No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  Wes always loved basketball.

  Sometimes he just loved it a little more.

  Dinero pointed at him. He pointed back. It was just one play, at the end of their second scrimmage. But maybe this deal was going to work out after all.

  “Ball didn’t even touch the ground once it left Dinero’s hands,” Coach Bob Saunders said. “Sometimes this game is just pure air.”

  And could make you feel as if you were walking on it.

  Wes took one more look at the double doors at the far end. The feeling that his dad was there was stronger than ever. Maybe because he knew how much his dad would have loved that play.

  But there was no one there.

  SEVEN

  COACH SURPRISED THEM AFTER WHAT was supposed to be their last practice of the week and said they were going to have one more, at eight o’clock Saturday morning at the rec center—he’d already booked the court time for them.

  All he said in the email he blasted out was that he’d have a surprise waiting for them when they got there.

  He did.

  “We are going to have ourselves a no-holds-barred, no-coach scrimmage today,” Coach Saunders announced.

  He told them he wasn’t going far, he’d be in another part of the rec center working on his own game for a change, so they wouldn’t be completely unsupervised. Just a little bit, he said. He said that what he mostly wanted was for them to supervise themselves this morning, without him watching over them. Without them trying to impress him.

  “I want you to impress yourselves today” is the way he put it.

  They were the ones who were going to pick the teams. They were the ones who were going to keep the score and call the fouls, same as they would on the playground, where everybody always used the honor system. If they wanted to use set plays, they could. If they wanted to go all street, as he put it, and really make it a playground game, they could haul off and do that, too.

  “Point is,” Coach said, “I’ve seen how hard you’ve all been working, getting ready for the season. Today I just want you all to cut loose and play, and have fun. Get to know one another better that way. Don’t be what you think I want you to be. Just be your own selves.”

  “So, you want us to be unplugged,” Dinero said.

  Coach grinned. “Not sure if you could be any more unplugged than you are already, son,” he said. “All due respect.”

  “Better watch it, Coach,” Emmanuel said. “You might affect the Money Man’s confidence.”

  Coach shook his head, still grinning. “Couldn’t do that if I tried,” he said.

  They all laughed, even Dinero.

  Coach said he didn’t want there to be any beefs or stare-downs or hurt feelings. The rule of the day was to cut loose. Not be afraid to show the best in their games, and maybe even the worst sometimes.

  “I want this to be an hour of team bonding,” he said.

  “You want to know who wins?” Wes said.

  “Nah,” Coach said. “It’ll be enough to know that you all know.”

  They tried to balance the teams out right. This was after the rest of the guys had decided that the way to have a fair game, and the best game, would be if Wes and Dinero were on different teams. Dinero got DeAndre as his big guy. Wes got Emmanuel.

  From the start, it was the best game, everything Coach could have hoped for.

  It was like one of those runs you’d get in the summer, on your favorite playground, even if you didn’t know all of the other players in the game, everybody there just to show off their best game.

  Casey Fisher, another of the Hawks’ small forwards, was guarding Wes. Josh Amaro was guarding Dinero. And for the next hour, it seemed everybody on the court got a chance to shine.

  But after a while, it became clear that the imaginary spotlight was shining brightest on only two of them:

  Wes and Dinero.

  They didn’t keep calling their own number. They didn’t dominate the ball, even though Dinero had it way more for his team than Wes did for his. But as much as Dinero did have it, as much showboating as he was doing every chance he got, it was still fun for Wes to watch, and even appreciate, even if you were on the other team. From all his time watching the NBA, Wes knew it was a little bit like watching Russell Westbrook, both before and after he stopped being teammates with Kevin Durant. No matter how much Westbrook loved to showboat—and Wes knew he did—and draw as much attention to himself, you still wanted to watch the way he could play the game, whether he was shooting or passing or getting another rebound on his way to another triple-double.

  His game almost demanded that you watch him every time he had the ball in his hands, or was about to go get it off the boards, or had gotten an assist.

  He even made you care.

  It was a little like that with Dinero Rey, already.

  But Wes kept up with him today. He held his own. He wasn’t going to change who he was. But he wasn’t going to let himself get shown up by Dinero, either.

  Coach said to have fun?

  Winning was fun.

  Dinero kept breaking down the defense off the dribble, effortlessly. Sometimes he was happy to dish to DeAndre or Casey or Russ Adams, the Hawks’ best shooting guard. Sometimes he’d make a playground move on a drive, or pull up and launch a three. Sometimes he’d chirp after he made a play or a basket.

  Sometimes he’d rub his fingers together in his Money Man gesture.

  They would probably always be totally different on the court, but Wes knew he loved watching Dinero play.

  And was going to love beating him even more.

  They only had the court for a couple of minutes more. Dinero broke past Josh one more time, did a little stutter-step as if he were pulling up in the lane. E ran at him from underneath the basket. Dinero, smiling, drove past him and laid the ball in.

  Game tied.

  It was decided, because they could all see they were up against the clock, that if Wes’s team scored, they won. If not, they’d play until next basket won.

  “I’ll take Wes,” Dinero said.

  “Fine with me,” Casey Fisher said.

  Bring it, Wes said to himself.

  Wes gave a quick look at Emmanuel and winked. It was Wes’s way of telling his friend to be ready.

  Wes knew he was ready, because he knew exactly what he wanted to do. Had it worked out inside his head. He remembered a time when his dad had shown him the end of what he said was one of his favorite NBA games ever played. Bulls against the Knicks, Madison Square Garden. It was when Michael Jordan was only a couple of weeks back after having gone off to play minor-league baseball in the middle of his career.

  By the time the game was down to the last fifteen seconds, Jordan had already scored fifty-five points.

  “Wasn’t even close to being in basketball shape yet,” Michael Davies had said. “And he goes in there and drops a double-nickel on them.”

  He paused the video and then said, “Watch what happened then.”

  Bulls had the last shot. Everybody in the Garden knew who was taking it.

  Only Jordan didn’t shoot.

  He looked like he was going to shoot, but then at the last second he passed to the Bulls’ center, who dunked the ball, and the Bulls won by that basket.

  Dinero covered Wes closely all the way up the court. A couple of times, he flicked out those fast hands of his and tried to steal the ball. One time, Wes spun away from him. Another, he just angled his body so it was between him and Dinero.

  When he got to the top of the key, Dinero still all over him, Wes went behind his back, something he’d never do in a real game, and broke into the clear at the free-throw line.

  DeAndre had no choice but to come up on him.

  By the time he did, Wes was already rising up into his jump shot.

  DeAndre even yelled, trying to
distract him.

  Yell your head off, Wes thought, right before he fired a bullet pass to Emmanuel underneath the basket.

  E laid the ball in.

  Game time.

  Dinero got to Wes first. And there was that weird grin again, the one that made Wes feel like it was anything but a smile.

  “You got me today,” Dinero said. “I’ll get you next time.”

  “Next time,” Wes said, “it’ll be a real game. And we’ll be on the same team.”

  Dinero was still grinning.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Won’t we, though.”

  EIGHT

  HIS MOM, WES KNEW, ALWAYS loved horses, from the time she first rode as a little girl. She had been a champion rider all the way through high school, but had finally given up competing when she went to the University of Maryland. But she still loved being around them. So, a couple of days a week, when she was done with her job as librarian at Annapolis High School, she volunteered at a barn outside of town where developmentally challenged people, children and adults, got up on horses and would slowly be walked around a ring.

  “It’s as much therapy for me as it is for them,” she told Wes. “It’s not just good for their spirit, it’s good for my soul.”

  Another time she said, “Being at the barn reminds me that it doesn’t have to be challenging to be happy.”

  Wes wasn’t sure if she was talking about the people she helped or the horses or herself.

  Two days a week, then, he’d come home to an empty house after school. It didn’t bother Wes. He already felt lonely enough a lot of the time, without his dad in his life. He just kept trying to use his alone time to keep himself focused on getting better at basketball, because basketball was the one thing in his life he felt he could control.

  If things did work out the way he hoped they would, there was no way his dad wouldn’t want to be a part of this basketball season. This was Wes’s first chance to show off his skills on an elite team like the Hawks. It was all part of the plan. Of course Wes wanted him and Dinero to be a good team, to figure it out the way Steph and Durant had. Of course he wanted the Hawks to be a great team.

  But the real team was supposed to be him and his dad.

  The next practice for the Hawks was scheduled for Saturday morning at the Annapolis Rec Center. The Saturday after that, the regular season started. When Wes got home from school on Friday afternoon, a barn afternoon for his mom, he didn’t even take time to make himself a snack. He changed into his old Under Armour sneakers—he didn’t wear the new ones outside on the driveway—and his cool blue Wizards shorts and the long-sleeved shooting shirt all the members of the Hawks had been given, got his basketball, and went right outside and got to work.

  He started today with a drill he used to do with his dad all the time: Bounce the ball high to his left or right, run and catch it before it hit the ground, and shoot.

  Run to the spot, catch, shoot.

  Again and again.

  As usual, he could hear his dad’s voice inside his head:

  No wasted motion. Up and into the shot.

  “C’mon,” Wes heard. “You’re taking too much time to release it.”

  He stopped.

  The voice wasn’t inside his head now. It was coming from the end of the driveway.

  NINE

  THE BEARD HE’D COME HOME with from Afghanistan had gotten longer, and he’d stopped trimming it, Wes saw. He was wearing the old white-and-orange Orioles cap he’d owned for as long as Wes could remember. Faded blue jeans that were too big on him and a black T-shirt.

  As he made his way up the driveway, he was still limping. He’d never really explained to Wes or his mom why.

  Wes wanted to toss the ball and run and hug him. But something kept him from doing that. Maybe the fear that he wouldn’t be hugged back. Or maybe his dad looked so weak that Wes actually was afraid he might knock him over.

  So he stayed where he was, right in front of the basket, ball cocked on his hip.

  But he could feel himself smiling. Realizing in that moment how little it took for him to be happy.

  He didn’t know why his dad was here. Just that he was here.

  “You’re running after the ball like you’ve still got your backpack on,” his dad said. “You know that in a game you’re not gonna be covered by guys as old and slow as me, right?”

  “Maybe slow,” Wes said. “But not old.”

  “Old as the navy,” his dad said.

  “Mom’s not here,” Wes said, without being asked.

  “I know.”

  “Is that why you picked now to come?” Wes said.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to see your mom,” he said. “But today I wanted to see you.”

  “I’m here every day and every night,” Wes said.

  Just like that, he knew his smile was gone.

  “Know that, too,” his dad said.

  Neither one of them said anything until his dad said, “I felt like you were a little slow with your release the other night at practice.”

  “I knew you were there,” Wes said. “I just knew it.”

  His dad lifted his shoulders and dropped them, as if even that took a lot of effort. Tipped the Orioles cap back on his head. “Old habits,” he said, “die hard.”

  “You could have come closer to the court,” Wes said. “A lot of parents do—Coach doesn’t mind. And I could have introduced you to Coach and the guys.”

  “I was fine where I was,” he said. “Watching from a distance.”

  Wes thought, And not only with my basketball.

  “Where’s your car?” Wes said. “I didn’t hear it.”

  “Parked a few blocks away,” he said. “Do a little extra walking every chance I get. Trying to build the strength up in the leg.”

  Again: He never said what happened to make him limp or why he lost strength in his leg. His mom had tried to get it out of him when he was first back and still living in the house. He’d say he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Never specifying what it was, whether he was talking about the war or what had happened there or his injured leg. Or all of it.

  Her questions only made him quieter, if that was even possible. It was like he was watching them from a distance even when he was still in the house. And they were watching him the same way.

  “It’s good to see you, Dad,” Wes said now.

  “Good to see you, big boy.”

  “How are you doing really?”

  “Doing okay,” he said. Then added, “Really.”

  Wes was about to tell him that he didn’t seem okay, that he seemed the total, complete opposite of okay, almost like he’d turned into a total, complete new person. But what was the point? If he knew that, so did his dad.

  They stood there, awkwardly staring at each other. Wes could still feel the connection between them, even here. But sometimes it was as if he were still as far away as Afghanistan. Wes would tell his mom sometimes that she could find out all the details if she wanted.

  “I’ll find out when your father tells me,” she said. “Or tells us.”

  “He needs us to help him,” Wes said.

  Then she said, “Not until he’s ready for it. And right now he can’t even help himself.”

  But today, he was here to help Wes, as it turned out.

  “You can’t keep letting that other boy run the whole show,” his dad said. “Like they used to say: Not enough mustard in the whole world to cover that kid.”

  They both knew who he meant.

  “I’m not, Dad,” Wes said. “I’m trying to figure out how we can run it together. And you’re the one who’s always told me you can’t be the best player you can be without being the best teammate you can be.”

  “Wish I could take credit for that one,” his dad said. “That one came from my old high s
chool coach.”

  He motioned with his hands for Wes to pass him the ball. Wes snapped off a hard chest pass that wasn’t too hard, extending his arms and his hands, turning his wrists out as he released the ball.

  Michael Davies caught the ball and then rolled it around in his hands.

  “That other boy?” he said.

  “His name is Dinero.”

  His father laughed. “That his real name?”

  “Nickname. Danilo is his real first name. Like Danilo Gallinari, the guy from the NBA.”

  “Well, whether it’s Danilo or Dinero, you make sure that boy shows you the proper respect,” he said. “He’s a good enough player that he has to know how good you are. Probably the best he’s ever played with. But he acts like he’s the boss out there on the court. He can’t go more than a few minutes without doing something to draw attention to himself. Like he thinks there needs to be a spotlight on him all the time.”

  “I’m not feeling that, Dad, I’m really not. He just has more street ball in his game.”

  “Well, I’m seeing that. Saw it in that scrimmage, for sure.”

  How much of their practices had he been watching?

  “How much have you seen?”

  “Enough to know that I know what I’m talking about.”

  He snapped off a hard bounce pass back at Wes. Wes grinned and fired one back at him.

  “We’ll get it figured out,” Wes said.

  “You sure?” his dad said.

  “Yeah.”

  “He thinks it has to be on his terms. You can tell he’s been spoiled into thinking that, probably every step of the way.”

  Wes started to say something. His dad held up a hand.

  “Remember something,” his dad continued. “He might think he’s better than you. But he’s not.”

  “Truth? Best I’ve played with yet.”

  “I’ve told you your whole life,” his dad said, “best means more than most talented.”

  At least, Wes thought, he’s trying to be my dad, whether I agree with everything he’s saying or not.