Technical Foul

by Rich Wallace

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Game on the Line

  Chapter 2 - The Go-To Guy

  Chapter 3 - No Heroes

  Chapter 4 - A Cheap Shot?

  Chapter 5 - Emotionally Drained

  Chapter 6 - Black, White, Purple, or Green

  Chapter 7 - A Lot to Prove

  Chapter 8 - Team Chemistry

  Chapter 9 - Get Me the Ball

  Chapter 10 - Taking a Break

  Chapter 11 - Out of Their Game

  Chapter 12 - A Night Out

  Chapter 13 - Playoff Pressure

  Chapter 14 - The Night Before

  Chapter 15 - All or Nothing

  Teaser chapter

  ALSO BY RICH WALLACE

  THERE CAME THE WHISTLE, SHARP AND LONG.

  Jared spotted Fiorelli in the corner and fired it

  out to him. Jared stepped into the key, calling

  for the ball back. He felt a sharp blow to his

  shoulder, and turned and jabbed his elbow hard

  into his opponent’s chest.

  And there came the whistle, sharp and long.

  “That’s a T!” the referee shouted, pointing at

  Jared. “Thirty-three, red, with the elbow.”

  Jared felt a chill and all the air seemed to go

  out of him. He’d lost his temper at a critical

  point, and now Memorial, leading by two, would

  shoot a free throw and then get the ball.

  “Not again,” Jared said to himself. He couldn’t cost his team another game.

  ALSO BY RICH WALLACE

  Winning Season Series

  Double Fake

  Fast Company

  The Roar of the Crowd

  Restless: A Ghost’s Story

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

  Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2004

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Wallace, Rich.

  Technical foul / by Rich Wallace

  p. cm.—(Winning Season ; #2)

  Summary: Jared, a high-scoring member of the Hudson City Middle School basketball

  team, gets angry when the point guard accuses him of being responsible for their

  string of losses, but finally realizes they can win only if he becomes a team player.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54972-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Cameron

  1

  Game on the Line

  The ball came to Jared near the basket, with a defender guarding him tightly. Jared made a quick half turn to his right, then pivoted left and dribbled, driving to the hoop. His shot hit softly off the backboard and into the basket.

  “About time,” said Spencer Lewis, the point guard.

  Jared ignored the comment. Less than a minute remained, and Hudson City trailed by two points. “Tough defense now!” Jared shouted as they retreated. “We need a stop!”

  Hudson City had led for most of the game, but the team’s shooting had gone cold in the fourth quarter. Specifically, it was Jared who’d turned to ice. He’d missed four straight shots before that last basket, and Spencer had griped after every one. In the meantime, Memorial had rallied, taking its first lead of the game.

  Memorial called for a time-out with about thirty seconds left to play. Jared wiped his face on his red jersey as he and the other Hudson City players jogged to the bench.

  Coach Davis cleared his throat and looked at Spencer, who nodded. “We have to get the ball back,” Coach said. “Foul if you need to, but let’s get a steal if we can. Take the best shot available.”

  Jared looked up at the bleachers in the small Hudson City Middle School gym. About fifty students were watching the late-afternoon game.

  Memorial passed the ball in, and the point guard dribbled to the top of the key. They could run out the clock and win the game without taking a shot. Hudson City had to get the ball.

  “Pressure!” Jared shouted.

  Spencer and Fiorelli hounded the Memorial guard and forced him to stop dribbling. The guard held the ball away from the defenders and frantically looked for someone to pass to. He sent a quick bounce pass into the paint, but Jared stepped in front of his man and intercepted it.

  Time was running out. Jared dribbled quickly up the court and straight toward the basket. Spencer was on his right, calling for the ball, but Jared was going all the way with this one.

  Jared drove into the lane with a pair of Memorial players at his sides. He could hear the spectators counting down the seconds: “Six-five-four . . .”

  “Trailing!” That was Jason Fiorelli, wide open at the free-throw line.

  Jared stopped his dribble and launched a fade-away jump shot from six feet, leaning slightly toward the end line to avoid a defender’s outstretched hand.

  The ball bonked off the rim and fell to the floor. A Memorial player grabbed it and held it tight as the buzzer sounded, ending the game.

  Hudson City had lost, 54–52.

  Jared looked around and caught Fiorelli staring at him from the foul line. “Dude, I was completely open,” Fiorelli said.

  “Ball hog!” That was Spencer.

  The opposing players shook hands and walked off the court. Jared took a last glance at the scoreboard. Another loss. They’d had such high hopes at the start of the season, but now they were 0–3.

  I’m not getting much support out there, Jared thought. He’d been the high scorer in all three games, but the result had been three tough losses.

  The team was quiet in the locker room, showering and dressing and then sitting in front of their lockers to wait for the coach. Jared took out his comb and ran it through his wavy brown hair.

  Coach Davis wasn’t happy when he finally came in.

  Mr. Davis was just one year out of college, and he was much quieter than last year’s coach. He was the shyest coach Jared had ever had. And the most nervous. His armpits were wet with sweat.

  “For some reason we can’t seem to hold on to a lead,” Coach said, stammering a little. “We’ve had a second-half lead in every game we’ve played, and every time we’ve blown it. Anybody have an answer for that?”

  The players just looked around. Jared caught Spencer’s eyes and they glared at each other. The two were supposed to be the leaders of this team. Both had been starters last year as fifth graders. Now
, as the veterans of the team, they had big expectations. The two captains: Spencer, short and black; Jared, tall and white.

  “Well,” said the coach when no one spoke up. “We’ll be running in practice tomorrow, I can tell you that. If we’re running out of gas in the fourth quarter, there’s a definite way to overcome that. It’s called effort.”

  They left the gymnasium and stepped out into the cool, early evening air. Jared began walking across the blacktop play area toward the street, but he stopped when he heard footsteps behind him. He was surprised to see Spencer, who lived in the opposite direction.

  “What’s up, Spence?” Jared said, looking down into his shorter teammate’s large brown eyes.

  “You blew it, Jared.”

  Jared shook his head. “Hey. I had twenty-two points, pal.”

  “You took twenty-eight shots!” Spencer said. “That’s more than the rest of the team combined. Do the math. The rest of us scored thirty.”

  Jared bit down on his lip. He and Spencer weren’t close, but they’d never been hostile, either. Spencer looked tough with his close-cropped dark hair and muscular arms. Was this guy looking for a fight?

  Jared thought for a few seconds, then said, “I’m the go-to guy, Spence. The man in the clutch.”

  “You won’t be much longer if you keep forcing shots,” Spencer said. “Just watch how often the pass won’t come your way if you never pass it back.”

  They stared across at each other again. “Coach’ll bench you if you don’t feed me the ball,” Jared said.

  “Coach isn’t exactly a basketball genius,” Spencer answered. “We’re in shape. We’re just not a team. On that last play you had two wide-open options—me and Fiorelli. You forced a lame-butt shot because that’s all you know how to do. If you make a simple pass, we tie that game. Instead you have to try to be a hero.”

  Jared swallowed hard and blinked. He knew he should have made the shot. Spencer and Fiorelli would have probably missed it, too.

  “Twenty points a game,” Jared said, tapping himself on the chest.

  “Yeah? And your shooting percentage is practically single digits,” Spencer said. “Just think about it, all right? You’re a good player, but you’re not helping the team. At least not as much as you think you are.”

  Spencer walked away. Jared watched him go.

  What did Spencer know, anyway? Spencer’d had his share of turnovers and missed shots today. He’d made plenty of bad passes and got burned on defense a few times. He was just as much to blame for the loss, Jared decided.

  Besides, he thought, without my twenty-two points, we wouldn’t even have been close.

  2

  The Go-To Guy

  Jared couldn’t sit still at dinner, thinking about the last shot that he’d missed. “I’ve made shots like that a million times,” he told his dad. “I never miss it in the driveway.”

  “There aren’t any defenders in the driveway, Jag,” Mr. Owen said with a laugh. “It’s a long season, Jared. You guys will start winning.”

  “We’d better,” Jared said. “We won’t even make the playoffs if we don’t get hot soon.”

  Jared’s mom was working the evening shift at the hospital, so he and his dad were eating tuna-fish sandwiches and pasta at the kitchen table.

  “I’ll try to get to one of your games in the next week or so,” Dad said. “I think I can cut out of work early next Thursday.”

  “Sounds good,” Jared said. He set down his fork and pushed away his empty plate.

  “You want more pasta?” Dad asked. “There’s plenty.”

  “No thanks,” Jared said. “I think I’ll go out and shoot.”

  “It’s getting pretty cold out there.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You ought to digest your dinner for a little while,” Dad said. “Otherwise it’ll come back up.”

  Jared shrugged. “I’m just going to shoot, not run. My touch was way off today. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t make a shot when it mattered.”

  Jared went up to his room to get his basketball. He pulled on a New Jersey Devils sweatshirt and glanced at the photos on his dresser—team pictures from junior football and Little League, and one from his guitar recital the previous spring. He also had a couple of bowling trophies, and medals from a local track meet where he’d won the long jump and the 200-meter dash. He’d had success in every sport he’d tried.

  Jared stepped out to the narrow driveway and began dribbling slowly, working the ball from hand to hand. There was no light to turn on, but the streetlight around the corner kept the night from getting completely dark, so he could always see the basket. And the light from his kitchen and the house next door also made it brighter.

  The old houses in this neighborhood were tightly packed, with only about two feet of space between the driveway and the walls of the homes. That’s one reason why Jared was a great shooter from close to the basket: in the driveway, he couldn’t get any farther away unless he went straight back to the street.

  He tossed up a jumper that swished through the net, then raced in and grabbed the ball, softly banking it in off the small backboard, which was attached to a pole.

  Jared loved to hear the bonk, bonk, bonk of the ball off the cement driveway and to watch the gentle flight of a shot. It seemed so easy here, as if he could do no wrong. He had spent countless hours at this basket over the past couple of years, driving past imaginary defenders and tossing in game-winning shots.

  All of those solitary practice sessions had paid off—he was the best player in the school. But one thing he hadn’t learned in all those hours alone was when to pass the ball. He wasn’t much of a teammate.

  Spencer was probably right. There were times when Jared could help the team more by giving up the ball than by shooting it. He’d work on it. But when the game was on the line, he knew he was the man to take over.

  The go-to guy, he told himself. You have to be that man.

  Jared looked over at the house next door and waved to old Mr. Murphy, who was watching from his kitchen. He trotted out to the sidewalk, then shifted low and sprinted up the driveway, dribbling past one defender after another.

  The clock was ticking down, and another player was in Jared’s face. He stopped short, fading back and lofting the ball high over the imaginary defender’s outstretched hands. The ball hit the backboard at just the right angle and dropped through the hoop.

  Game winner!

  Jared raised his arms in the dark and smiled. He never missed that shot—the short fade-away jumper in the final seconds of a game. That shot was a lock. It was golden.

  At least out here in the driveway it was. Jared stared at the backboard for a few seconds, right at that sweet spot where the ball would hit before settling safely into the basket.

  He hadn’t hit that spot this afternoon. With the game on the line, he’d blown it.

  3

  No Heroes

  Mr. Vega, the math teacher, was writing on the blackboard, so Jared turned around and whispered to Jason Fiorelli, “Think we’ll be running all afternoon?”

  “Depends,” said Fiorelli. He played forward and was nearly as tall as Jared and definitely more agile. He had a presence that exuded confidence. “Davis gets bored pretty quickly when we do drills. He’d rather watch us scrimmage. He’ll probably start off real tough, then decide we learned our lesson.”

  “Yeah. That’s not the problem, anyway. We’re in good shape. Just not smart.”

  Fiorelli nodded. “We play stupid sometimes. I mean we should be 3 and 0, not the opposite.”

  “No question,” Jared said.

  “Jared.” That was Mr. Vega.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Eyes front please.”

  “No problem.”

  “Unless Mr. Fiorelli has something more interesting to say than I do.”

  Several students giggled. Jared shook his head. “How could Fiorelli possibly have something more interesting than math to talk about
?”

  Mr. Vega raised his eyebrows and gave a small smile.

  “We were talking about math,” Fiorelli said. “I was saying to Jared how the inverse of three and zero is zero and three. And he said he wanted to get smarter. Really. He did.”

  Mr. Vega nodded and smiled a little more broadly. “Thank you, Jason. You’ll both get smarter by looking at this equation on the blackboard.”

  “No problem,” Fiorelli said. “I’m with you.”

  Practice started with ten laps around the gymnasium, then a series of sprinting drills. Coach Davis had the players sit in the bleachers after that. He stressed that the running wasn’t a punishment for losing, simply a matter of conditioning. “Somehow we fall apart late in the game, and the only factor I can think of is that we’re just getting too tired to execute.” Coach looked right at Spencer, as he always seemed to do when he needed to make a coaching decision.

  “It’s not that,” said Spencer, who had taken a seat on the bottom row of the bleachers. He was holding a basketball between his knees. “Some of us just panic when the score gets tight and think we have to do it all ourselves.” He turned and glanced at Jared, then looked back at the coach. “Some of us think we have to turn into heroes.”

  “And are you one of them?” Coach asked.

  “Nope.”

  “So you’re blaming your teammates?”

  “I’m just saying what it is,” Spencer said. “Jared here thinks he doesn’t have to pass the ball. He takes lousy shots over and over when the rest of us are open.”

  Coach looked up at Jared. Jared just shrugged. He knew that Coach Davis had little coaching experience. The previous coach had resigned last spring, and Davis hadn’t been assigned the job until late October. He’d even told the players at the first practice session that he’d never coached a team before. “But I know the game,” he’d said. “I’m a fan.”

  Jared wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his gray T-shirt, which was damp with sweat. “I shoot because that’s what I do best,” Jared said. “I’m the leading scorer. Scorers have to shoot.”