True Legend

by Mike Lupica

  “My name in class is Paco,” Lee had said. “She thinks Paco should be pulling a higher grade.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “Only the classroom world.”

  “Well, then, vamos, Paco!” Drew said.

  “You know Spanish, dude?”

  Drew grinned. “Vamos and hola are pretty much all I got.”

  Then Drew said he’d meet him in the parking lot at four thirty.

  • • •

  “Paco” finished early with Mrs. Conte, and when he tried to get Drew on his cell, the call went straight to voice mail. So Lee went looking for Drew, checking the locker room first.

  Then he poked his head into the gym, not really expecting to find him there, knowing the girls’ team had practice in there today, with no competition from the guys’ team.

  And yet, there was Drew.

  Lee didn’t spot him right away, didn’t even think to look up to the top level of Henry Gilbert—their gym was the only one in the league with two levels of stands, almost like a college arena. But somehow his eyes went up there, all the way to the last row of seats.

  And that’s where Drew was. As if he was hiding.

  Lee backed up into the runway, walked up the back stairs to the second level, past a closed concession stand, and carefully poked his head through one of the entrances.

  Hiding a little bit himself.

  Maybe because Drew made fun of girls’ basketball as much as he did. Except, watching him now, getting a look at his face, Lee realized his friend wasn’t watching girls’ basketball.

  He was watching girl’s basketball.

  Singular.

  That meant the singular Miss Callie Mason.

  • • •

  To use one of Drew’s favorite words, Lee could see him watching every dag-gone move Callie made.

  Some of the boys called her “Halle” Mason, because they thought she was as pretty as Halle Berry. Callie was the star of the Oakley girls’ basketball team, a five-eight point guard, already drawing interest from colleges, even though she was only a junior.

  From the start of the school year, Lee had noticed how quiet, even nervous, Drew would get when they passed Callie in the hall or saw her in the cafeteria. Or when they were coming out of the gym after practice and she and her teammates were on their way in.

  But when Lee asked Drew if he wanted to go to one of the girls’ games, he’d say no, almost like he was too proud, or maybe because he spent so much time busting on the idea of women’s basketball.

  “Why don’t you at least try talking to her?” Lee had said a few days ago.

  “We talk.”

  “Yeah,” Lee had said. “That’s some major conversating—‘Hey, Callie.’ ‘Hey, Drew.’”

  “I ever need to say something to her, I will,” Drew had said.

  “Sure you will.”

  “You’re an idiot sometimes. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m the dumb one.”

  Only now, not knowing he was being watched, tucked against a back wall, Drew looked completely happy watching Callie play. Like he’d be content to sit up here all day.

  As if he could watch her dish and shoot and run the court—pretty much be the True Robinson of the girls’ team—until her coach blew the whistle and sent everybody home.

  Lee thought about giving him a hard time, just for the fun of it.

  But he couldn’t.

  Couldn’t make himself walk down the row and call him out. Just because of the look on Drew’s face. Almost like a kid looking through a window at a store at something inside that he couldn’t have.

  Interesting, Lee thought.

  He loved the guy like a brother, but maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world for there to be something he couldn’t have.

  So he went back outside, past the concession stand again, down the stairs, out to the parking lot to wait. When Drew showed up about twenty minutes later, neither one of them mentioned anything about girls’ practice. They just talked about where they wanted to eat.

  • • •

  Park Prep had more kids than any other school in their league.

  Park was loaded every single year, had won the league nine of the last eleven seasons, won it before Oakley joined the Valley in basketball, and kept on winning it after that. It was one of the most famous basketball programs in the state of California. Its coach, old John Mabry, was a California legend, having coached Park for forty years and won over seven hundred games.

  And Mabry’s team had beaten the Oakley Academy Wolves every single time they’d played.

  It was, Drew knew, the single best reason why Mr. Gilbert had brought in Billy DiGregorio two years ago, hired him away from the powerhouse program Billy had built in Sacramento. He had been brought to Oakley to beat Park Prep—as much as he’d been brought there to win a league title, and maybe a Southern District title after that—for the first time in school history.

  “I was at the press conference when he took the job,” Lee had told Drew. “He said he wasn’t taking on a job as much as a challenge. He didn’t know the challenge would get a lot less challenging when you fell into his lap. And ours.”

  Drew hadn’t fallen, of course. It was more like Mr. Gilbert had placed him there. From the time Mr. Gilbert started talking to Drew’s mom about them moving to the West Coast, there had never been any question about where Drew was going to school, any more than there was a question about where Darlene Robinson was going to work or where they were going to live.

  Maybe Mr. Gilbert had even picked out their street in Agoura Hills before he talked to Darlene Robinson after the all-star game that time.

  “I’m gonna paraphrase an old line from sports,” Mr. Gilbert had said to Drew once. “Your coach’s good luck is the result of my design.”

  Mr. Gilbert always told Drew and his mom it was their decision, he could get Drew into some other fancy private school if she wanted. Chaminade over in Woodland Hills was a great school. But it didn’t take too long for them to figure out that everything went a lot smoother when what they wanted was what he wanted.

  Meaning Mr. Gilbert.

  Like it was just one more part of the deal.

  Everybody called games between Oakley and Park “rivalry games,” but Drew could never see it as much of a rivalry when one team did all the winning.

  Still, this was the first of two regular season games between them, and the Oakley kids—because they had Drew now—were treating it like some kind of high-school-basketball Super Bowl. There had been a pep rally in the gym after practice on Monday, handmade posters all over the corridors, a huge “Beat Park” banner hanging across the top of the main building of their campus, from one corner to the other.

  “I’ve been waiting my whole life to beat these guys,” Lee said in the locker room, maybe forty-five minutes from the tip. “At least it feels like my whole life.”

  “Dude,” Drew said, “chill yourself out. We’re playing Park tonight, not Kobe and the Lakers.”

  “But if you grew up in this town the way I did, they are the Lakers,” Lee said. “Or the old Celtics. Or those UCLA teams from back in the day that used to win every year in college basketball.”

  “They’re not winning tonight,” Drew said, on the carpet now in front of his locker, doing his back stretches.

  “It would be so great for our school,” Lee said. “Finally getting those guys.”

  Drew nodded, meaning, Yeah, let’s do it for our school. But he wasn’t trying to do it for his school, or to make school history, or even for his buddy Lee.

  Tonight was about him against King Gadsen.

  That was the rivalry he was thinking on, even though he and King had never played against each other before.

  The ri
valry that was starting tonight.

  No way Drew was losing to him.

  He didn’t usually think of basketball that way, thought of it as his five against the other five.

  Not tonight.

  Let’s see who’s king when the horn blows tonight.

  • • •

  Local TV and the LA papers had started to cover Oakley’s games regularly now, the sportswriters always wanting to know which way Drew might be leaning on college.

  When they came right out and asked, Drew would just say, “Let me enjoy being in high school. My mom keeps telling me it’s all right to run the court fast. She just doesn’t want me growing up too fast.”

  They ate that with a spoon.

  So the media crowd had been big since the start of the season, and so had the home crowds, people wanting to see Drew play, see with their own eyes if he and the hype were both for real.

  Nothing like tonight.

  This huge sound hit Drew when he led his teammates out of the tunnel, biggest sound he’d heard yet in the Gilbert Athletic Center.

  Even Drew Robinson, who could block out everything except the game he was playing, the pass or shot or steal he was about to make—put on what his mom called his “blinders”—felt like he’d gotten gut-punched by the force of the place in those first moments when he was on the court.

  The sound told him how much they wanted him to beat Park, the way Lee Atkins had told him in the locker room.

  Drew saw his mom across from the Wolves’ bench, in the second row where she always was, with Seth Gilbert. They were standing along with everybody else, pointing at him as he got in the layup line. Drew just nodded. It was one of the things the media had picked up on about him, how he never changed expression on the court, how you never knew whether he’d just made a good play or a bad one, whether his team was up twenty or down twenty.

  They said with True Robinson, you could never tell whether he’d just made one of his highlight-reel passes or missed an open jumper. Not that that happened very often.

  Behind him in the layup line, Lee yelled, “You better be your True self tonight, you hear me?”

  Drew yelled back, “Loud and clear.”

  Drew didn’t let anybody notice, not the crowd or the cameras, but every chance he got, he snuck looks down the court to check out King Gadsen, showboating it up in his own layup line, waving his arms at the Park cheering section to pump his fans up, all the Park kids wearing their black “Sixth Man” T-shirts.

  Every once in a while, King would pull out the front of his black jersey, making the Park kids go even crazier. He was wearing number 23, of course. LeBron’s number. The real King.

  Drew wore number 1. Had since New Heights. His coach there, Coach Adams, had smiled when he handed it to him, not even giving him a choice as he pulled it off the top of the pile.

  “Just because you are the one, kid,” Coach Adams had said.

  “One what?”

  “The one every coach wants to walk into his gym.”

  Now he was about to show this hot dog King Gadsen that he wasn’t the one around here anymore, wasn’t the one in this league or this rivalry or on this coast or anywhere.

  Before they left the huddle for the tip, Coach DiGregorio leaned over and said into Drew’s ear, “Let it come to you.”

  Meaning the game. They talked about it all the time, how the game would go through Drew eventually, but he couldn’t force himself on it early.

  Not that Drew had to be told.

  “I got this, Coach,” he said.

  “Don’t let that guy turn this into some kind of playground dumbfest,” Coach DiGregorio said.

  “You know I’m not about that.”

  “But you know he wants to show you up.”

  Drew allowed himself a smile, in here, surrounded by his teammates. “Easier said than done,” he said.

  King made a show of coming over to shake Drew’s hand, give him one of those fake, lean-in half hugs. Like they were bros.

  “They afraid to have you guard me, Junior?” King said.

  Leaving out the “LeBron” part of the nickname.

  Drew didn’t smile now, just gave King his blank stare and said, “Do I know you?”

  King Gadsen didn’t play the point for Park; another kid—Steve McCrae—did. But Coach Mabry didn’t worry about that on defense, he had King guarding Drew. Not that it helped much at the start of the game. Lee made threes the first two times Drew threw him the ball, and the gym got even more insanely loud.

  Coach Mabry immediately switched King over to Lee, but it didn’t matter—he came around another screen the third time the Wolves had the ball and buried another bomb from the wing. Then Tyler Brandt, their power forward—his twin brother, Jake, was his backup—grabbed the rebound, threw a long pass to the streaking Brandon Yarborough, their skinny small forward, and as soon as he laid the ball up to make it 11–2, Coach John Mabry was standing up, hands over his head, signaling for a time-out.

  Coach Mabry looked annoyed that he had to keep up out of his seat due to the way his team had started the game.

  The Wolves ran to their own bench, jumping around like they’d already won the game. Drew didn’t even wait for Coach to tell them they hadn’t won anything.

  “Settle down!” he snapped at them. “You think they’re gonna run to the bus ’cause we played a couple of good minutes?”

  “Drew’s right,” Coach D said, sticking his chair in the middle of them and sitting down. “Just keep doing what we’re doing. And be ready when they make their run, because you know they’re going to.”

  They did. Coming right out of the time-out. King Gadsen was still talking, both ends of the court, but now he began to back it up, scoring ten straight points. After he made a three-pointer from what looked like NBA distance to Drew, King ran past and yelled, “You know who I am now, Junior?”

  From then until the end of the half, it was just a great high school basketball game. Everybody playing in it knew that, the way everybody in the stands did. Most of the Wolves’ wins up to now had been blowouts, but this was different.

  This was, as Lee liked to say, all that.

  Only Drew couldn’t get his shot to fall. It didn’t matter, because Lee stayed hot, hot as Drew’d ever seen him. Still, Drew was pressing, whether he was open or coming off a screen, even missing a layup when he had gotten all the way to iron after blowing past everybody.

  Coach had said let the game come to him, only now he couldn’t find it anywhere in the gym, the way he couldn’t find his shot.

  The shoot-out that everybody had expected—that he’d expected—between him and King, wasn’t happening. It was between King and Lee Atkins. King already had twenty-five for the game, and Lee had twenty.

  Drew did get loose a few times for layups he made, and he managed to knock down a couple of teardrop floaters in the lane. But mostly he was getting his assists, content to feed Lee. That is, until the last shot of the half, when Drew hit a long, fadeaway three of his own from in front of the Wolves’ bench. The shot broke a tie and put Oakley up by three, 49–46, going to the locker room.

  Finally he heard the crowd chanting, “Truuuuuuuuuuue,” the way it usually did when he was making everything he looked at, against King Gadsen or anybody else.

  Seth Gilbert was waiting for him in the tunnel.

  He put his hand out, and for a second, Drew thought he was going to give him some kind of halfhearted high-five. But what he did instead was pull him aside.

  “Nice shot,” he said. “Finally.”

  “Can’t find my rhythm,” Drew said.

  “Well, you better.” Mr. Gilbert spoke in a tone Drew knew by now, one with some teeth to it.

  He had his hands on Drew’s shoulders, and anybody watching the two of them wo
uld have thought he was giving him some kind of halftime pep talk.

  “Trying,” Drew said, wondering where this was going. He was against a wall, could see the rest of his teammates filing past him toward the locker room.

  “Try harder,” Mr. Gilbert said. “Everybody’s supposed to be talking about you tonight, and all they’re talking about is the other kid. The media guys are, the college scouts are. Our own fans are. You’re supposed to be carrying your team, not your buddy.”

  “Don’t worry,” Drew said. “We’ll win.”

  “Win what?” Mr. Gilbert said. “A game?”

  Then he turned and walked back into the gym that he’d built.

  NINE

  They decided to go man-to-man defense to start the second half, that it was the only way to slow down King Gadsen. They needed to get a body on him, or he might end up going for fifty tonight.

  In the past, Lee would take the other team’s big scorer, even if he was a point guard, because Coach D didn’t want Drew to gas himself out playing defense. But tonight was different, and they all knew it, so Drew took the pressure off Coach before he ever had to make a call.

  “I’ll take him,” Drew said, everybody in the room knowing who he meant. “He’s still gonna get his, but I’ll shut him down enough for us to win the game.”

  Under his breath he said, “And I’m gonna start getting mine.”

  Coach D gave him a look. “Hey,” he said, “we’re winning the game, right?”

  “Right,” Drew said.

  But Mr. Gilbert’s words were still in his head, like winning the game wasn’t going to be enough tonight, that even with Oakley up those three points, he was losing the game within the game he was playing against Gadsen.

  And Drew, despite his tough talk about guarding King in the huddle, wasn’t so sure he could shut him down. He knew that sometimes the hardest thing in sports was stopping somebody great when he was being great. In King’s case, that meant shooting great. He didn’t have nearly the all-around game that Drew did, the feel for the game, the vision or the passing or any of the rest of it.