No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  Wes checked his phone. It was almost time for his mom to pick them up.

  “You think I should talk to him?” Wes asked.

  “I don’t know if he’s gonna change,” E said. “I know he can see what a good player you are. But he also sees some kind of threat.”

  “I gotta convince him that he’s wrong,” Wes said. “I don’t know how. But I do have one idea worth trying.”

  Wes met Dinero at the rec center at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. Wes’s mom drove him. Dinero’s dad drove him. Wes was waiting out front when Dinero and his dad pulled up. He watched as Dinero’s dad got out of the driver’s side and came around and hugged Dinero before getting back behind the wheel.

  Before the car, a black Jeep, pulled away, Dinero’s dad rolled down the window on the passenger’s side, and Wes heard him say, “Love you, star. Go shine like you can.”

  “Love you, too, Papa,” Dinero said.

  Wes and Dinero had each brought their own basketball. Maybe, Wes thought, that figured.

  I’ve got one ball; he’s got another.

  “Glad you called,” Dinero said, giving Wes a quick high five. “I was just gonna veg and watch football today. Maybe shoot around a little in the backyard at halftime.”

  Wes knew from the other guys on the team that Dinero’s dad, a lawyer in Annapolis, had built him a full court in their backyard, with a free-throw line, a three-point line, a lane, everything. They said that during the summer there were pickup games on Saturday mornings, mostly with seventh- and eighth-graders.

  “I just thought that we could work on some stuff together,” Wes said. “Maybe get to know each other’s games better.”

  Dinero smiled, but it didn’t feel to Wes like one of his happy smiles. “Fine with me, Thirteen.”

  It had always been Wes’s theory that he did his best thinking on a court, with a ball in his hands. Maybe, he figured, if it was only him and Dinero on the court, they could talk in Wes’s real first language:

  Basketball.

  Wes decided it was worth a try. They could only make this work if they worked together. Maybe they could be more than teammates. They could be friends.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  They had fun.

  There was a game going on at the next court, five on five, a bunch of guys in it that Wes recognized from Mr. Correa’s usual game. But he wasn’t out there this morning. The court on the other side of the grown-ups’ game was empty at eleven o’clock. So, for now, Wes and Dinero didn’t have to worry about people showing up and wanting to use the court they were on.

  They started out playing a game of H-O-R-S-E, Dinero finally winning on a three-pointer from the right corner that Wes missed twice. Wes had to hand it to the guy. Dinero didn’t have much weakness to his game.

  Then they played a game of one-on-one, to seven baskets. Dinero finally won that one, too, with a drive to his left—his left-handed dribble as sure and strong as his right—faking Wes into the air before he banked home the winner.

  It made Dinero happy.

  Very happy, with a smile as genuine as any Wes had seen on Dinero.

  They had joked and chirped on each other the whole game. But they both knew it was serious ball, especially at the end.

  Yet it didn’t bother Wes so much to lose a contest like this, one that came down to the final shot. He’d shown his own skills along the way, proven that he could keep up with Dinero step for step.

  They sat down on the floor and drank from the water bottles they’d both brought.

  “Do your parents always tell you to hydrate?” Wes said.

  “In two languages,” Dinero said.

  “You think LeBron hydrates?” Wes said.

  Dinero laughed. “Only if he feels like it,” he said. “When you’re as great as he is, you make your own rules.”

  “But he’s an awesome teammate,” Wes said. “That’s what everybody says.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t make the rules,” Dinero said. “The king does what he wants.”

  Wes nodded.

  “Is LeBron your favorite player?”

  Dinero shook his head. “Steph,” he said. “I like that he stayed the man in Golden State even after Durant got there.”

  “But wasn’t Durant MVP of the finals?”

  “Game still runs through Steph,” Dinero said. “Always will.” The grin now, the one that wasn’t quite a smile.

  Wes thought, Are we talking about them, or are we talking about us?

  He changed the subject. “You like working on stuff by yourself?” he said. “I do.”

  “I guess,” Dinero said. “But after a while I get bored.”

  Wes never did.

  “I already know what I can do,” Dinero said. “I’d always rather play a game.”

  “Games help me get better,” Wes said. “But sometimes I want to be alone and just work.”

  “You work,” he said to Wes, grin back in place. “I play.”

  “Is there a difference?” Wes asked him, honestly wanting to know, because he didn’t think so.

  “I don’t know, I don’t think about it all that much,” Dinero said. “Maybe it’s because basketball was never hard for me.”

  He didn’t make it sound as if he were bragging. Just stating a fact. Like he was telling Wes his cell phone number.

  “You do make it look pretty easy,” Wes said.

  Just because he did.

  “I just look at it, like, basketball is something I was meant to do,” Dinero said. “Like it was my ticket to where I wanted to go.”

  “College ball?” Wes said.

  “Steph didn’t stop after Davidson,” Dinero said. “Why should I?”

  He made it sound as if they were the same, him and Steph, even though he was only in the seventh grade. Wes put it to him this way: “You sound so sure.”

  “Sure as you and me are sitting here,” Dinero Rey said.

  He took another swig of water. “You want to get after it one more time?”

  “Okay,” Wes said. “But I better warn you: No way you’re taking me twice in the same day.”

  “Well then,” Dinero said, “since it’s Sunday morning, you better say a prayer, dude.”

  “I know you’re just coming with more chirp,” Wes said.

  They both stood.

  They’d used Dinero’s ball in the first game. Wes picked it up.

  “Shoot for it?” he said.

  “You take it,” Dinero said. “Even if you get the lead, it won’t last long.”

  “You sound like Mr. Correa going on about Shakespeare,” Wes said. “All I hear is blah-blah-blah.”

  Wes had never loved playing one-on-one. Even though so much of basketball was you against somebody else, straight up, Wes had always looked at it as a game within a much bigger game. Wes Davies knew that people around the world called soccer “the beautiful game.” But as far as he was concerned, they had it wrong. Basketball was the beautiful game, a game of motion, of passing and shooting, guarding and being guarded. One-on-one wasn’t real ball, not to Wes. Real ball was ten guys out there, and ten times the possibilities.

  That was real ball.

  The only thing real for him right now was that he didn’t plan on losing to Dinero again this morning.

  Wes went up early, 4–2. But Dinero got hot in the middle of the game, even making a crazy fallaway with Wes all over him, to pull within one, 6–5. His ball. Winners out. They checked the ball out on top. Dinero crossed over on Wes, got a step on him, drove right, tried to rush a runner before Wes could use his long arms on him. Wes was ready and blocked it cleanly.

  Dinero called a foul.

  Wes knew it wasn’t. He knew it was a clean block. But they were using the honor system, even if Wes didn’t think Dinero was showing m
uch honor right now. He didn’t say anything or change expression. He just went and retrieved the ball, keeping himself calm, and handed it back to Dinero.

  “Check,” he said.

  This time Dinero went left. Put on a burst off the dribble, stopped as quickly as he’d started, tried to fake Wes into the air the way he had at the end of the last game.

  Fool me once, Wes thought.

  He didn’t bite. And proceeded to block another shot, as cleanly as before. Dinero didn’t say a word. He had to know he couldn’t call two fouls in a row, not this close to game time. He raced back to the outside. Dinero came out, but got too close to him. Wes stutter-stepped, blew past him, laid the ball in. It was 6–all. Now it was game time.

  Wes went to the top of the key. Dinero checked him. There was only the sound of their breathing between them. Sound of the air.

  And before Wes put the ball on the floor, he knew how he was going to win the game. Just like that. It almost made him smile. He prided himself on thinking one move ahead. Now this move had come to him.

  Dinero wasn’t as close as he’d gotten the play before, not wanting Wes to drive past him again and end the game with another layup. He watched as Wes calmly raised the ball over his head.

  And then Wes was bringing the ball down, bouncing it hard between them, but at an angle, so it went flying in the direction of the right corner.

  Dinero was slow to react. Wes ran underneath the ball like an outfielder running and getting himself underneath a long fly ball. He caught it before Dinero could catch up with him. Then he squared himself like he was alone in his driveway and put up a long jumper that hit nothing but net.

  “Hey!” Dinero yelled, his voice sounding. “Hey, you can’t do that, pass the ball to yourself!”

  “Wasn’t a pass,” Wes said. “Just a real long dribble. It’s called leading the ball. Look it up.”

  “That should be a travel,” Dinero said. “Or a double dribble. It should be something.”

  “Here’s what it is,” Wes said. “Seven–six, me.”

  The next thing he said came out of him before he could stop it. Or maybe there was a part of him that didn’t want to stop it.

  “I just threw myself the pass you should have thrown me yesterday,” he said.

  Dinero had been walking to retrieve the ball. He stopped now. Slowly turned around. Just like that, it was as if a dark cloud had passed in front of his face.

  “You’re not gonna let it go, are you?” he said.

  “I was joking,” Wes said.

  “It didn’t sound like joking to me,” Dinero said. “You tell me you were open yesterday, and now today you bring it up again. You got a problem with me?”

  Everything was suddenly more serious than the game.

  “No,” Wes said. “You got a problem with me making a little joke?”

  “My problem,” Dinero said, “is that you still have a problem with a game we won. On a shot that I made at the buzzer.”

  Wes thought about reminding him that it was a lucky shot, but knew that would only make things worse. He hadn’t come here today looking to start a fight, just a basketball friendship.

  “You told me the first night of practice,” Wes said, “to be ready if I was open. Well, yesterday I was wide open.”

  They stood staring at each other. Dinero hadn’t moved. Neither had Wes. Neither one of them giving any ground.

  “You’re not always my first option,” Dinero said. “Maybe you need to get that in your head.”

  “But I should have been,” Wes said. “Everybody knew that.”

  “Well, everybody didn’t have the rock,” Dinero said. “I did.”

  Then he flashed a strained smile and, without saying another word, without saying good-bye, walked over and picked up his ball, and grabbed the little gym bag in which he’d carried his water bottle, and walked out of the gym.

  Taking his ball and going home.

  THIRTEEN

  JUST LIKE THAT, THINGS CHANGED between them, as if Dinero had smacked him with the ball all over again.

  His ball.

  If you watched the next two practices for the Hawks, you might not have noticed things were different between Dinero and Wes. Dinero didn’t stop smiling, didn’t stop talking to Wes, didn’t stop passing him the ball. Sometimes it was like he went out of his way to make everybody else think that they were boys.

  Wes knew better. They weren’t. It was something he tried to explain to Emmanuel after their practice on Wednesday night, second-to-last one before their game at Montgomery County on Saturday.

  “You’re seeing things that aren’t there,” Emmanuel said. “Like you’re seeing ghosts.”

  “He’s not a ghost,” Wes said. “He’s right there with me on the court.”

  “He’s not freezing you out,” Emmanuel said. “You think I wouldn’t notice?”

  They were waiting for his mom to pick them up, where they were supposed to wait, in the front lobby.

  “I’m trying to explain this to you without making it sound as if I have a big head,” Wes said.

  “You do have a big head, full of basketball,” Emmanuel said. “But I know that’s not the kind you mean.”

  Wes lowered his voice, even though the rest of the players were gone by now. But sometimes you said things that you were afraid you might hear.

  “I should always be his first option,” he said. “But I’m not. That’s what I’m seeing.”

  “You’re saying that if he doesn’t give it to you when he should, it’s the same as freezing you out.”

  “Exactly,” Wes said. “He’s the point guard. I get that he ought to have the ball more than me. But when we’ve scrimmaged the last two practices, he’s giving me fewer touches. And there were even fewer tonight than there were on Monday.”

  “You’re saying it’s on account of what you said to him,” Emmanuel said.

  “Hundred percent.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “You know what they say, E,” Wes said. “Ball don’t lie. And you know me well enough to know I never lie about ball.”

  It was little things, working themselves up to being big things. Dinero would wait just long enough after Wes got open so that by the time Wes got the ball, he was about to be covered close again. When they’d run the high pick-and-roll—a play that was money for them, like Dinero’s nickname—Dinero was keeping it more.

  And there were times when Wes shouldn’t have gotten the ball, when he was all jammed up in traffic, that he did force it to him, even though there was no room for Wes to maneuver.

  “He didn’t like me telling him he was wrong,” Wes said. “It’s like nobody’s allowed to do that with him.”

  “So, talk to him,” Emmanuel said.

  “Because that worked out so great the last time we got together?” Wes said. “All I did was make things worse.”

  “Sounds like it!”

  He was smiling, though.

  Emmanuel said, “Come on, he won’t take this to the game. He wants to win the way we do.”

  Wes was sure he did. But only playing by his own rules.

  The Dinero rules.

  FOURTEEN

  WES SOMETIMES THOUGHT—ACTUALLY A LOT of times thought—that his mom knew him as well as his dad knew basketball.

  Like she knew him as a person the way his dad knew him as a player, even though Wes had always believed they were the same, you couldn’t separate them even if you tried.

  “Quiet tonight,” she said at the end of dinner. “Something going on with the team?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said.

  “And it’s something you can’t talk to your old mom about?”

  “It’s a basketball thing.”

  “Oooooooh,” she said. “A basketball thing. Way above my motherly pay gra
de.”

  She winked at him.

  “You know I didn’t mean it that way,” Wes said.

  “Try me,” she said. “If you’re going too fast for me, I’ll tell you.”

  “Funny,” he said.

  She sighed. “I know,” she said.

  So he told her. All of it. He told her about telling Dinero he was open right after the game. He told her about the one-on-one game and joking that he’d made the pass to himself that Dinero hadn’t made. Told her about the way Dinero had reacted. And now the way he’d kept reacting at the Hawks’ last two practices.

  “You think he’s getting in your way,” she said, “jamming you up.”

  He nodded. “There’s only five guys on a team,” he said. “And all it takes for things to get out of whack is one.” He shook his head. “And then things really are wack.”

  “Isn’t he too good a player to let his ego get in the way of the team’s goals?” she said.

  “That’s the way it ought to work.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Nope.”

  His mom said, “You obviously struck a nerve and hurt his feelings. So, apologize.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Wes said. “If there’s anybody who should apologize, it’s him. He’s the one who made the bonehead play at the end of that game.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “But you did call him out. Now, be the bigger man before this thing between the two of you jams up the whole team.”

  She smiled across the table at him.

  “I know you’re a guy. I know guys think that talking things out is against the law. But trust me, sometimes shutting up isn’t the answer.”

  “Dad won’t talk things out,” he said.

  “And look where that has gotten us,” she said, in a sad voice that made Wes wish he’d known when to shut his big mouth.

  He told her he’d think about it, but right now he had homework to do. His mom said to go ahead, she’d clean up, before pointing out that he often had homework he’d forgotten when he wanted to drop the subject.

  He went upstairs, thinking he did want to talk things out, just not with Dinero. He wanted to talk things out with his dad. Who didn’t talk about much of anything these days. He tried to call him when he got to his room, but it went straight to voice mail. It meant his phone was turned off again, or maybe it had died.