Chasing Perfect

by Bob Hurley

  All game long, I was thinking it was our game to lose, even with the sluggish way we started out, even with the way we kept letting Shawnee stay in the game, but we couldn’t pull away. We’d go up by a couple buckets, and they’d come charging back. The game went to overtime, and it was the same thing all over again. They’d take the lead, and we’d tie it right up, but as the clock started to run down in the extra period it started to feel to me like the game was slipping away from us. Ike Williams, one of our star players, fouled out. And then Mike Fry, another one of our key guys, committed a crucial turnover with a little more than a minute to go in the overtime period.

  Shawnee was up by one at that point, and the turnover got them started on a two-on-one break. As they advanced the ball to their end of the floor I got a sick, sad feeling in my stomach. I started to think the game would now be out of reach, on the other side of this fast break, and our undefeated season was about to end. It wasn’t like me, to give up on a game before the clock ran out, to give up on our season, but the momentum wasn’t with us. Everyone in the arena could sense that the momentum wasn’t with us.

  Shawnee was playing like a team of destiny; we were just playing.

  Happily, mercifully, Rashon Burno was our one man back on the play. Like me, he wasn’t the type to give up on a game until it was over. Like me, he’d taken the lessons learned over the long arc of our season and put them into practice. But unlike me, he didn’t have the flash of a negative thought. He wasn’t thinking our perfect season was just about done, or that our national championship was now out of reach … all on the back of that one turnover. He just wanted the ball back.

  Here’s how he got it. Our bench was at the far end of the court, which meant that we could only watch what was happening from the back of the play. I could see the Shawnee player who’d stolen the ball drive down the right side of the court, flanked by his teammate running on the left side. Rashon had gotten himself in position in front of the kid with the ball, and he was trying to get him to commit. Rashon stepped toward him, to challenge him—hoping, I guess, to get him to give up his dribble and pass the ball to his teammate on the other side of the floor, which is just what happened. And as it happened, Rashon seemed to know it ahead of time, because as the kid sent the ball across the court Rashon moved with it. Next, the player on the left took the pass and put the ball on the floor, and we could see he was about to make a move toward the basket. Here again, the entire arena seemed to sense what was coming, but nobody counted on Rashon. Nobody counted on Rashon having the presence of mind not to try to take a charge, not go up and try to block the shot, or not just foul the kid outright and stop the clock. Instead, he simply stripped the ball away from the Shawnee player, almost like you’d see a quarterback on a handoff. One moment the Shawnee player was leaving his feet, scooping the ball up off the bounce and going hard to the hole for an underhanded layup, and the next moment his hands were up in the air, empty, and the ball was going the other way. Rashon just plucked it away, like a magician’s sleight of hand, and threw it down to our end of the floor, to Ajmal Basit, who dunked it to put us back up by one.

  It was the most unbelievable, unexpected exchange. We went from being down one, with the ball, thinking all we needed was a good look and a stop and the game was ours to win, to the prospect of being down three on the wrong side of a huge momentum shift with a minute to go in our perfect season. But Rashon Burno, the shortest player on the floor, wasn’t about to let that happen, so he made an incredible steal to turn things around and give us back the lead. All in the matter of just a few seconds.

  And Rashon wasn’t done just yet. On the inbound play after Ajmal’s dunk, Rashon picked up his man, the Shawnee point guard, who advanced the ball toward midcourt. Rashon, as the last play had just showed, was a terrific, on-the-ball defender—probably the best to ever play for St. Anthony. (Certainly the best to ever play on my watch.) He also had tremendous instincts and an innate understanding of the inner workings of the game. All of that came into play on the next exchange, because Rashon knew the Shawnee guard was thinking about a time-out. He knew the kid would glance over to the Shawnee bench, to see if his coach wanted him to stop the clock and talk things over, so he waited for it, and waited for it. Finally, the kid turned his head ever so slightly toward his coach, and in that same instant Rashon swept in and stole the ball and drove swiftly to our end of the court for an easy layup, putting us ahead by three.

  Again, an unbelievable play.

  It was still a one-possession game, so it’s not like we could breathe any kind of sigh of relief just yet. But Rashon Burno was not about to let up on defense either. Shawnee immediately called a time-out, to get their players to take a deep breath after those two big steals, which was probably what I would have done in that same situation. But then, on the inbound play, they kicked the ball out to the same guard who’d just had his pocket picked by Rashon—and Rashon stole the ball again! Drove it down the length of the floor and laid it in.

  Now we were up by five, with less than thirty seconds to go, but by this point Shawnee was defeated. On the scoreboard, it was a six-point swing, but in reality it was an eight-point swing, because after the Mike Fry turnover they had been looking at that two-on-one break and an all-but-sure-thing layup.

  A lot of kids, they’d give up on a play like that. Even a top defender like Rashon, you don’t expect him to come away with the ball, but he went at it with passion and determination. He would not be denied—and he wasn’t. He ended up saving our entire season on just that one play. Turned out to be the biggest, greatest, most memorable play in the history of our program—and it came attached to the biggest, greatest, most memorable lesson: don’t quit.

  Don’t quit on your season.

  Don’t quit on your teammates.

  Don’t quit on yourself.

  And if you happen to be a coach with a sad, sick feeling in your gut that your team’s perfect championship season is about to go up in smoke … don’t quit on your players.

  Rashon turned that game around for us almost single-handedly. He finished with ten steals, for a tournament record that will probably never be broken. Ten steals in one game! I can’t imagine anyone ever getting close to that, and here it came from one of the guys who had to sit out the Kobe Bryant game earlier in the season, from a kid who had a lot to learn about accountability—but a lot to teach his coach and his teammates about what it means to keep at it.

  We had quite a group that year. In all, eight of our guys went on to play Division I college ball; that’s a lot coming from any one high school team, but it just shows you the depth of talent we had on our roster. As I’ve mentioned, Ajmal Basit went to UMass–Amherst, Rashon Burno to DePaul, Ali Abdullah to Howard University, and Delvon Arrington to Florida State. Anthony Perry went on to star at Georgetown, while Ike Williams played at Fairleigh Dickinson, Mike Fry at Lehigh, and Jamal Ragland at St. Francis. Even Gary Dunbar, who got a chance to shine against Kobe Bryant, earned a scholarship to Felician College, a Division II program in Rutherford, New Jersey, and his career offers a terrific footnote to a terrific season.

  Gary was a strong athlete, but not the kind of basketball player who could touch the talent we had on our team that year. This is not a knock on Gary so much as it is a point of praise for everyone else, but when we put Gary in our starting lineup to match up against Kobe Bryant, he stepped up his game and played like one of the top recruits in the country.

  He played tough. He played smart. He played big. And he got a chance to do all of these things simply because he played.

  Without Gary, I don’t think we would have gotten out of Philadelphia with a win that day against Lower Merion. In fact, I’m sure of it. His tenacity turned that game around for us, and he wouldn’t have even been on the floor if Rashon Burno and Anthony Perry hadn’t screwed up and missed practice for no good reason. It all tied in. And the great side benefit to Gary’s role was that he got a story to tell his children and grandch
ildren. He lifted his team, and what he got back was a moment to remember for the rest of his life.

  Gary comes to our games from time to time. He came to one not too long ago, with his fiancé. He brought her by to say hello, and all she wanted to talk about was this Lower Merion game. She’d heard Gary talk about it, of course, and a part of her just didn’t buy it. The story was almost too incredible to believe—that the guy she was about to marry had once gotten the best of the legendary Kobe Bryant on a basketball court. That our perfect season might have gone another way if Gary hadn’t stepped up. That we might not have been national champions after all.

  Turned out we just happened to have footage of Gary’s steal on a DVD, which we sometimes sell at home games as a fundraiser, so his fiancé bought a copy to see it for herself.

  HARD WORK

  Thursday, March 1, 2012

  Opening round of postseason play.

  Technically, it’s a second-round game for us, after a first-round bye, but it amounts to the same thing.

  I’ll say this—it never gets old. Each season, while we fight and build and hustle our way into the tournament, it feels like the rest of the world has been put on pause. It’s what we play for all season long, and when it finally comes around on the calendar, I can’t think of anything else—because, hey, there’s nothing like a single-elimination basketball game to get your juices flowing.

  I have my game day routines, my superstitions. A hard workout downstairs in the gym. A sauna. A short nap in the afternoon. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. (Maybe two if I’m feeling like I’ll need the extra fuel.) A couple sports drinks to replace all those fluids I lost at the gym. Then I get my notes ready, get my head around the game, and I’m all set.

  Past couple years, we’ve been running our Senior Night ceremony right before our opening playoff game. A lot of folks, they hear this is how we set it up, they think we’re being arrogant or cocky. Like we take the fact that we’ll make it to the postseason, with home-court advantage, as a kind of given. I take their point, but it’s not like that. It’s just that, for a lot of our players, it’s tough for their parents to break away from work for an afternoon game. They can’t always make it. They get to what they can, when they can. This way, if we tie it to a playoff game, they get a double bonus. We bring more people out, more extended family members, so it’s a more meaningful moment for our senior players.

  If we’re having a lousy season and it doesn’t look like we’ll make the playoffs, or it doesn’t look like we’ll get to host our first-round game, we can always switch things up—but that hasn’t happened yet.

  As it is, not every one of my guys is represented at today’s ceremony. My wife, Chris, is on alert to escort any seniors who don’t have a parent or a family member in attendance. My daughter, Melissa, too. They’ll walk out to half-court with the player, get some flowers, pose for pictures, and it’s nice because they all know each other. You play for me, you’re like part of the family, so these kids all know Chris and Melissa. It’s not like they’re being met by some stranger.

  Still, it breaks my heart a little bit that some of these kids are on their own for a moment like this. As moments go, this is pretty damn big. It marks the end of their high school careers, the beginning of whatever comes next. Their folks should be here—but all you can do is all you can do. You set it up so nobody notices these few kids are on their own, so they feel like a part of our St. Anthony family, and then you play the game.

  We’ve drawn a scrappy team from Oratory, a prep school from nearby Summit, New Jersey, in just about the same spot we saw them the year before. That’s how it goes in the Non-Public B bracket of the state tournament. You see a lot of the same teams one year to the next. Oratory has just beaten Saddle River Day School a couple nights earlier, in a close first-round game, so these kids are pumped. Excited to be here. You can see from the way they’re warming up that they have a nothing-to-lose kind of attitude. They’re loose. They’re laughing.

  Our guys, I don’t want them loose. I don’t want them laughing. Nothing-to-lose is not how I want my guys to approach anything—this game, any game, any assignment. Always, I want them to play like there’s something on the line, like their effort matters. I want them laser-focused. There’ll be time for loose and laughing at the end of the season.

  We still have some work to do.

  Oratory puts up a fight, but they’re no match for us. We’re bigger, stronger, more polished. We storm to an early lead, 23–4 by the end of the first quarter. Kyle Anderson is playing like a man among boys. He runs the floor like he can do whatever he wants. He’s come back from his one-game suspension like he’s got something to prove—and he does. To me. To himself. To the coaches at UCLA, where he’ll be playing in the fall. Watching him play, I have to remind myself he’s still just a kid—and sometimes kids do stupid things. They should know better, but they don’t—not always.

  A kid who can play like this, like a dream, he should know better. One day he will. And soon.

  Past couple games, Kyle’s taken his game to a whole other level. A part of me thinks he’s playing like this to make up for letting me down. For letting his teammates down. To compensate. If that’s the case, he’s doing a whole lot of compensating. In our last regular-season game, against Medford Tech, he poured in thirty-five points, a season high. And here against Oratory, he’ll finish with thirty-four, in just three quarters. But it’s not just that he puts the ball in the basket that sets Kyle’s game apart. It’s not just that he’s physically able to exert his will. It’s the way he sees the game. The way he distributes the ball. The way he sets the pace.

  Some of the guys, they’ve taken to calling Kyle “Slo-Mo,” because of how he sometimes moves on the court—slow, almost sleepy. It’s like watching a great baseball player, a pure hitter, who’ll tell you that time seems to stand still when he’s at the plate. Who’ll tell you he can see the seams on the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. Ted Williams. Rod Carew. Tony Gwynn. The ball waits for them to put it in play. That’s Kyle. He slows things down so the game comes to him—and then, when it gives him the opening he’s looking for, he explodes to the basket or fires off a crisp pass to a teammate cutting across the lane.

  These kids from Oratory, they won’t back down. They play with a ton of heart. But they can’t stop Kyle Anderson. They’ve never seen a player of his caliber, don’t quite know what to do with him. This is nothing new. Kyle’s been playing for me nearly two full seasons, and nobody’s stopped him yet.

  Sixty games into his St. Anthony career, he’s yet to lose—and he’s playing like he means to keep it that way.

  8.

  2003–2004: HARDWIRED TO WIN

  YOU CAN RUN A LOT OF PLAYS WHEN YOUR X IS TWICE AS BIG AS THE OTHER GUYS’ O. IT MAKES YOUR XS AND OS PRETTY GOOD.

  —Paul Westphal

  BASKETBALL IS LIKE WAR IN THAT OFFENSIVE WEAPONS ARE DEVELOPED FIRST, AND IT ALWAYS TAKES AWHILE FOR THE DEFENSE TO CATCH UP.

  —Red Auerbach

  Sometimes you find a way to win despite yourself.

  Sometimes the whole is way more than the sum of its parts.

  And sometimes, as a high school coach, with an ever-changing lineup, your players keep finding ways to surprise you—good ways, bad ways, and every way in between.

  Okay, so that about sums it up when I think back on our 2003–2004 season. Seemed like there was every argument against us winning it all that year, and yet we found a way to answer every argument and keep winning. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t me or any of my assistant coaches who helped this group of players rise above our low expectations. Wasn’t like these kids learned anything about mettle or maturity or found a way to grow their games or carry themselves like champions.

  No, they were just a bunch of knuckleheads who could play ball. It was in their DNA.

  They couldn’t get out of their own way, this group—but absolutely, they could play. And it’s no wonder. These kids wer
e shot through with talent, but even more than that, they’d come together as a team in the purest sense. Our key guys had all grown up playing with each other, off each other, all the way back to elementary school—in some cases back to their first travel teams with the Jersey City Boys’ Club. That kind of familiarity, you don’t often see it at any level of the game. Not anymore. In the NBA, it used to be you’d have a nucleus of players who might stay together for a good long run—the Red Auerbach Celtics, say, or the Red Holzman Knicks—but that’s disappeared with free agency. These days you might see a couple guys play together over a stretch of winning seasons, but the supporting cast keeps changing. In college you’ll see a group make a splash as freshmen and sophomores, until their first whiff of success when they’ll go their separate ways in the professional game.

  But here in Jersey City, less than ten years ago, there was this one frustratingly special group that came together on our hometown courts and played a frustratingly special brand of basketball. Trouble was, away from the court, they were a frustratingly special mess. I don’t mean to be too hard on these kids—because, after all, they were just kids—but every day was a struggle with this group. Every day there was some new brand of nonsense we’d have to figure out. We never knew what kind of trouble these players would make in the classroom, on the streets of Jersey City, even in the gym.

  Only thing we could count on with this cast of characters was that nothing would be trouble-free.

  The story of this season has its roots in the seasons that led up to it. That’s always the way of it in high school sports. You lay a path one year for your guys to follow the next; you try to carry forward some piece of momentum or turn a disappointment into some kind of positive. Here it happened that our 2004 seniors joined our program just as we were graduating a team of back-to-back champions. The leaders of those teams were about as poised and polished a group as I’ve ever coached, so there was every reason to think we could keep a good thing going as our younger guys learned to model the positive behavior of their older teammates.