by Mike Lupica
Drew said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast.”
Robbie Gilbert laughed. But the sound made Drew wonder, as always, how a laugh could sound that mean. Maybe because it came out of him so loud. Robbie talked loudly, laughed loudly, and his band played loud, tuneless, heavy-metal music. Drew had heard them one time at school.
One time was enough.
“You?” Robbie said. “Interrupt us? Dude, you’re family. Like the brother I never asked for.”
He walked back to the main house, shaking his head, talking on his phone now, not looking back. Seth Gilbert watched him go, shaking his head, not saying anything.
By the time Eddie appeared to clear Robbie’s plate, it was almost as if Seth Gilbert’s son hadn’t been there at all.
“You want me to have Eddie get you some breakfast?” It was almost like he was telling Drew more than asking.
“I’m good,” Drew said.
“I gotta get some healthy food in you,” Mr. Gilbert said. “You can’t go through life eating your Lucky Charms and Froot Loops.”
“You left out Cap’n Crunch,” Drew said. “Ended up eating a whole box this morning after my mom left for the office.”
“You need a nutritionist.”
“I got everything I need in my cereal boxes,” Drew said. “Breakfast and a great snack all at once.”
He’d read one time that Derrick Rose, another one of his point-guard heroes, liked the same kinds of cereals he did.
Mr. Gilbert wanted to know why Drew had gotten up so early when there was no school, and Drew told him that not only couldn’t he get to sleep last night, he couldn’t stay asleep this morning. Then he told him about the ghost guy and how he couldn’t get him out of his mind now.
“You sure it just wasn’t some kid from town who looked older?”
“No, it was an old guy for sure. Not as old as you—”
Drew clamped a hand over his mouth as soon as he said it, but it was too late. “Wait, I can explain what I meant,” he said.
“Please don’t,” Mr. Gilbert said, grinning. “It can only get worse for me.”
“He was a man, is all I’m saying,” Drew said. “But a man who played some big ball sometime in his life.”
Seth Gilbert said, “Well, maybe you’ll run into him again on one of your midnight runs.” And just like that, Drew could tell he was already bored with the subject.
Drew liked Mr. Gilbert a lot, but the man had the attention span of a TV remote.
“How’s the ankle?” Mr. Gilbert said now, moving on to the next thing.
Drew had tweaked his ankle at practice a couple of days ago, no big thing. He’d just been putting extra tape on it. Hadn’t even felt it last night in the park.
“Better,” Drew said. “When I got out there last night, made all my cuts, put my weight on it, no problem.”
“I could have my orthopedic guy take a look,” Mr. Gilbert said. “You’ve got time today.”
“It wasn’t even a sprain,” Drew said. “I’ll be good to go for all the big games after the break.”
Mr. Gilbert smiled now—he had the whitest teeth Drew had ever seen.
“Kid, the next big game for you is your first one in college,” he said.
“I know that,” Drew said. “But Lee and all the other seniors on the team are counting on me to get them their title. And help get a couple of them scholarships, too. And finally beat Park along the way.”
Park Prep, over in Oak Park, had always been the big powerhouse in their league. Oakley had come a long way in the six years the school had been in existence, had built a winning program and sent some kids off to college scholarships. But the Wolves still had never beaten the Park Prep Eagles.
“You keep telling them that it’s just as important to you,” Mr. Gilbert said, “and they’ll believe you. You know why? Because they want to, that’s why.”
“But I do want to win as much as they do,” Drew said.
Mr. Gilbert turned halfway around in his chair now, as if Drew were talking to somebody behind him. “This is me you’re talking to, kid. Not some guy interviewing you that you’ve got to say all the right things to.”
“But I do want to win. Same as you.”
“And you keep selling that to anybody who’ll listen. It’ll be one more reason for people to call you a leader and a winner. Just understand that there are other priorities here, and they don’t change. Stay healthy. Stay out of trouble. And what else?”
Drew smiled. “And stay close to you,” he said.
“Your mom’s looking out for her baby boy, too. But I’m looking out for his brand.”
Drew said, “I’m a brand already?”
“Yeah, but that’s not anything for you to worry about,” Mr. Gilbert said. “That’s my job.”
Drew didn’t say this next thing, but thought it:
Mr. Gilbert’s talking like he’s the man next to the man already.
Like the two of them already had a contract, even if nothing was written down on paper.
FIVE
Practice was held in the late afternoon, even during Christmas break.
Their coach, Billy DiGregorio, was big on being a creature of habit, even when he didn’t really need to be. It was just another way for him to be the boss. In front of the other players, anyway.
He and Drew both knew it was different between them. They were more like partners.
So of course Coach ran the practice schedule for the holidays past Drew, the way he did pretty much everything else having to do with the Oakley Wolves.
Billy DiGregorio was a no-nonsense guy. Hundred percent. He had been a tough little point guard at Santa Clara in his day, way before Steve Nash went to Santa Clara. And he knew more about basketball than a lot of guys Drew had played for—most of the guys he’d played for, to be honest—but even with that, he knew the team ran through Drew, not him.
Nobody would say it, there was no point, but they both knew Drew was as much the coach of the Wolves as Billy DiGregorio was.
“You care whether or not we stay on our normal schedule over break?” Coach said to Drew the day before classes let out.
Drew had grinned. “Not nearly as much as you would if we started changing things all around, Coach. I know how you lose your mind when things get moved out of their proper place.”
“The only days we’ll have off will be Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day.”
“We can go on those days, too,” Drew had said to him. “There’s no holidays with me, not from basketball.”
“But you still remember what your mom and I tell you,” Coach DiGregorio said. “There has to be more to your life than putting a ball through a hoop.”
“Whatever you say, Coach.”
The truth was, Drew did just enough to get by in school, keep his grades respectable. Keep up appearances. His mom would push him to do better when he’d start to slip in something, the way he was with English right now, and then he’d have to step on it.
He’d done well enough on his PSATs to know he’d be able to handle the real SATs fine when the time came. And Drew knew something else: there wasn’t a college he was interested in that was going to care too much what kind of SAT scores he had, or ACT scores, what grade point average he ended up with before he left Oakley.
They just wanted Drew Robinson to come to their school for a year and fill out a stat sheet, not the college application form known as the “Common App.”
Drew remembered a story he’d heard from one of his AAU coaches back in New York, about an old-time hooper named David (Big Daddy D) Lattin. Lattin had finally ended up at Texas Western, played on the NCAA champion team they did the movie Glory Road about, the mostly all-black team that beat all-white Kentucky in what
some people said was the most important college basketball game ever played.
But before Big Daddy D ended up in El Paso, at the school called UTEP now, he was recruited by some schools up north. One day he was sitting with the athletic director at Boston College.
And the AD guy finally said to him, “What about the boards?”
Meaning college boards.
Big Daddy D, according to the story, smiled wide and said, “I sweep ’em clean at both ends!”
Big Daddy D, even fifty years ago, wasn’t looking for a college education, he was just stopping at college on his way to the pros. Same as Drew, even though he would never say that to his mother, knowing she would give him a gentle whack to the back of his head.
Drew’s body was still in high school, classrooms and gyms. His mind? Truth be told, it was already in the NBA, no matter how much Darlene Robinson pushed back on him about hitting the books, the value of an education. Same as his adviser at school, Mr. Shockey, did.
Drew would joke sometimes with Mr. Shockey, “My main interest in books is that my accountant keeps ’em straight once the money starts to roll in a few years from now.”
Mr. Shockey would give him that look that was part bored and part disgusted and say, “Make sure you tell your mom that. I’m sure she’ll think you’re a riot.”
Mr. Shockey was a good guy, and he really cared about Drew, just wanted him to be the best student he could be while he still was a high school student. That was why Drew let Mr. Shockey think that he could get as much out of him in school as Coach DiGregorio did on the court.
But it was just one more role for Drew to play.
One more head fake to put on somebody.
• • •
After practice the next day, Drew talked Lee into driving him to Morrison that night to see if the ghost guy might come back.
“But, dude,” Lee said, “can’t we go earlier than you usually go? I’m not like you. I don’t keep vampire hours.”
As soon as Drew asked, both of them had known Lee would go. It was like when Drew would tell Lee to go sit on the wing when he was bringing the ball up the court—they both knew he would, no matter what play Coach had called.
All part of being Drew’s number two.
Funny thing was, Lee Atkins couldn’t have been any more different from Drew, and not just because one of them was black and the other one was white. It was everything. Drew was New York, born and bred. Lee had been born in Thousand Oaks, grew up there, only moved one time when his parents wanted a better neighborhood than they were already in. His dad was a doctor, his mom sold real estate, and the two of them had made sure that Lee had never wanted for anything his whole life.
One more thing that made him different from Drew: Lee never had to dream himself into a big house in a rich neighborhood. He was already there.
Lee never had to want for a dad, either, the way Drew did.
He was just the kind who had a good life going for him and seemed sure he always would. He liked basketball fine, and was the second-best shooter on the team after Drew, but he knew this last year of high school ball—he was one of the four seniors on the team starting along with Drew—was going to be the end of the line for him in hoops.
So this season was everything for him, this shot at the league title, maybe the state title after that.
This chance to be on the same court with somebody as good as Drew (True) Robinson.
The first day of school, in the cafeteria, everybody having known all summer that Drew was coming to Oakley Academy, Lee had searched him out, sat down next to him with his tray without being asked.
“You’re going to need a wingman,” he’d said, “and not just on the court. I’m it.”
Drew couldn’t help but smile at Lee’s confidence that somebody he didn’t know was going to like him. This blond, spiky-haired kid, maybe an inch shorter than Drew. Somehow being sure of himself, just in a laid-back California way, almost like one of the surfer dudes they’d see at the beach.
“I don’t even get a vote?” Drew had said.
“Course you do. This is a democracy,” Lee had said. “But it wouldn’t change anything.”
It hadn’t. The only things Lee wanted off of Drew were championships and the ball when he was open.
And what Drew wanted from Lee, even though he’d never said it out loud to him, maybe because he was too proud, was Lee’s friendship.
Drew had had guys he thought of as friends in his life, guys he called friends. But they hadn’t really been. He hadn’t ever had a real friend until Lee, and their friendship had started almost the moment Lee sat down with him in the cafeteria. Hadn’t known what he’d been missing until Lee just showed up like that.
He kept telling himself he’d explain that to Lee one of these days, let him know he was something more than an assist to him, a ride somewhere when he needed one. He just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
“Why are you so fixed on this guy?” Lee said on their way to Morrison, his hands on the wheel of his BMW.
“If you see him, you’ll understand,” Drew said. “It was like watching some homeless dude turn himself into Kobe or LeBron.”
“You don’t get excited when you watch the real Kobe and LeBron.”
“They’re supposed to do the stuff this guy was doing.”
Lee shook his head.
“One o’clock in the morning, when we could be watching a movie or playing video games at Mr. Gilbert’s,” he said. “And I’m on my way to the playground.”
“There’s just something about this guy, you’ll see,” Drew said. “I got to check him out again.”
Just with a witness this time.
• • •
Lee knew more about old-time basketball players than anybody Drew knew. He was talking about old dunkers now as they passed the kids’ playground at Morrison, with its swings and slides and monkey bars. Drew had told him again about the way the ghost had dunked the ball.
“Doctor J, Julius Erving, was the first guy who made people think he could fly before he threw it down,” Lee said. “Made it mad cool to throw it down. There were plenty of other guys who dunked before him, just not with his kind of style.”
“Then came Michael Jordan, right?” Drew said.
Lee shook his head.
“No, before him, and sort of at the same time as Doc, came David Thompson. He was supposed to be everything that Michael was in the pros, but he got down with drugs and partying and then fell down a flight of stairs in some New York club. Wrecked up his knee and was never the same.”
“I think I knew that,” Drew said. “People talked a lot about it after Jordan invited him to the Hall of Fame when he was inducted.”
“Michael knew what everybody knew about David, what he should have been,” Lee said. “Before he messed everything up.”
Lee knew that Drew wasn’t a big party guy, had never even touched a beer. But Lee talked all the time about guys who had messed things up for themselves in one way or another, how they’d lost their way. Trying to get the message across that he didn’t want that to ever happen to Drew.
Lee always tried to find ways to tell Drew not to let himself get too spoiled by what he had already, what he was going to have, because sometimes it wasn’t drinking or drugs that could get you sideways, make you lose your way—
It was just being spoiled.
Drew was worried that he was going to have to hear that speech again tonight, have to find a way to change the subject or just tell Lee all over again that he was worrying about something that was never going to happen.
But they were coming up on the bad court at Morrison now, and both of them could see, even in the dark, that the ghost guy was back.
SIX
Drew put a finger to his lips.
“What, you think he can hear us?” Lee said.
Drew’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I just don’t want to spook the man this time is all.”
They stayed close to the tree line, trying to hide themselves from the lights of the pool, like two kids sneaking through the night in a game of hide-and-seek.
It was him, no doubt.
Same clothes, same cap, hoodie, jeans, old ball. Deciding that it was safe for him to come back, have the park to himself again. Or maybe he’d been here last night even if Drew hadn’t.
The first thing they saw when they snuck closer: the high-flyer, one-hand high dunk Drew had seen the first night. Even higher this time. Drew looked at Lee, wanting to see his reaction, saw his mouth drop open. He knew Lee was about to say something, and that—Lee being Lee—he might not be able to control his excitement. Might yell out like he did in a game sometimes when he drained a three.
Drew reached over and clamped a hand over his mouth.
Drew mouthed, “Be quiet.”
Lee nodded.
They both watched as the guy bounced the ball to himself, not going underneath for a reverse slam this time, grabbing the ball out of the air and then doing a full 360 before throwing down another one.
Lee’s eyes were as wide as his mouth now. He whispered, “You ever see that movie The Soloist?”
Drew shook his head. Put a finger to his lips, reminding him to keep his voice down.
“It’s about this reporter finding a homeless guy playing this amazing music on his crummy violin,” Lee said. “Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey. The guy isn’t right in the head.”
“Jamie Foxx or Robert Downey?”
“Jamie Foxx—he’s the one who plays the violin.”
Drew nodded at the court, “This guy doesn’t look crazy to me. He can just flat play.”
They hung behind a tree and watched for at least fifteen minutes, maybe more. For Drew the show was better the second time around, under a moon even brighter tonight. Or maybe it was the guy’s game shining brighter. Now he turned the cap around on his head, drove down the lane, put the ball behind his back, laid it in with his left hand.
