No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  “Fine, have it your way,” he said.

  “As much as you guys play like men sometimes, and as much as you have both looked up to the men in your lives, you need to remember something,” she said. “You’re still just boys.”

  “Your point being?” Wes said.

  “Just go outside and be boys,” she said. “That’s my point.”

  THIRTY

  FOR A LITTLE WHILE IN the driveway, they didn’t talk about their dads.

  They were just boys.

  They didn’t play one-on-one today. Wes admitted that he’d never liked playing one-on-one, mostly because he didn’t think you learned a whole lot about basketball if what you were doing didn’t involve passing the ball.

  “I know you still have to play with your head up in one-on-one,” Wes said to Dinero. “But somehow when I’m doing it, I feel like I’m playing with my head down.”

  “Never thought of it that way,” Dinero said. “So maybe I’ve already learned something today.”

  “I don’t learn anything when it’s just me against somebody else,” Wes said. “Going up against each other we’re not learning how to play with each other.”

  Dinero shook his head. “My dad kept telling me that I had to watch out for you,” he said.

  “Guess what?” Wes said. “My dad told me the same thing about you.”

  “Yeah,” Dinero said, “and then I made him look like a genius when I wouldn’t pass you the ball.”

  Dinero had the ball. He spun away from Wes with a lightning move Wes had seen him use in games. He started to pull up for a jumper. But Wes had a feeling he wasn’t shooting, so he cut to the basket. Dinero finished his shooting motion with an empty right hand, because he was shoveling a perfect underhand pass to Wes with his left.

  Then Wes caught the ball with his left hand, and in one motion, already in midair, he scooped the ball off the backboard.

  “Hey,” Dinero said, “we should try that in a game one of these days.”

  “If we do, I better make the shot,” Wes said, “or we’ll both be sitting next to Coach.”

  “He can sit one of us down and win, we already proved that,” Dinero said. “But not both of us.”

  Making it sound like they were a team, within their team. Or as if they were introducing themselves to each other all over again, closer to the end of the season than the beginning.

  Wes knew it wasn’t as if all of their problems were going to disappear in one afternoon. But maybe they were both learning today, mostly about each other. Mostly they were passing each other the ball, from all parts of the driveway and all angles. They invented plays, imagining where imaginary screeners and imaginary defenders were. They came up with a drill that no matter where either of them was on the driveway court—even if they weren’t facing each other—as soon as one guy yelled, “Open,” a clean pass had to be made in that moment. The more they did it, the better they got at it, as if they could find each other with their eyes closed.

  “I got another one,” Dinero said. “No matter which one of us has the ball, if the other thinks he can get open on a cut, all he has to do is this.”

  He made his money motion with his fingers.

  “Seriously?” Wes said.

  “Might as well finally make the move useful,” Dinero Rey said.

  “I’ve never done that before in my life,” Wes said.

  “First time for everything,” Dinero said.

  They bumped fists. And kept playing, having lost track of time. Not going against each other. Playing basketball with each other. Wes’s mom came to the side door finally and asked if Dinero would like to stay for dinner. He said that he needed to call his parents, but was pretty sure it would be okay with them. Then Wes asked if he could invite Emmanuel over, too. She said to have at it. He went inside and called E, while Dinero was getting out his own phone and calling home.

  “You want to come over and shoot around and then have dinner later?” Wes asked Emmanuel.

  He heard E ask his mom and heard her in the background telling him that if she was going to give him a ride, it had to be right now, she had some errands to run.

  “Be there soon,” E said, “as you probably heard.”

  “Pretty sure I could have heard her without a phone,” Wes said. “Get over here, dude. Dinero and I will be waiting for you.”

  He was waiting to drop that one on him.

  “Excuse me?” E said.

  “Yeah,” Wes said. “He came over and we’ve been outside working on stuff ever since.”

  “You and your nemesis, Dinero?” E said. “That Dinero?”

  “Shut up and get in the car,” Wes said.

  When he was back outside, Dinero said, “My parents are cool with me staying.”

  “Cool,” Wes said.

  It was crazy, if he really thought about it. He’d been hoping all along that his dad might make his season better. And maybe now, because of what he started by walking onto the court that day, he had.

  Wes had the ball. Dinero cut to the basket. Wes grinned and held on to the ball.

  “Oh, I get it,” Dinero said. “It was your turn not to pass me the ball even though I was open.”

  “Nope,” Wes said.

  He rubbed his fingers together.

  “You didn’t give me the sign,” he said.

  Wes was nearly back to the sidewalk. Dinero went over near the front walk, made the money motion with his fingers. As soon as he took off, Wes snapped off a long, one-bounce pass that caught him right in stride.

  When E got there, they ran some of the plays the Hawks did off high screens, then had him popping out to take short jumpers of his own, which he was knocking down the way he had at the end of the game against the Spurs.

  “There’s gonna be a big moment before this season is over,” Dinero said to E, “when the defense is going to back off and dare you to make a shot, and you’re gonna make it.”

  “If you say so,” Emmanuel said.

  “We know so,” Wes said.

  They stayed out there until Wes’s mom called them for dinner. The day got colder, Wes’s mom saying it was in the forties. Wes and Dinero and E all wore hoodies, and worked up such a good sweat they didn’t care. They ate dinner and had more chocolate chip cookies. Wes’s mom put the lights on over the basket, and they went back outside and played until it was time for Dinero and E to leave.

  Wes was getting ready for bed when he heard his phone buzzing. He went and picked it up. The screen read, “Unknown Caller.” Wes felt his heart beating a little faster because the only unknown caller who ever called him was his dad.

  “Hello,” he said, hearing the excitement in his own voice.

  There was no response. But he could hear people talking in the background and music playing.

  “Hello,” he said again. “This is Wes. Is that you, Dad?”

  There was still no response. Just the voices and the music, until he heard somebody in the background yell, “What does a guy have to do to get a beer around here?”

  A bar, Wes thought.

  His dad was calling him from a bar.

  Had to be.

  “Hello,” he said one more time.

  Nothing except the bar noise. Somebody laughed. There was a cheer. If it was a bar, maybe there was some kind of game on the television.

  Wes didn’t want it to be a bar, but where else could noise like that be coming from?

  He stared at the phone in his hand, put it back to his ear, held it there until the bar noise was gone, and he finally heard the call end. Then Wes turned it off, stuck it in the top drawer of his nightstand, turned off the lights, and got into bed.

  The whole day had been money, he thought.

  Until it wasn’t.

  THIRTY-ONE

  SOMEHOW THEY WERE STARTING TO close in
on the end of the regular season, in first place by themselves now, becoming more certain by the game that they would be one of the teams in their league’s Final Four.

  Didn’t mean it was getting any easier.

  Even though things had gotten easier between Wes and Dinero, and even though they both had the best of basketball intentions, they were still a work in progress—they were learning to play together all over again.

  It reached the point where Coach Saunders had to sit them down and explain that there was such a thing as being too unselfish, as much as he preached unselfishness to them and the rest of the Hawks all the time.

  “You guys are so worried about passing the ball, to yourself and everybody else, that you’re passing up good shots,” Coach said after they’d hung on to beat a really good team from Washington, D.C., the Bulls.

  “See,” Coach continued, “there always comes the time when the ball is supposed to stop. When you’re supposed to shoot it. Doesn’t matter whether it goes in or not. Not what I’m talking about. It means that the play you just ran—one your old coach drew up for you—actually worked.”

  Wes knew what he meant. It wasn’t that he and Dinero had overpassed in the game they’d just played and won. There were times when they were both so fixed on tracking what the other one was doing that it had nearly cost them a victory. There had been too many times when Wes had the ball and his eyes locked on Dinero the way a quarterback in football only locked in on one receiver. And Dinero had done the same.

  They had been tied with the D.C. Bulls at 46 with just over two minutes left to play. Bulls ball. The kid Wes had been guarding for most of the game, Kyle Lester, was shorter than Wes by a couple of inches, but he’d had a solid game. Wes had underestimated him early because of the size advantage he had on him, thinking his length would keep Kyle from shooting over him from the outside. But then he’d found out the hard way—after Kyle knocked down some jumpers—that he had this sneaky way of creating just enough space for himself right before he released the ball.

  Now Wes told himself to crowd Kyle even more with the game on the line. As soon as he did, Kyle put the ball on the floor. He seemed to have a step on Wes. But Wes cut him off and forced him to the middle. When he did, Kyle forced up a shot anyway, the kind of shot Dinero kept trying to squeeze off in traffic earlier in the season. The shot hit the front of the rim. Wes, following the play all the way, grabbed the rebound. He heard Coach yell, “Push!” Fine with Wes. He knew they had come from behind in the second half because they had pushed the ball on the break-off after just about every Bulls’ miss.

  Wes took the ball up the middle himself. Dinero was on his right, E on his left. There were two guys back for the Bulls. Wes ran the three-on-two exactly the way he had always been taught, making the defenders commit themselves first. Making them come to him. It wasn’t much of a coordinated effort. They both tried to pinch on Wes at the same time, leaving both wings open.

  As much as E’s shot had improved lately, Wes was going to Dinero all the way.

  As soon as the ball was in Dinero’s hands, Wes thought:

  Shoot it.

  This time I want you to put it up.

  Dinero didn’t hesitate.

  But he wasn’t shooting.

  He was passing the ball right back to Wes, almost as if the ball had barely touched his own hands. Wes was so surprised to see the ball coming right back at him that it nearly went through his hands. He bobbled it at first, quickly collected it, saw that E was still wide open on the left, and passed the ball to him.

  Second option becoming the best option.

  E also didn’t hesitate. Just pulled up as the defender closest to him slid over, banked home a ten-footer like a champ.

  Hawks by two.

  At the other end, Kyle Lester made a terrific feed to the Bulls’ center and got the kid a layup.

  Game tied again.

  Under a minute.

  The whole season has come down to the last minute, Wes thought.

  And, really, who’d want to have it any other way?

  The Hawks went right back at them. Dinero had the ball now, near the top of the key. The rest of them spread the court. Wes ran to the right corner. Always his sweet spot. Kyle ran with him. Then they both watched as Dinero just absolutely torched the kid guarding with him with a filthy crossover, leaving the kid frozen in place, taking the ball past the free-throw line and into the middle.

  Wes had seen him make this same move in scrimmages plenty of times, breaking down Josh or Russ or even Wes off the dribble this way, having the bigs in front of him at his mercy.

  Even when Wes and Dinero weren’t getting along, when it really was as if they were playing on opposing teams, it had been fun to watch Dinero operate this way, knowing how many options he had in moments like this.

  Like he had the defense defenseless.

  So many times, Wes had seen him pull up, even when a big came up on him, and delight in tossing his favorite shot—a teardrop, Dinero called the drop—up and over everybody.

  Drop the drop on them now!

  It was like Wes was shouting at himself, inside his own brain.

  Except at the last moment, as the Bulls’ center did get a long arm up, Dinero wheeled and kicked the ball all the way over to Wes, even as covered as Wes was. Kyle nearly beat him to the ball. Didn’t.

  Wes grabbed it, had time to give a quick check of the shot clock.

  Three seconds showing.

  Now or never.

  He turned—not getting a chance to square himself all the way, almost as if he were shooting sidesaddle—and got the ball airborne even with Kyle right in his face. So Wes was the one forcing a shot now, because he had no choice.

  When he let it go, he thought it was too high and too hard.

  Maybe a little bit to the right.

  But then he watched in amazement as the ball hit high off the backboard and went in.

  The Hawks were back up by two.

  It was the way the game ended.

  It was almost immediately, as soon as they were out of the handshake line, that Coach pulled Wes and Dinero aside, sat them down at the end of the bench, and gave them his speech about unselfishness.

  They both did a lot of nodding. They both knew enough about basketball to know that what he was telling them was right. They both said they’d work harder. Coach said that was all he could ask.

  “Work harder,” he said. “Think better.”

  But even now Dinero couldn’t resist being Dinero.

  “But, Coach,” he said, “don’t they sometimes accuse LeBron of being too unselfish?”

  Wes watched Coach grin. It was as if he could see Dinero putting a move on him. But he was ready for it.

  “I’m sorry,” Coach said, “but are you comparing yourself to LeBron?”

  “No, sir!” Dinero said.

  They were both having fun and knew it.

  “But you can appreciate the point your point guard is making,” Dinero continued.

  “Help me out,” Coach said.

  “I may be moving the ball too much,” he said. “But at least I’m moving it.” He smiled. “Just like you keep telling me to.”

  A big smile from him now, as big as he had. Wes felt himself smiling, too.

  Coach turned to Wes and said, “You think this is funny?”

  “Fun, Coach,” he said. “Just having fun watching the show.”

  “And would you like to add anything to the conversation?”

  Wes said, “We’ll both try to be better.”

  “And smarter,” Dinero said.

  “More like it,” Coach said. Then he looked at both of them, his face suddenly serious, and said, “Not the worst problem in the world to have, even if we needed to get lucky a couple of times there down at the end.”

  “Fun
getting lucky once in a while,” Wes said.

  “Winning’s the most fun,” Dinero said, then nodded at Wes and said, “I get that from him, Coach.”

  Wes went to talk to his mom, and E and E’s parents. But as he walked over to them, he could see Dinero’s dad waving him over, almost as if he were angry with Dinero, his face red. For most of the season Wes had been waiting for Mr. Rey to show some kind of emotion at these games, to do something more than sit there with his arms crossed.

  Finally he was.

  Dinero’s smile, Wes could see, was already long gone. He stopped and watched as Dinero and his dad made their way quickly down the sideline, past the Bulls’ bench, toward the doors of the rec center. Mr. Rey was doing all the talking. Dinero had his head down as his father clearly gave him an earful, out the door and into the lobby and probably all the way home.

  Wes thought:

  It’s as if Dinero’s dad had turned into Lonzo’s dad, just without the world hearing everything he had to say.

  Or maybe Dinero’s dad had been that way all along.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THERE WAS A MAN SITTING on the front step of the porch when they pulled into the driveway after the game, in the same place Wes’s dad had been that time.

  For a second, Wes thought it might be his dad.

  It wasn’t.

  “Who is that?” Wes said to his mom, before either one of them got out of the car.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Stay here.”

  “I’m not afraid to get out of the car, Mom,” Wes said.

  He saw her smile. “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t be, would you?”

  As they both got out of the car, Christine Davies called out to the man. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing on my front porch?”

  The man stood up, smiling, putting his hands up in surrender.

  “So sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I don’t mean to sound rude,” she said. “But who are you?”

  “I’m looking for Lieutenant Davies,” he said.