The Final Four

by Paul Volponi

  MJ pump-fakes with the ball, getting his defender off his feet. He goes up for the easy put-back, but misses at point-blank range.

  Playing as if his name was on the line, MJ rips the rock away from another Trojan and lays it up again. This time, the ball spins around and out, as if there was a see-through plastic cover over the rim.

  Despite the echo of boos in his ears, MJ has more fight in him. He bats at the ball, desperately trying to keep it alive on the glass, until suddenly, off of MJ’s fingertips, the ball hangs on the iron without any spin at all and then falls though the net.

  MJ emerges from the crowd beneath the basket like a battered prizefighter who’s just landed the punch of a lifetime. The Spartans now lead 75–73, with a little more than four minutes remaining in double overtime. And with those jeers having turned into a shower of applause, MJ heads back up court pumping his fist at Malcolm.

  NOVEMBER, FOUR MONTHS AGO

  As they wrestled on the floor, MJ got his hands free from Malcolm’s and fired three or four clean punches into his grill. But there was no quit in Malcolm. He fought back like a wildcat, and his nails took a small patch of skin off of MJ’s chin.

  Other players in the athletes’ dorm heard the ruckus.

  They tried to come busting into the room. Only MJ and Malcolm were tangled up in front of the door, blocking it. And when Baby Bear lowered his shoulder to force it open, MJ saw a flash of white light as the door slammed into the side of his head.

  A bunch of guys, including Baby Bear and Grizzly, separated MJ and Malcolm.

  A senior on the football team sniped at Grizzly, “Our freshmen know their place. You let that McBride kid get away with thinking he’s all that and a bag of chips. That’s your fault for not setting his ass straight.”

  Grizzly exploded at Malcolm, shoving him backward at the shoulder with a stiff arm. “You hear the shit I have to take because of your attitude!”

  Then Baby Bear stepped in between and said, “I feel you on this, Grizz. Believe me. But don’t dent our scoring machine.”

  “Man, I belong to me, not any of you!” said Malcolm, pulling himself free of people’s grasp. “I’ll act the way I want!”

  “Not in my face, you won’t!” countered MJ. “I just proved that!”

  “The two of you, shut up,” warned Grizzly. “And nobody else here better breathe a word of this outside the dorm.”

  But out of spite, one of the football players had already called security, and within a few minutes, campus police arrived at Malcolm and MJ’s door.

  It was Sergeant Dixon, a five-foot-nothing black woman in her forties whose attitude was bigger than any other cop’s on campus.

  “Everybody back to your own rooms! Move! I won’t tell you all again,” Sergeant Dixon ordered. “I only want the two in the altercation to remain here!”

  She had a pair of officers with her who were large enough to play football on the Michigan State offensive line. But she didn’t need them.

  “Nothing happened. I must have cut myself shaving,” answered MJ to Sergeant Dixon’s question about the mark on his chin. “I’m just no good at it.”

  “That’s why we shouldn’t give razors to children,” replied Dixon without a stitch of humor.

  After that, MJ wouldn’t say another word. He just kept rubbing the growing knot on his right temple.

  Malcolm wasn’t in a talking mood either, especially with a swollen lower lip.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” Malcolm told Sergeant Dixon, raising the bottom of his shirt up to his mouth to dab the blood. “I must have walked into the damn door.”

  “Don’t blaspheme in front of me,” she demanded.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said Malcolm, as if he was suddenly talking to his own mother.

  “You expect me to believe it was the door?” she asked, with her penciled-in eyebrows raised.

  “What did you think I was going to say?” added Malcolm. “I’m no snitch.”

  Sergeant Dixon was tight with Coach Barker. So instead of writing up a report and filing it with the dean’s office, she called Barker on his cell.

  MJ could hear Barker’s irate voice on the other end, and when that short conversation was over, Sergeant Dixon said, “Both of you boys are coming with me to the gymnasium.”

  The two walked on either side of her, and she did all of the talking.

  “You can take that grim look off your face,” Dixon told MJ. “Seeing the coach is better than seeing the dean. It’s like the judge being your stepfather.”

  But MJ was concentrating more on Malcolm. He was jealous of the swagger the freshman was walking with.

  Dixon escorted them as far as the gym door, and the pair entered on their own.

  Barker was standing at the foul line beside a rack of basketballs, shooting free throws.

  MJ and Malcolm silently took up places a few feet to his left. Barker drained a half-dozen shots in a row before taking his eyes off the rim to look at them.

  “That’s forty-nine straight,” said Barker, picking another ball up off the rack and spinning it between his hands. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve put on twenty pounds since my playing days. I never lost my shooting touch. How many do you two geniuses think you can make?”

  Malcolm didn’t give an answer, and neither did MJ.

  “Well, if I miss this last free throw, I’m going to run those bleacher steps from the bottom to the top, ten times,” said Barker.

  The coach buried his final shot, barely jiggling the net.

  “Hooray, no running for me,” he said, barely cracking a smile. “Now it’s your turn. Twenty-five shots apiece to equal my fifty. Add your scores up together. For every shot either one of you misses, you’ll each run ten sets of steps. So I guess you’ll be rooting for each other, if you’re smart.”

  Malcolm stepped to the line first, and MJ watched as he sank all twenty-five, even with that busted lip.

  Then it was MJ’s turn.

  He missed the first three shots, with Malcolm chasing down the ball for him, and scowling over every one.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Jordan. I’m sure you’ll find yourself a rhythm soon,” said Barker. “That’s what you search for in pressure situations—a rhythm or a flow.”

  MJ hit his next nine shots before the feeling left him again.

  In the end, MJ made just fourteen out of twenty-five.

  “Eleven misses. That’s one hundred and ten sets of steps the two of you owe. But I guess that’s better than being suspended two games for fighting. Better for you, better for the team, better for me,” pronounced Barker. “Before you begin climbing, you boys want to tell me what brought this fight on?”

  “He put his hands on my sister’s tattoo,” Malcolm blurted out quick.

  “He said something I didn’t like about me and my dad,” said MJ with just as much gas.

  Barker studied them for a few seconds, and then he said, “You two need more common ground. Maybe you should visit a junkyard together sometime. I’ll give you each a sledgehammer and you can beat on abandoned cars, instead of each other. That’s what you should both hate, right? Cars? Jordan’s father was killed in a traffic accident, and Malcolm’s sister in a drive-by.”

  MJ looked over at Malcolm, who was staring back at him.

  Then MJ’s right hand, which was hanging down at his side, suddenly balled up into a tight fist. Only it wasn’t Malcolm who MJ was pissed at now.

  “But you two will share common ground,” demanded Barker. “You’ll run those steps together, side by side. No leader. No follower. Now get moving.”

  It was five sections up, and five back down, with forty concrete steps in each section and the smell of stale sweat everywhere. After climbing the first couple of sections, MJ started singing to himself, trying to find a rhythm.

  He tried a bunch of songs before eventually settling on something his mother always played on CD, Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown.”

  It was a tune Malcol
m knew well, one of his parents’ favorites.

  “Hey, American Idol, remember that song from the old Gatorade commercial? ‘I Want to Be Like Mike’?” asked Malcolm. “Why don’t you sing that one for a while?”

  But MJ let that remark go.

  Then, on their fifteenth set, MJ asked Malcolm, “You think Coach said that nasty crap about junkyards and cars so we’d hate on him and not each other?”

  Barker was beneath one of the baskets, talking on his cell phone.

  “I don’t really care,” answered Malcolm. “If he didn’t have the keys to the NBA kingdom, I’d tell him to take all that sneaker company money he gets for the kicks we have to wear and run these damn steps himself.”

  Two sets of steps later, Malcolm said, “By the way, you should be saying thank you to me, benchwarmer.”

  “Why the hell is that?” asked MJ.

  “If you’d gotten into a fight with anyone else, you’d have been suspended for sure,” said Malcolm.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “That’s right. I’m too valuable to lose. This team’s not winning without me at the point.”

  “Wow, that’s some favor you did for me,” said MJ. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not a role model… Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

  —Charles Barkley, Hall of Fame basketball player and TV analyst

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MALCOLM McBRIDE

  7:42 P.M. [CT]

  “Force him left! Make him use his off-hand!” Malcolm hears an assistant coach screaming from the sideline, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, with the near voiceless Coach Barker anchored at his shoulder.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm’s thinking, Damn it, Coach. Don’t scream it out loud for this Euro-boy to know, too.

  That’s when Malcolm notices Roko adjust, fighting for more room to his right.

  “Don’t matter if you know what’s coming,” snaps Malcolm, as he cuts off Roko’s dribble completely, forcing him to pass. “I could put you inside our huddle and give you the whole game plan. You’d still be a step behind me.”

  “I already know the game plan. Everyone does,” Roko responds. “It’s don’t let Mr. One and Done stop us from playing like a team.”

  Malcolm follows Roko around a screen, sliding his feet on defense, and never crossing them, so he can move in any direction.

  “Want to hear our game plan?” asks Roko, as Malcolm corners him. “Let McBride shoot the ball all he wants, do it all himself. Then we’ll be playing five against one, in our favor.”

  “Except that five of you against me aren’t enough,” says Malcolm. “It’s still not even close to being even.”

  With the shot clock winding down, Aaron Boyce takes a fallaway jumper in the lane. He misses, and Baby Bear gobbles up the rebound for the Spartans.

  Malcolm gains control of the rock and starts up court.

  Now it’s Troy’s turn to defend, with Michigan State leading by a bucket and less than four minutes to play.

  “Come on and catch some of this one-man show,” taunts Malcolm. “’Cause nobody can stop it.”

  “Bring it, son,” mimics Roko from every movie he’s ever seen about the hood, as he balances low to the ground with his arms spread wide.

  “Oh, you’re my daddy now?” Malcolm comes back. “Never gonna happen.”

  Malcolm fakes right, and then he crosses over to his left.

  But he can’t shake Roko, who’s still right in front of him.

  “Just me and you. Nobody else,” says Roko. “You can’t—”

  There’s a loud crunch as Baby Bear steps out of nowhere, knocking Roko flat with a hard screen.

  Unguarded now, Malcolm takes a step back behind the three-point line. He turns the rock between his fingers, feeling for the grips. Then he lets the shot fly with his hands, falling into a perfect gooseneck over his head.

  The shot goes in, and the ref raises both arms in the air to signal that it’s a three.

  “Red Bull-shit,” crows Baby Bear at Roko, who’s still on the floor.

  Down by five points and with Roko dazed, Coach Kennedy calls for a Trojan time-out.

  “Money McBride!” says Baby Bear, taking a running start at a powerful chest bump with Malcolm. “We’re the new Shrek and Donkey.”

  “No, he’s Donkey,” says Malcolm, pointing at Roko. “But I’ll take that Money tag.”

  From that morning’s national newspaper:

  MONEY BALL SHARED BY ALL BUT PLAYERS

  NEW ORLEANS, La. — “Money ball” could easily become the new catchphrase for the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. And that dollar-green-colored basketball bounces in many directions, including the way of the NCAA, individual universities, coaches, television networks and companies that hope to rake in more than they spend in advertising and sponsorship. The money ball, however, doesn’t get passed around into the hands of the players, without whom there would be no lucrative tournament.

  Collegiate players rarely gripe publicly about the system. All of that changed yesterday when Michigan State freshman Malcolm McBride, who will leave after a single season of college ball to enter June’s NBA draft, challenged it head-on.

  “I heard that the NCAA makes something like $700 million on this tournament, and that my school could make 15 mil. I know part of that number’s off my back, my sweat. That’s like slavery,” said McBride, at an NCAA-sponsored Final Four press conference.

  How is a substantial portion of that tournament money generated?

  The NCAA, which currently has a $6-billion 11-year TV deal with CBS, collects more than $700 million annually in broadcast fees and marketing rights. In turn, the network charges advertisers approximately $700,000 for a 30-second TV commercial during the Final Four. That price of advertising nearly doubles to around $1.3 million for the National Championship Game, with only the Super Bowl traditionally drawing more than the 40 million viewers expected to tune in. If those prices seem too high, network honchos can rest easy knowing that official NCAA sponsors are actually required to buy commercial time for the tournament.

  The competing universities at this year’s Final Four—Michigan State, Troy, Duke and North Carolina—are in line for a windfall of free advertising. It is estimated that during the course of the tournament, these schools will have each received more than $500 million worth of exposure. That exposure strengthens student enrollment and donations from boosters, and increases the quality of their incoming basketball recruits to field future tournament teams that could keep the money ball rolling their way for seasons to come.

  Tournament advertising isn’t limited to TV, Internet, radio and print ads. Some college coaches are now renting out space on their game-day sweaters. You’ll see them prowling the sidelines with a sneaker company emblem or chain store logo emblazoned on their clothing. They also wear the sponsors’ trademarks during TV interviews and to events. Many coaches, whose salaries already dwarf that of their university presidents, receive bonuses for advancing through various stages of the NCAA tournament as well. Several coaches reportedly have a bonus of up to $500,000 for winning the National Championship.

  Video games licensed by the NCAA to outside companies mimic players’ appearances and athletic moves. The games generate millions of dollars in sales without a penny going to the athletes. Because of their amateur status, college basketball players cannot endorse products for sponsors or even profit from the sale of replica jerseys with their name on the back. Yet players can be walking billboards for schools that sign exclusive product deals with sneaker and clothing companies. The players wear the shoes and other apparel during games while the school collects the money.

  “Part of me feels like my school and coach sold my soul to some sneaker company. These aren’t even the kicks I like to wear. They get paid for it, and I have to deal with the blisters on my feet,” said a player at the Final Four who did not want his identity revealed. “I’m stuck in this system if I want to show the NB
A what I’ve got. There’s even a site on the Web that’s reselling tickets for the Final Four at $3,300 apiece. But I’m not allowed to resell the tickets that my school gave me. Go figure.”

  Of course, every now and then the money ball takes an unexpected bounce. In 2009, Marcus Jordan, the son of Hall of Fame basketball legend Michael Jordan, began his college basketball career at the University of Central Florida. Upon recruiting Marcus Jordan, the university assured him that he could wear his father’s Nike Air Jordan–brand sneakers, despite UCF’s exclusive $3-million deal with Adidas for its players and coaches to wear the company’s shoes and apparel.

  “When I was being recruited, we talked about it,” Marcus Jordan told the Orlando Sentinel. “They said they had talked to the Adidas people, and it wasn’t going to be a problem. I think everybody understands how big of a deal it is for my family.”

  So for UCF’s opening game, while the rest of the team wore Adidas, Marcus Jordan had on Air Jordans. He did, however, don a pair of black ankle braces with the Adidas logo. But that wasn’t enough to soothe the sneaker maker, and Adidas canceled their deal with the university.

  Seemingly lost in the fight for the money ball was the outcome of the game, which UCF won, defeating St. Leo 84–65.

  “The time when there is no one there to feel sorry for you or to cheer for you is when a player is made.”

  —Tim Duncan, a Virgin Islander American, four-time NBA Champion, and three-time NBA Finals MVP

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ROKO BACIC

  7:43 P.M. [CT]

  Lying on his back, Roko can see the crowd in the stands framing the faces of Crispin and Aaron, who are leaning in over him. All of the noise and voices sound muffled to him, like the Spartans had stuffed Roko’s ears with cotton before they rang his bell. Roko doesn’t remember the screen that knocked him flat. He just knows that his teammates have pulled him up to his feet, that there’s a time-out on the floor, and that he’s heading towards the sidelines.