No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  “You’ve got to get that shot off quicker, or somebody will be getting you.”

  “People always talk about what players can do in space. Well, guess who has to create that space? You do!”

  But no matter how hard his dad worked him, no matter how much he was in Wes’s ear, he still made it fun. He never acted like one of those dads. He wasn’t Lonzo Ball’s dad, the one who made you think you couldn’t turn on ESPN without seeing him. Or hearing him. Wes never felt as if he were being pushed. His dad wasn’t in his ear or in his head that way.

  “We’ve always got to be clear on one thing,” Michael Davies would say. “These are your dreams, not mine. And I’ll never love those dreams as much as you will.”

  “But didn’t you love basketball as much as I do when you were my age?” Wes asked him one time.

  “I did,” his dad had said. “But I didn’t have the gift for it that you do.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because deep down you always know.”

  And he was always big on telling Wes that the great ones had to be selfish and unselfish at the same time, that finding the right balance was the trick.

  “You got to know when to take it yourself,” his dad liked to say. “But you got to know when to give it up.”

  Now Wes wondered whether he’d ever give up on his dad coming back to him, and to his mom, things going back to the way they were before he went away for the last time.

  Wes wondered sometimes, especially when he was out here alone with basketball in the night, whether he’d ever get his dad back at all.

  It was why his dreams had changed now. If he did have the gift for basketball that his dad told him he had, then he had to get more out of it than his dad ever had. Wes had to become the player his dad had always told him he could be. Was convinced Wes could be. His dad was the first to tell Wes, way before they moved here, how important AAU basketball was, how much it could do to get Wes to where he wanted to go. How it would be the next step for him once he got past seventh grade.

  Wes worked on his first step now, off the right-hand dribble, off the left, back to his right, his dominant hand. But it wasn’t only being quick off the dribble. You had to be able to put the brakes on, too, and change the direction. You had to create your space and get your shot.

  Before somebody got you.

  He didn’t work on his passing tonight, didn’t bring out the three passing nets his dad had bought for him, ones he could set up around the driveway, ones that could take a really hard pass and not topple over. When his dad was still here, still out here with him, Wes would complain when he’d miss a net with a pass and have to go chase down the ball.

  “So don’t miss,” his dad would say, but always with a smile and a wink. His dad had never pushed him. If anything, he would slow Wes down when he thought he was trying too hard, or trying to do too much.

  That’s what had really happened at practice tonight: Even though Dinero was the one who’d thrown the pass, it was Wes who had missed. He knew he shouldn’t be still fixed on it. But he was. When he’d think about it, he’d get mad at himself all over again, even as he told himself that Mom was right, that he’d never let anything like that happen again. He’d be ready next time. He had to be ready because he already knew he’d never played with a passer better than Dinero Rey.

  Wes could pass, too. He was a forward who really could pass like a point guard. His best friend, Emmanuel Pike, always told him he was a little guy in a big guy’s body, that someday Wes was going to be the most famous point forward in the world. As much as Wes’s dad believed in him, Emmanuel seemed to believe in him just as much. And it made Wes work even harder, because he didn’t want to make liars out of either one of them.

  But Dinero?

  He made the whole thing look easy. Like basketball came as easy to him as that smile. Like he was the seventh-grade version of Steph Curry. Now he and Dinero had been thrown together the way Steph and Kevin Durant had been thrown together. They’d sure made it work with the Warriors.

  Two guys.

  One ball.

  It had been something going up against Dinero’s team in sixth-grade ball, his team and Wes’s making it to the finals of their league, Dinero’s team winning by a basket in the end. Wes thought Dinero’s team was more than a basket better than his, but Wes had pretty much played the game of his life in the finals—first triple-double of his life—and kept it close the whole way, before Dinero made a pass and got his team a layup at the very end.

  That day he’d honestly felt it was big fun being Dinero’s rival.

  Now they were teammates.

  So they weren’t rivals anymore, right? He remembered the weird grin Dinero had given him. It hadn’t felt all that friendly.

  Maybe they still were rivals.

  Somehow Wes had to make sure they didn’t get in each other’s way. He couldn’t let anything get in his way.

  Or he’d never get his dad back.

  FIVE

  PRACTICE WAS EARLIER THAN USUAL on Thursday, five o’clock at the Boys and Girls Club.

  Wes’s school was the Wiley Bates Middle School, sixth through eighth. Rather than take the bus home and have only an hour or so before practice, he decided to spend the time a lot more productively, which meant with his guidance counselor, Joe Correa.

  Other than the friends he’d made over the last year at Wiley Bates, Mr. Correa was pretty much the coolest guy in school and someone who felt more like a dad lately than his real dad. Wes knew that a lot of other seventh-graders, including Dinero, were tight with Mr. Correa, too. There was just something about him that made him relatable. It was a Mom word: relatable. She said it was a quality that the best teachers had, and you either had it or you didn’t. Mr. Correa did.

  He was about six three and had played high school ball when he was growing up in New York City. But he said he always knew he didn’t have it in him to take the next step. Wes wasn’t so sure about that. From time to time he’d seen Mr. Correa in some pickup games at the rec center, playing with some of his boys. As far as Wes could see, he still had some serious game, even as slow-footed as he was, and always seemed to be enjoying himself more than everybody on the court, as hard as you could see him trying to win.

  “I always wanted basketball in my life,” he told Wes after one of his pickup games. “But I knew it was never going to be my life.”

  “It’s different with me,” Wes said, “and always will be.”

  Mr. Correa grinned. “Always is a long time.”

  “I’m just sayin’,” Wes said.

  Now they were in his small office, one filled with books, not just on the shelves, but stacked on the floor. Mr. Correa taught English in all three grades at Wiley Bates and seemed to love reading and writing—and his books—the way Wes loved basketball.

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask you yesterday,” Mr. Correa said. “How’d the first practice go?”

  “Well, it started off terrible,” Wes said, and told him about getting hit in the face.

  Mr. Correa laughed.

  “You too?” Wes said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother thought it was funny, too,” Wes said, “even though I came home thinking I had ‘Wilson’ imprinted across the side of my face.”

  Mr. Correa laughed again.

  He was wearing his usual school outfit: khaki slacks; a pair of beat-up old-school Jordans; one of those shirts you could wear outside your pants. He had a young face and an easygoing smile. If you didn’t know he was a teacher, you probably could mistake him for a college kid.

  “I did a lot better when we scrimmaged,” Wes said.

  “Shocker,” Mr. Correa said.

  “It’s going to be serious ball on our team,” Wes said.

  “Shouldn’t be any problem for a serious baller like you,”
Mr. Correa said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “It’s gonna be a challenge,” Wes said.

  “New teams and new teammates usually are.”

  Wes said, “I almost felt like it was my first day of basketball school.”

  “Totally normal,” Mr. Correa said.

  Wes looked around, even though it was just the two of them. “If I tell you something, it stays in here, right?”

  Mr. Correa said, “Like my books.”

  Wes blew out some air, making a big sound in the small office.

  “Even after just one practice, I feel like it’s Dinero’s team.”

  “His world, and you’re merely living in it?”

  “Something like that,” Wes said.

  Mr. Correa ran a hand through his hair.

  “That is his personality,” he said, “and has been from the time he first walked through the doors of this school. He entered as a sixth-grader the way everybody else did. But he carried himself as if he’d been here his whole life.”

  “It’s almost as if he’d already elected himself captain of the team,” Wes said.

  “My experience,” Mr. Correa said, “is that really good point guards—and he’s a really good point guard—always sort of feel that way. Maybe it’s because they know they’re going to have the ball the most.”

  “Every other team I’ve played on, the offense ran through me, even though I was playing forward.”

  “Because that’s the way your dad taught you?” Mr. Correa said.

  Wes nodded.

  “From everything I’ve seen the last couple of years, he taught you really, really well. Have you talked about you and Dinero with him?”

  “I haven’t talked to him in a couple of weeks,” Wes said. “He used to come for dinner at least once a week. But now he’s not even doing that.”

  “Maybe he needs time,” Mr. Correa said. “You can’t lose faith.”

  “That’s what my mom says.”

  “You’ve got two great parents, Wes. It’s just that one of them is going through a very hard time.”

  “I feel like I’ve only got one parent right now,” Wes said. “And maybe for always.”

  Mr. Correa smiled. “I thought we already went over this. Always is a long time.”

  The office was quiet then. It reminded Wes of his own house. Or maybe his life. It wasn’t that way when his dad was still his dad. If he was in the house, boy, you knew he was in the house. When he was talking, about anything, with Wes or with his mom, it was as if he were in every room in the house at once.

  That was before he’d gotten back from Afghanistan.

  Before everything changed, and he would spend hour after hour sitting in the small den where he and Wes used to watch games together, any kind of basketball game, college or pro. Sometimes, if it was a really big game, his mom would set up TV tables for them in there, and they’d watch from dinner all the way until it was time for Wes to go to bed. Unless there was another big game, and he got to stay up late.

  Now it was all different. That room had become his dad’s room. Sometimes he would have the television on, sometimes not. But he would be there alone, usually with a bottle of whiskey next to him and a glass.

  Wes would wake up in the night and come downstairs if the television was still on, and his dad would still be in his chair, head back, snoring slightly, the bottle next to him empty most of the time.

  It was as if he’d left the house even before he officially moved out and into the small apartment closer to the Naval Academy, on the other side of town.

  “Was your dad drinking the last time you saw him?”

  They had talked about that. They talked about everything. Sometimes Wes needed to talk about everything with someone other than his mother.

  “He wasn’t drinking the last time he came for dinner,” Wes said, “because he was driving.”

  “It’s a very good sign,” Mr. Correa said, “that he’s aware enough not to drink and drive.”

  “He was that night,” Wes said.

  “Did you two talk about basketball?”

  “We hardly talked about anything,” Wes said.

  “And that was the last time you saw him.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?” Mr. Correa said. “What does that mean?”

  “I didn’t even tell my mom this,” Wes said. “But you know the netting that separates the courts at the rec center? I couldn’t see through it too well. But I thought I saw him up in the stands on the next court over. Sitting there by himself.”

  “Did you go over?”

  “We were scrimmaging by then,” he said. “And by the time we finished scrimmaging, whoever it was was gone.”

  He felt his throat tightening. It happened a lot when he thought about his dad.

  “It was almost like I’d seen a ghost,” Wes said, and then told Mr. Correa that maybe that figured, because his dad had pretty much become a ghost.

  SIX

  IT WAS DURING A WATER break at Boys and Girls that Emmanuel Pike said, “We are definitely not playing sixth-grade ball anymore.”

  “No,” Wes said, “we are not.”

  “This is real,” Emmanuel said.

  “So real,” Wes said.

  Emmanuel was maybe two inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than Wes, a power forward who could run the floor and defend and rebound and couldn’t shoot to save his life. He was big and strong and played with heart and was the kind of solid role player every good team needed. His mother was a hairstylist, so Emmanuel had cool cornrows that were long, but not too long.

  They were happy to get a break in the action because tonight it really had been serious ball with the Hawks, starting with Wes. He was making what his dad called good nerves work for him on this night, knowing he had to be impressing his coach, and his teammates. He was making his shots, making good decisions, using his length to defend, generally doing the one thing that his dad had always told him great players had to do:

  He was imposing his will on the game.

  He and Dinero were on the same side, but tonight they were sharing the ball, communicating with each other—even though this was only their second scrimmage as teammates—thinking along with each other. Neither one of them was showing off. It was as if they were too busy for that. More like they were showing each other the possibilities if they could play together across a whole season the way they were playing together tonight.

  And Wes was seeing something else tonight:

  That Dinero Rey wanted it as much as he did. It was something he couldn’t hide, even behind that smile. He still wanted to be a coach on the floor—he couldn’t help himself—sometimes he’d be moving other guys around even when it was Wes with the ball.

  “Game’s about filling open spaces,” he said to Wes one time when Coach Bob Saunders had stopped play because he didn’t like the way his biggest guys were boxing out.

  “One of the first things my dad ever taught me,” Wes said.

  “He gonna come check us out one of these nights?” Dinero said.

  “Soon,” Wes said.

  For some reason, he turned then and looked down to the double doors at the end of the court, almost like he could feel his dad’s eyes on him. But no one was down there. He couldn’t see anybody looking through the windows in the doors. Then Coach Saunders blew his whistle and they were back at it, Coach saying that he wanted to go even harder than they had all night for the last fifteen minutes.

  “You never know which play is gonna be the one that might change everything,” Coach said.

  That was a thing with him, Wes could tell already. He said that some of the biggest basketball games he’d ever seen sometimes turned on the smallest moments. You just didn’t know when those moments were coming. So you had to be ready.

 
Don’t you worry, Wes wanted to say to his coach. Don’t you worry about me.

  I’ll be ready.

  The game ended up tied. Dinero and Wes’s team ended up with the ball last. Coach had put in a few plays at each practice. But he told them he didn’t want them to run a play now. He wanted them to get somebody open and score. He wanted them to make a play.

  Wes was being guarded by Andy Rhule, another small forward on their team, one Wes could see was going to get a lot of playing time. Dinero was being guarded by another of the Hawks’ point guards, Josh Amaro.

  Coach had put twenty seconds on the clock, just to dial things up for everybody.

  Dinero said nothing to Wes as he brought the ball up, just gave a little nod of his head to indicate that he wanted Wes on his right.

  They had been killing it all night with high pick-and-rolls, and somehow, just with their eyes, Dinero and Wes decided they would run one more.

  Twelve seconds.

  Ten.

  Dinero was dribbling the ball near the top of the key, Josh respecting how quick he was by giving him some room. As soon as Dinero took a step to his right, Wes flashed in and set himself at the foul line extended.

  Dinero ran Josh into the screen.

  Andy Rhule switched over to cover Dinero.

  As soon as he did, Wes reverse-pivoted and cut down the left side of the lane. Open. In space. But then he saw two things, almost at the exact same moment:

  Saw Dinero’s pass headed straight for him.

  But saw the kid who everybody knew was going to be their starting center, DeAndre Walker, moving over to cut Wes off.

  Dinero saw DeAndre, too, and before his pass even reached Wes, he was flying down the right side of the lane, beating Andy Rhule, a clear path to the basket.

  Instincts took over for Wes then. He didn’t even catch the ball. Just reached out with his big hands and tapped it right back to Dinero, almost as if the ball had never touched his hands at all.

  Dinero caught it in stride, laid the ball in off the backboard just as the horn sounded.