The Outside Shot

by Walter Dean Myers

  “The feet are quicker than the eye, especially when they belong to Sly,” Sly said.

  Even Teufel managed a smile. Winning covered a lot of things.

  “Hey, Lonnie, there’s a woman outside wants to see you,” Go-Go said. “If she’s got a sister, I’m available.”

  I thought it was Sherry, but it was June Brignole with Eddie. She wanted to thank me for the tickets. I told her it was okay and that I would bring Eddie home.

  I took Eddie into the locker room and told the guys that he was a buddy of mine.

  “He’s helping me with my jump shot,” I said.

  They kidded with Eddie, and Colin found a small shirt to give him. I watched Eddie Brignole as he stood among the guys. His eyes darted around and he was as happy as I had ever seen him. It wasn’t anything special, but just being one of the guys mattered to him. Maybe he had dreamt about being a ballplayer and he was edging toward that dream here in the locker room. Same as I was.

  Sherry met us outside the gym, and together we took the bus to Eddie’s house. I had to carry him the two blocks from the bus because he had fallen asleep.

  “I can get him upstairs,” June Brignole said.

  Eddie woke as I put him down, looked up at his mother, and hugged her. I said good-bye and, with my arm around Sherry, started to leave.

  “Lonnie!”

  I turned and saw Eddie standing in the doorway, half hidden behind his mother’s dress. I went back to him and took him by the shoulders.

  “Hey, my man, you’d better get some sleep if you’re going to help me with my game tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t stand no sleepy coaching.”

  “Lonnie,” he said, “you’re a real nice guy.”

  I held him for a long while, trying to hold my tears back. Then I stood and gave him five. He yawned, and I figured he’d be asleep by the time me and Sherry got to the bus stop.

  We were doing okay, me and Eddie, I thought as Sherry took my arm. It wasn’t going to be easy and maybe neither of us would make it in any big way, but that’s the way it was. Nothing we could do about that. But Eddie had a chance, a good chance, to live the way he’d want to live. And for the first time in my life, I felt that I did, too. And somehow it was about a lot more than playing ball. It was about knowing what was out there, what to go for, and what to walk away from. I figured Eddie to play it to the bust if he had half a chance, and so would I. That was all for the long run, though. But for then and there, we were both doing okay.

  Don’t Miss …

  Book Group Discussion Questions

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  A Freewheeling Talk with John Ballard, author of the original screen treatment for The Outside Shot

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  Excerpt from Hoops

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  Excerpt from 145th Street

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  Excerpt from On a Clear Day

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  Walter Dean Myers (1937–2014)

  Book Group Discussion Questions

  When Lonnie Jackson gets a basketball scholarship to Montclare State, he knows everything depends on him following the rules and keeping his head in the game. But after he arrives in the Midwest, Lonnie feels like he’s a fish out of water and finds it hard to stay focused. There’s Sherry, the beautiful and assertive track star who Lonnie pursues with mixed results, and Lonnie’s new teammates, most of whom he gets along with. Then Lonnie learns that some of the players are involved in an illegal betting and gambling operation. Facing pressure from all sides, Lonnie must figure out how to fit in without ruining his future. Does he have what it takes?

  • The first conversation between Colin and Lonnie deals with the different assumptions each one makes about the other because of race (this page). Colin jokes that it’s unfair that his family is so poor when he isn’t even black. Do you think that you might still hear this conversation today? How have our attitudes about race changed?

  • Larson pressures Lonnie into getting involved with betting and gambling on games (this page). Lonnie never seems happy about it, yet he allows himself to become roped into various schemes with the Fat Man. Do you think Lonnie’s feelings of being the outsider push him into making this decision? Have you ever tried to fit in without compromising your values?

  • Lonnie thinks the other team members don’t like Sly because “he acted so black” (this page). Are racial stereotypes like this still problematic? If so, do they stem from messages in the media or are they derived from pop culture trends?

  • When Sherry and Lonnie are going out again, she shares her dating history with Lonnie and says she dated a few white boys, but didn’t feel “too comfortable with that” (this page). She says she arranged the dates in secret so no one would know. Do you think concerns about mixed-race dating still exist today? If not, what factors do you think have changed it?

  • Lonnie is among the few boys on the basketball team with a full scholarship, and despite being from a rough background, he is one of the only team members who isn’t into drinking or partying. However, he has a reputation throughout the school for being violent and is instantly suspected by the police when they are investigating the Fat Man (this page). Do you think this is an accurate representation of young black men in the public eye? If so, what can we do to change this perception?

  • The relationship between Lonnie and Eddie is almost like that of a father and son, with Lonnie constantly protecting and defending Eddie (this page). However, we never get a glimpse of Lonnie’s own father or Lonnie’s relationship with him. Do you think that Lonnie’s soft spot for Eddie has to do with his own father being absent? Why does Lonnie feel he can truly be himself when he is around Eddie?

  • Throughout the novel, Lonnie meets people who are instantly awed by him and interested in him. He always assumes it is because he is black, but in fact, in most cases, it is because he is in college. What do you think this says about stereotypes surrounding African Americans? How does Lonnie’s view on race relations change throughout the novel?

  • Compare how Lonnie is treated in his Harlem neighborhood (this page) and at college. What are some differences? What are some similarities? What do people seem to focus on in each place?

  • What kind of role do you think Ray played for Lonnie? Do you think Ray’s suicide affected Lonnie in ways other than his grief for Ray? Colin and Lonnie both confess that they felt they could have been Ray (this page). Why do you think they felt this way?

  A freewheeling talk with John Ballard, author of the original screen treatment of The Outside Shot

  What It Takes to Be the Outside Shot—On the Court, and in Life

  The Outside Shot is a sequel to Hoops, about Lonnie Jackson, a basketball player from Harlem and his senior year in high school.

  Hoops was based on movie screenplay you wrote, but The Outside Shot was based on a movie screen treatment. What is the difference?

  The movie screenplay for Hoops was 140 pages; the whole plot is told scene by scene with dialogue, and all the characters’ relationships are laid out. A movie screen treatment is a preliminary sketch, 40 to 50 pages. Just the key characters, themes, and plot were roughed out as a guideline for Walter to run with. We’d already teamed on Hoops, so I knew when I passed him the ball he’d deliver—that’s what has made Walter Dean Myers an industry MVP. Walter had to add whole new scenes, plot twists, characters, dialogue—a Herculean task—plus translate the entire story, telling it from just one point of view—Lonnie’s.

  Why did you name your story The Outside Shot?

  To show who Lonnie really is, I wanted a sequel to Hoops that took Lonnie outside of his comfort zone—outside of his known environment, his friends, his neighborhood—and plunked him down in an environment unfamiliar to him.

  Why take him to the Midwest, so far from home?

  I believe that only by exposing yourself to situations and people that oppose your normal day-today reality can you ever really grow. For Lonnie, being on the same streets every day just reflects back at him what
he already knows—just like when we “like” something on the Internet—a song, a movie, a brand of clothes—all we get back is more of the same. So we’ve boxed ourselves in. Buried ourselves under a heap of sameness. You’re never exposed to things that throw you out of your comfort zone.

  So in this story, Lonnie will need to stretch himself—go for the outside shot?

  Yes. Risk failure. Success is measured only by your willingness to fail. Lonnie will have to plunge deep into the unknown. But, unfortunately, that will take more than stretching. It will take reinventing himself.

  How can you reinvent who you already are?

  When kids invite me to their schools, I ask them, What if the very thing you don’t know could alter your life, totally? Are you willing to give up what you are being for what you could become? Only by Lonnie risking who he thinks he is, only by going outside of the box, can he reinvent himself. Now that takes real courage. That takes guts.

  That can be scary—for Lonnie, for anyone—going to places you’ve never been before.

  We’re scared of the unknown places when we should be welcoming them. Scary can be good.

  How can being afraid be good for you?

  There’s a big misunderstanding about fear. Fear is not weakness. A courageous person isn’t someone who has no fear. It’s someone who is afraid—but goes ahead anyway. In Walter’s hands, this story becomes about Lonnie not having fear cripple him. He’ll either learn how to use fear to break through his barriers—or he will fail.

  Society’s barriers—or his own?

  Both. Lonnie is an outsider—a black kid from the slums of big-city Harlem injected into a Midwestern white college in the countryside. Montclare is an unfamiliar land, a foreign country. And as an outsider, it’s not safe.

  What is it about the Midwest that is threatening to Lonnie?

  Whatever is unfamiliar can seem dangerous—it’s a threat to what you believe.

  What other challenges does Montclare College represent to Lonnie?

  Lonnie is the only kid from Harlem in a college with just three blacks in his freshman class. No one knows him, so he’s free to begin again—but will he? Or will the Lonnie he knows, the Lonnie he’s put together for himself back home, pull him back? At Montclare, everything he knows is overturned. The friends in Hoops who had his back—gone. The coach in Hoops who kept him on track—gone. The Harlem streets that echoed his glory days—gone. All his props—gone.

  What he steps into really is another world.

  Walter Dean Myers put it perfectly about Lonnie: he doesn’t belong to that world, but he wants what’s in it.

  What does Lonnie want that is outside of his reach?

  He wants to hook up with Sherry, a cute-looking track star. But she’s out of his league, middle-class, and he doesn’t know how to talk to her. He wants respect from his new coach, but he isn’t willing to give respect to him.

  What’s stopping Lonnie from joining that world?

  Basically, it’s someone else’s world. Where all the rules, all the road maps, all the signposts, are written in a different language. And Lonnie, he’s holding on to what he’s got. He can’t even see what’s in front of him—because he’s driving through life looking through the rearview mirror.

  How can Lonnie turn that around?

  When all that you know of life is the life you’ve been living, you can’t see it for what it really is. You need to step outside yourself to see what you’re doing.

  Can you apply this to basketball?

  Sure. You can’t see where you plant your left foot when you take your mid-range jumper, or where your elbow is when you release the ball. But your coach can. But will Lonnie listen to him? Or will he think that he knows better than his coach?

  How can Lonnie adjust to the college kids in his new life?

  Lonnie doesn’t see it that way—he feels they should adjust to him. Walter lays out this dilemma for him—and for us—beautifully. How will Lonnie, or anyone, “fit in”? Do you try to conform, join the gang, the “in-crowd”? As an outsider, Lonnie is at a crossroad: he can either cling to everything that has worked for him before—or cast off his old self and explore the unfamiliar.

  Which does he do?

  At first, neither. He befriends two other outcasts—both white.

  Why is Colin an outcast?

  Colin couldn’t be more different than Lonnie. He’s a rednecked, blue-eyed, country-western, guitar-picking kid. Lonnie calls him “farm boy” at first, but then sees that his roommate has less clothes in their shared closet than he has. Being poor is what brings these two teammates together.

  And Colin hasn’t a shred of bigotry in him.

  When Colin invites Lonnie home for a long weekend, he realizes his dad has never had a black guy in their house! It’s an awkward dinner. But it’s awkward not because Lonnie is black, but because Lonnie is a college kid and Colin’s parents, being illiterate, don’t know how to talk to him! This is how brilliantly Walter sets, then resets, the outsider theme.

  What is Eddie’s role in supporting the theme of outsiders?

  Eddie is a painfully withdrawn nine-year-old, bullied into a comatose state by his father. Where Lonnie is crippled by uncertainty, tongue-tied around Sherry and not knowing how to talk to her, Eddie won’t talk at all! He’s paralyzed, literally, by fear.

  Fright can be crippling—how can Eddie conquer fear?

  We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. For some, those weaknesses can be a huge hurdle to overcome—our “handicaps,” as they say in sports. Also, they can open us to ridicule; and ridicule is what’s left Eddie speechless. He has to bust out of the mental prison he’s locked himself into. Lonnie chips away at his protective armor, and in one terrific scene Walter concocted, Eddie learns to turn his own particular weakness into a strength—not by hiding it, but by embracing it. You need to own your fear—or it will own you. You know, there’s a slew of celebrity actors and speakers who, like Eddie, stopped talking when they were young because they were too scared?

  What would make them or someone like Eddie be so scared they would shut down like that?

  We get scared of our weaknesses being discovered. Scared at being laughed at. Scared of looking like a fool. Some, like Eddie, had speech difficulties. Some were stutterers throughout their teens like Tiger Woods, Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, even big NBA pros like Shaquille O’Neal. So whatever “handicap” you and I are covering up, each of us has a choice: Will that fear own us? Or will we get to the other side of it?

  How do you do that—get to the other side?

  You can’t get around it. You have to go through it. I used to be scared of heights—it definitely paralyzed me, stopped me from doing a lot. So I jumped out of an airplane, parachuted. It didn’t cure me or get rid of my fear—but that fear no longer stops me.

  You were an outsider, too—in the South, in Selma with Dr. King, where you were put in jail.

  Yes, outsiders are most always perceived as a threat, out to overturn the status quo. Before the Civil Rights Movement, if you were black, you couldn’t vote. Those of us—both black and white—who went down South to get the vote for blacks were spat at, beaten, locked up for trying to overcome what was, to us, an alien situation.

  When it becomes a standoff like that, how can it be overcome? Something or someone has to give.

  The Outside Shot asks this very same question: Who adapts to whom? And exactly how will the college “insiders” react to the newcomer? Will they take him in—or close ranks and deny him? Bully him—or try to change him. Treat him like a roommate—or segregate him?

  Or integrate him into the team, hopefully, and into the college.

  Possibly, but as the story unfolds, Lonnie learns integration has been—and always will have to be—a two-way street.

  Both sides need to adjust, accommodate each other.

  Accommodation helps. But, sadly, accommodation alone will never result in permanent success.

  Why?

/>   Because neither side has really changed. They’ve just “moved around” a bit, “made room” for each other. Underneath, the same mistrust and misunderstandings are boiling up. All the characters in this story will need to give up their point of view, dare to be different. Risk how they’re being for what they can become. For that, each will have to think—and act—outside their box.

  Can you compare this metaphor to the outside shot in basketball?

  Risk is at the heart of change. Like Lonnie, the outside shot is a long shot—more valuable because it’s harder and less likely to succeed. But taking the outside shot used to be a risk only because people were unfamiliar with it. And only because pro players were willing to take that risk did it become acceptable—and, in turn, revolutionize the entire game.

  How did the outside shot change playing basketball so radically?

  The NBA didn’t even have a three-point outside shot until 1979. Players like Michael Jordan had to reinvent their game, rethink all they were taught. It went against everything they practiced to do: drive for the basket, don’t take a low-percentage shot. Players not only had to risk going for that low-percentage shot—the outside shot—they had to learn how to perfect it.

  I thought that step-back outside jumper was one of MJ’s signature shots?

  Not at first. “Air” Jordan, known for his soaring leaps to the rim, played his entire college basketball career without a three-point outside shot! When he got to the pros, he was bad at it. But MJ was willing to risk missing it. And it wasn’t until his fifth season that he finally mastered it.

  Did coaches have to rethink their strategy?

  It takes a revolutionary to revolutionize anything. Coaches had to throw out their game plans. The time-tested tactic of driving to the hoop became tossing it back out, working the three-post perimeter. By stretching the floor, they opened it up to more possibilities.

  Who do you think was the most revolutionary coach?