near him, he turned away.
Gary thought back to Demetrius’s behavior when he joined the team two years earlier. He had assumed he wouldn’t like Demetrius, that his ego would be massive, but Demetrius was welcoming, and he called Gary often to make sure he wasn’t frustrated by Keller’s ranting. As Demetrius’s star ascended, as The Hoop Scoop began touting the brightness of his prospects, Gary saw no change. A week after the publication of the Sports Illustrated article, Gary called Demetrius to congratulate him. “Wassup, Mr. Sports Illustrated,” he said.
Demetrius was embarrassed. “Come on, man, be quiet about that. We’re a team.”
Gary saw him differently now. He told his father: “You look at D now and you just know in his head he’s thinking, Man, I’m the shit.”
In pool play, Team Cal slogged to victories over the PG Ballers 74–46 and the Bay State Magic Elite 63–50, and narrowly defeated the Little Mizzou Tigers 52–49. Conditioned by Keller to jump on teams at the start, to “take their hearts out,” the team rebelled in his absence. They played with little energy, switching from lackluster to driven only late in the game when provoked by the possibility of a defeat. In elimination play, Team Cal would eventually face a team too good for such an approach, and Gary, Sr., and Rome, Sr., the two acting coaches, knew this. Yet they were incapable of jump-starting the team, mostly because they couldn’t get through to Demetrius. He averaged less than 10 points over the first three games, as he refused to assert himself. As in Las Vegas against Houston Hoops, he dribbled aimlessly on the perimeter or quickly gave the ball up to teammates, his only contribution on offense the occasional long jumper.
The day before the elimination rounds, as a few of the boys walked to Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex, Gary caught up to Demetrius.
“D, what’s wrong, man? You aren’t into this, are you?”
“I just don’t want to play,” he said.
“For real? Why?”
“My knee’s been bothering me, and I should be resting it. I talked to my mom, and she said I shouldn’t be playing at all. She’s actually mad at me ’cuz I’m out here.”
Gary didn’t believe him. If his knee hurt, why was he jumping rope before games with that stupid vest on? Why did he throw down dunks in warm-ups? It didn’t help his case that all the boys were banged up to some degree. Gary’s broken left arm hadn’t healed completely, and he dribbled exclusively with his right hand. Rome had braces on both his ankles, and Aaron had rolled his right ankle as well. Roberto had twisted his back in a fall and had to ice it between games.
“I wanted to be mad at D, but you know who I was really mad at? Coach Joe,” Gary said later. “He was always giving D excuses just in case he didn’t play good. ‘Oh, D’s sick,’ or ‘D’s knee is hurting.’ Coach Joe let D think it was okay to do that.”
And only Coach Joe could reach him now. Only Keller could fly in and convince Demetrius to reembrace his teammates. Only he could inspire the boys, get them to play with the enthusiasm they displayed the year before in winning the title. He had said he would fly in after pool play, but then he called and said he would be a day late. The next day, he repeated that line.
Team Cal drew ARC, from Southern California, in the Round of 64. They defeated that familiar foe 52–39, although in the past a win by less than 30 would have been a disappointment. The boys returned to the condos, expecting Keller to arrive at any moment. They woke up the next morning anticipating that, like Santa Claus, he’d simply appear and deliver the new shoes he had promised them. He never arrived, however, and at one point he called Demetrius and claimed to have missed his flight. As for the new shoes he had promised them: “I swear I
sent them,” he told Demetrius. “I bet they got there but someone stole them.”
Keller had confided in a few people before the tournament, admitting that he wouldn’t be joining the team in Florida because he was too busy. He also predicted they would lose well short of the finals. They hadn’t practiced together; Demetrius was out of shape; off-the-court squabbles bled onto the court. “I don’t need to be there to see them get killed,” he said.
It was a fitting way for Keller to finally step out of the boys’ lives. He lied to them, had no faith in their abilities, and pointed out their shortcomings with nary a mention of his role in their emergence.
In the Round of 32, Team Cal faced the Georgia Hurricanes, a good team that had brought a huge crowd to Florida. When Team Cal arrived at Disney’s Sports Complex, they were jeered as they entered the gym. Most of the fans targeted Demetrius. If he missed a shot during warm-ups, chants of “Overrated!” cascaded down to the floor. “You ain’t that good!” people yelled. As Demetrius stretched under one basket, Gary, Sr., walked up to him and helped him stretch his arms behind his back. “I could feel his pulse, and it was just pounding,” Gary, Sr., said later. “The pressure on Demetrius, man, it was intense.”
The Georgia Hurricanes featured several long and athletic forwards, players similar in size to Demetrius, Rome, and Roberto, too mobile for Terran and Craig to guard. Team Cal could have used another rangy athlete, someone like Vondrae, but his absence was another example of Keller letting the team down. Vondrae’s uncle had asked for $1,000 a month (the amount Vondrae told him Aaron received) to move to Fontana from Nebraska. Keller declined, and he put Vondrae on a plane back to Omaha before Nationals, just as Roberto had predicted.
The Hurricanes jumped to a 6-point lead, then 8, then 10. They were not more skillful, they just worked harder, fighting for rebounds, hustling after loose balls, playing good help defense. Early in the game, Demetrius caught the ball on the right baseline and drove hard to the basket. All the attributes that made him special—his speed, body control, and leaping ability—were exhibited, but as he lifted the ball to the rim, a Hurricanes forward slid over and blocked it. It wasn’t a clean block, but it was enough for the ball to fall short, eliciting loud hoots from the crowd.
Demetrius stuck to the perimeter after that, moving the ball and leaving Aaron to battle the Hurricanes’ frontcourt. In the second half, with Team Cal trailing by 12, Demetrius asked out of the game, claiming his knee hurt. Gary, Rome, Aaron, and Roberto were on the court when he subbed himself out, and they couldn’t believe it. The game was not over; they could still battle back. Yet Demetrius waved the white flag. When the game ended with Rome missing a shot at the buzzer that would have won it, the boys talked not of that miss and the hard-luck nature of their 58–57 defeat but of Demetrius.
“He’s supposed to be all this shit, the best player in the country and all that, but he didn’t help us at all. He quit on us,” Roberto said to Gary back at their condo. “Coach Joe and him, they both quit on us.”
The team qualified to play in the third-round losers’ bracket, the winner of which would finish in sixth place, but many of the boys didn’t want to play another game.
“Can’t we just forfeit?” Demetrius said. “It doesn’t matter, so why play?”
Late that night, a handful of boys sat together talking in one of the condos. Their anger at Keller and Demetrius had dissipated, and they reminisced about their years together, remembering not only the great victories and the national title but also silly little moments, like the crazy coach in Portland who threw his watch into the stands. They recalled the run at Nationals the year before. “Remember when Roberto got off the plane and just tore it up against the Virginia Panthers?” Aaron said. As the memories flowed, they realized that the team would certainly die after this tournament. The players would go to different high schools and eventually land on different grassroots teams. The plan to keep the team together from the beginning of their grassroots experience to the end was dead.
Kids are usually too busy looking toward the future to notice the last few seconds of their childhood. In less than two months, they would be high school freshmen. The pressures and responsibilities would multiple quickly. Core courses, qualifying SAT scores, official visits, unofficial visits, verbal commitments, letters of intent—it would all happen fast. Their basketball innocence had probably died years earlier when Joe Keller cut a deal to brand them with Adidas’s three stripes, but sitting in that condo in Florida, the boys decided to seize one last moment of purity.
“Fuck it. Let’s just go out there tomorrow and play as hard as we can,” Aaron said.
“So what if the best we can do is sixth place?” Gary said. “Let’s get sixth place, then. Let’s go out as high as we can.”
Roberto seized Keller’s familiar rallying cry and made it his own. “Let’s just play our hearts out. Everything we got.”
The following morning, Team Cal defeated the South Florida Heat 70–67. The margin of victory would have been greater had Demetrius given maximum effort and if Aaron, who dominated in the first half, had not reinjured his ankle early in the second. Regardless, it was Team Cal’s best game of the tournament. They cheered one another on, played hard on defense, and shared the ball on offense.
They played the Suffolk Blazers next, a very beatable team. Aaron entered the gym on crutches, his ankle swollen to the size of an orange, but he still demanded to play, and Gary, Sr., relented, even though Aaron could barely run up and down the court. He was not the only boy hurting. Gary’s arm was killing him, and Roberto’s back flared up, as did one of Rome’s ankles. But if Aaron was going to keep playing, there was no way they would sit out.
With the game tied and about five minutes remaining, Aaron rolled his ankle again. He was fighting for a rebound and came down on a defender’s foot and fell to the ground. As Aaron limped to the bench, he pleaded with Gary, Sr., to let him stay in the game. “Sorry, Aaron, we can’t risk doing permanent damage to that ankle,” he responded.
Aaron sat down next to Demetrius, who had taken himself out of the game much earlier, citing his injured knee. Demetrius barely watched the game. If he could have gotten away with it, he would have typed on his Sidekick from the bench.
“D, man, we need you in there,” Aaron said.
Demetrius looked away.
Aaron watched Gary miss a jumper from the right side, which led to a fast break that gave Suffolk a four-point lead. The game was slipping away. Aaron got up gingerly, balancing on one foot, and stood over Demetrius.
“Man, D, we need you out there! What is wrong with you? The team needs you!”
“Man, this ain’t no team.” Demetrius didn’t stand up, and he didn’t match Aaron’s anger.
“You’re wrong, D. It is a team. It’s your team.”
Suffolk scored again, pushing its lead to 52–46, which would be the final score.
“I ain’t going out there,” Demetrius said. “It ain’t worth it for me. It ain’t worth me injuring my knee some more. I got a career to worry about it.”
“A career?”
“Yeah, I can’t be worrying about this. I’ve got to think about my future.”
25
Mark Soderberg (wearing glasses) coaching Fontana High in New York in 2005 while Demetrius watches in street clothes
Had Demetrius matriculated to Fontana High a decade earlier, the classroom in which he sat for intro Spanish would not have existed. It was a “relocatable” classroom, brought in to ease an enrollment crunch that had swelled FoHi’s numbers so much that it was the fifteenth-largest high school in the United States. Meant as a temporary fix, these boxy prefabricated structures were now a permanent part of the campus, as they were at schools across the state. They went by many names—portables, modulars, trailers—but at FoHi they were known as the “bungalows.”
Demetrius’s left foot was propped on the desk in front of him, the only empty seat among the forty metal-and-plastic desks
in the room. He wore a royal-blue dress shirt with French cuffs that was two sizes too big and hung untucked over jeans so baggy, he had to hold them at the waist when he walked. His jeans were rolled at the bottoms, just enough to show off his spotless blue-and-white Vans high-tops. He ironed his shirt and jeans before he’d left home that morning, a ritual that Kisha teased him about. He ironed everything—T-shirts, sweatshirts, even his underwear. He also took great care to make sure his attire matched perfectly. It was not by accident that the blue on his shirt matched the blue rubber bracelet on his right wrist.
The teacher, Mr. Marchese, ran through the various holidays, saying each in Spanish and having the class repeat them. Upon reaching Veteran’s Day, he asked, “Does anyone have any relatives who fought in a war?” A young girl, the only other African American in the class, raised her hand. “My grandma was in the Watts riots,” she said.
“Oh, my God, that is dumb,” Demetrius said quietly. He covered his mouth with his hand.
The teacher moved on to Día de los Muertos and Día de Todos los Santos, and that spurred a discussion on who got to go to hell and who went to heaven. It hijacked the class for the next thirty minutes.
“This class is so boring,” Demetrius said.
He was never called on, and at one point a short Latino boy wearing a white undershirt and jeans pointed to Demetrius and asked Mr. Marchese, “How come you never call on him? He just sits in the back and says nothing.”
“No, I don’t,” Demetrius said.
“Yes, you do.”
“No. If I didn’t do nothing, then how would I have an A in this class?”
That exchange continued to bother Demetrius after class ended. “I wish I could have punched that kid, but you gotta be careful around here,” he said. He stood in line to buy lunch from one of several windows divided by metal railings, which resembled the betting windows at a horse track. “Things are crazy around here, and you gotta be careful. That kid, who knows who he’s got watching his back? He could have brothers, he could be in, like, a little gang; you just never know.”
Play Their Hearts Out Page 34
