No Slam Dunk

by Mike Lupica

  With a minute to go in the third quarter, even the Pistons’ shooting guard, Sammy Orr, got hot and cut the Hawks’ lead to ten.

  Wes gave a quick look at their bench. Dinero was still sitting next to Coach, who was making no move to put him back into the game. Josh hit Wes after Wes made a great backdoor cut. Matt Riley missed. On the last play of the quarter, Casey Fisher released early on a Sammy miss, and Wes threw him a football pass. Casey got a layup right before the horn. The lead was back to fourteen. The Pistons never got closer than that the rest of the way.

  Dinero never got off the bench, except for timeouts.

  When the game was over, Dinero reluctantly got into the handshake line along with everybody else. He didn’t speak to any of the Pistons. He didn’t speak to anyone on the court, period. Showed no interest in the homemade cookies that Josh’s mom had brought.

  He just wanted to get out of there.

  But he had to wait, because his father was at the other end of the court with Coach, underneath what had been the Hawks’ basket in the second half. Mr. Rey was the one doing most of the talking, as far as Wes could tell. It reminded Wes of the scene between Dinero and his dad after their last game, when he’d given Dinero an earful. Now he was doing it with Coach Saunders.

  At one point, Mr. Rey pointed a finger at Coach, who stared at the finger until Mr. Rey put his hand down.

  While that was going on, Wes walked over to Dinero and said, “Man, what happened out there today?”

  Because he couldn’t not ask.

  Dinero didn’t look at Wes. He just kept staring at his dad and Coach, his face telling Wes everything. Mostly about how much Dinero wanted his dad to walk away.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Dinero said.

  “But what about everything we talked about?” Wes said. “About us being a team?”

  “We want the team to win, right?” Dinero said. “Well, wasn’t our lead bigger before Coach took me out? Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not saying it was,” Wes said. “It just wasn’t a team thing.”

  “Sometimes the best thing for this team is me taking over the way I did,” Dinero said. “The way I can.”

  It finally ended between Coach and Mr. Rey. Dinero’s dad began to walk in their direction, his face red.

  “Dude,” Wes said. “Talk to me.”

  “I can’t,” Dinero whispered.

  His dad jerked his head in the direction of the doors to the gym and kept walking. Dinero followed him. And all Wes could think was that what had turned into a long day for Dinero Rey was about to get longer.

  It was funny, he thought.

  For so much of the game, the way they’d played really had been money. It was why they’d won.

  It was the Money Man who’d lost.

  THIRTY-SIX

  WES WAS IN MR. CORREA’S office after school on Monday. His mom was picking him up after that for an early Hawks’ practice.

  Wes was still trying to understand what had happened with Dinero on Saturday.

  “I thought everything was all good,” he said to Mr. Correa. “And then it turned into crazytown.”

  “Sounds like,” Mr. Correa said.

  “I think it has something to do with his dad,” Wes said, and then described how after one game he’d been upset with Dinero even though the Hawks had won, and this time he’d been upset with Coach, even though the Hawks had won.

  “It’s like he doesn’t care how we play,” Wes said. “Just how Dinero looks.”

  Wes had never asked Mr. Correa about his private conversations with Dinero and wasn’t about to start now.

  “I think he’s under a lot of pressure from his dad,” Wes continued.

  “You said you never felt that kind of pressure,” Mr. C said. “From your dad, I mean.”

  “I never felt him pushing me,” Wes said. “At least until now. When he keeps pushing me and my mom away.”

  “Fathers and sons,” Mr. Correa said, slowly shaking his head, but smiling. “When my dad was the one doing the pushing, he was pushing me away from basketball and toward baseball.”

  “No way,” Wes said. “You’re way too good a basketball player.”

  “But my dad thought I was a better pitcher. And he thought baseball gave me a better chance to get to the pros. Only I knew something that he didn’t, even when I was your age: I was never gonna be good enough to make it to the pros in either sport. He didn’t see it that way. He thought baseball was my ticket to fame and fortune.”

  He pushed back from his desk, put an old-school pair of Adidas high-tops up on his desk, white with blue stripes.

  “I have a feeling, just off what you’ve told me,” Mr. C said, “that Dinero’s dad thinks Dinero is going to be the next Steph Curry. Or Russell Westbrook. Pick a guard.”

  Wes turned and picked up the Nerf ball off the floor, then drained a baby hook.

  “You may very well be the best Nerf shooter I’ve ever seen,” Mr. C said.

  “I would’ve passed it to you,” Wes said, grinning at him. “Only you would have missed.”

  “Sad, but true,” his adviser said.

  “At least Dinero’s dad is around,” Wes said.

  “You need to be patient with your dad,” Mr. Correa said.

  And then it all came spilling out of Wes, everything Petty Officer Phillips had told him about what happened to his dad’s unit. How Petty Officer Phillips had come around wanting to thank Wes’s dad for something his dad was obviously still blaming himself for.

  “If they all know it wasn’t his fault, how come he doesn’t?” Wes said.

  “Give him time,” Mr. Correa said. “He’ll find his way back to you and your mom.”

  “I want to believe that,” Wes said.

  “So, keep believing,” Mr. C said. “Basketball is full of momentum swings. It just takes a team a while to find its footing and believe in its shots. Your dad’s finding his footing all over again. In time, he’ll start believing in himself. And then he’s going to need you and your mom like never before. His teammates.”

  He made a motion with his hands for Wes to pass him the ball. Mr. C shot and even held his follow-through.

  Missed.

  “Told you,” Wes said.

  They both laughed. There were so many complications in Wes’s life right now, because of his dad and because of Dinero. So much that Wes didn’t understand or that didn’t make sense to him. But everything always felt right when he was in this office. His problems didn’t disappear when he was with Mr. Correa. But they also didn’t seem as bad. It was why Wes always walked out of there feeling better.

  Mr. Correa believed things would get better with Wes’s dad. And because he did, he made Wes believe.

  It wasn’t all Wes wanted, or even close.

  But it would have to do for now.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  A COUPLE OF TIMES AT PRACTICE, Wes tried to start conversations with Dinero, as a way of seeing if he was okay. Dinero didn’t blow him off when he did or act mean. He just made it clear that he didn’t want to talk.

  So maybe they were the same in that way.

  One time Dinero said to Wes, “I told you I wanted to be more like you. So right now I’m letting my game do the talking. Okay?”

  Wes almost told him that his game had practically been shouting at him during the Pistons’ game, but didn’t.

  He just said, “Okay.”

  They were getting ready to play the last game of the regular season, against Bakari Hogan and the Montgomery County Grizzlies, try to nail down first place in the league once and for all.

  “I feel like the playoffs really start today,” E said to Wes in the layup line.

  “You know what, E?” Wes said to his friend. “I’ve felt as if every game has been the playoffs for a while.”

&nb
sp; He leaned in, so he and E could bump shoulders. As always, they were as close as brothers could be. The way Petty Officer Phillips had described the brotherhood of his dad’s unit? Wes felt that way about E. And knew that E felt that way about him.

  Wes hadn’t talked to E or anybody else this week about the way the last game with the Grizzlies had ended, the pass going out of bounds.

  All E said to Wes was, “We owe these boys one.”

  “I owe them one,” Wes said, and left it at that.

  The Grizzlies won the coin flip, which meant they got the ball first. Before they inbounded the ball, Bakari said to Wes, “Hear you guys have only gotten better since the last time we played.”

  “You believe everything you hear?” Wes said.

  Bakari smiled. He still had his amazing dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail, still had the high socks and the shooting sleeve.

  “Have a good one,” he said to Wes.

  “You too,” Wes said.

  He didn’t shut down Bakari in the first half. Bakari was way too good for that. But Wes remembered what Bakari liked to do and where he liked to shoot the ball. It wasn’t just that Wes remembered how the last Hawks-Grizzlies game had ended. He remembered all of it.

  So even though Bakari was getting his points, Wes was making him work for every one of them. When Bakari would miss, Wes would box out like a demon. And even doing all that, Wes was still able to play his best game at the other end. He got hot midway through the first quarter, and this time Dinero didn’t freeze him out, showing no hesitation as he fed Wes the ball every time he was open.

  But E and DeAndre were scoring inside. They were moving and the ball was moving, and a six-point lead at the end of the first quarter had doubled early into the second. It was as if they were trying to make Bakari see what he said he’d heard about the Hawks, that they’d just gotten better and better since the teams’ first meeting.

  It looked like they might win easily today.

  Then Dinero made things hard on himself, and everybody, again.

  He pulled up on a break and, instead of passing the ball to Josh, who was wide open, hoisted up a three. Missed. Wes was trailing the ball. Bakari had stayed in the backcourt, thinking that the Hawks were about to get an easy two, not a missed three. Trevor Arrazi, the Grizzlies’ power forward, rebounded Dinero’s miss, turned and threw the ball the length of the court to Bakari. Lead was down to ten.

  On the Hawks’ next possession, Dinero dribbled around until he got into the lane, pulling the Grizzlies’ big to him. Wes was open in the right corner. But Dinero didn’t feed him this time. Instead he tried to throw a bounce pass back between his legs to Russ Adams at the top of the key.

  Only the pass was way wide of Russ. The kid guarding Russ picked the ball off, sailed down the court alone, and made the layup that cut the Hawks’ lead to eight. Everybody on the Grizzlies’ bench jumped up, feeling the game changing in front of their eyes. Coach didn’t even wait three minutes this time. He stood up, signaled for a timeout, and put in Josh to replace Dinero.

  “You’re taking me out for one missed shot and one bad pass?” Dinero said.

  Too loud, again.

  As if he hadn’t learned anything in a week.

  “Trying not to let this turn into a bad end to the half for our team,” Coach said.

  Dinero opened his mouth, then closed it. Maybe he had at least learned when to stop talking between last Saturday and this one.

  He sat for the rest of the half. The Hawks and Grizzlies played even until the horn. The Hawks’ lead was still eight.

  It was then that somebody’s dad made a scene at the rec center. Only this time it wasn’t Wes’s dad.

  Mr. Rey didn’t come out of the stands screaming the way Michael Davies had that time. But as soon as the horn did sound, he headed straight for Coach Saunders again.

  “I’d like a word with you,” Mr. Rey said.

  “I’m sorry,” Coach said, keeping his voice even, “but it is not appropriate for you to approach me during a game. I’m not sure it was even appropriate for you to approach me after the game, the way you did last week. But we are most definitely not going to have this conversation now. So it will have to wait.”

  “It can’t wait,” Mr. Rey said, “if you’re planning to bench my son for the rest of this game.”

  Wes looked around. Everybody in the gym was staring at Coach and Dinero’s dad.

  “The way I coach this team is my business, sir,” Coach said. “And that means coaching them in a way that I think is best for them.”

  “I have a problem with you continuing to make him look bad,” Mr. Rey said.

  He wasn’t screaming. But his voice was getting louder.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Rey,” Coach said, “I believe the one who has created the problem for your son is you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I believe you are telling him to play basketball in a way that is contrary to our best interests and to his own.”

  Wes looked over at Dinero, who seemed as frozen in place as Wes had been the day his dad had been the one to come out of the stands.

  “Well, then,” Mr. Rey said, unwilling or unable to back down, “maybe the best thing for my son, and for your team, is for me to take him home right now.”

  “No!” Dinero yelled.

  “No,” a man’s voice said from behind them.

  Wes turned around and saw his own dad standing there.

  “You don’t want to do this to your boy,” Lt. Michael Davies said to Mr. Rey. “And you don’t want to do it to yourself.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  HE WASN’T WEARING HIS ORIOLES cap today.

  And he had shaved his beard. His blue Navy hoodie looked brand-new to Wes. So did the pressed khaki pants he was wearing.

  He wasn’t loud today. He wasn’t weaving from side to side. Wes didn’t know where he’d been watching from in the gym.

  But here he was.

  “Who are you?” Mr. Rey said.

  Lt. Michael Davies gave a brief nod in Wes’s direction.

  “I’m his dad,” he said.

  “This isn’t your concern,” Mr. Rey said.

  “Actually,” Wes’s dad said, “it is.”

  Mr. Rey said, “This is about my son.”

  “No,” Wes’s dad said. “It’s not just about your son. It’s about mine, too. It’s about the team. And what’s best for the team.”

  Somehow, while this was going on, Dinero had come over so he was standing right next to Wes. Michael Davies nodded again, at both of them.

  “The two of them being a team is what’s best for them and for the whole team,” he said.

  Wes knew it had to be getting close to the time when the second half was supposed to start. He saw Coach Saunders look over to where the two refs were standing at half-court. The taller of the two refs, Mr. Costello, who had worked a lot of Hawks’ games this season, just smiled at Coach and made a motion with his hand that said, Go ahead.

  Maybe they knew that what was happening over near the Hawks’ bench might be as important as the game.

  Or more important.

  Coach and Mr. Rey and Wes’s dad had formed a small circle now. Coach turned and told his players to go start warming up for the second half. But when Wes and Dinero went to join them, Coach told them to stay.

  “Listen to Lieutenant Davies,” Coach said to Mr. Rey. “He’s explaining things as well as I ever could.”

  “You’re holding my son back,” Mr. Rey said to Coach.

  He had finally lowered his voice. Maybe it was because of the presence of Wes’s dad. Maybe, Wes thought, being able to command respect was something you never lost.

  No matter how hard you tried.

  “Something’s holding your boy back,” Michae
l Davies said. “But from what I’m seeing, it’s not Coach here. All I ever see him doing is trying to coach your boy and all of them the right way.”

  “He sits him down every time he tries to have a little fun,” Mr. Rey said. “It’s like he doesn’t understand the modern game.” He shook his head, almost in a stubborn way. “And he sure doesn’t understand how he’s messing with my son’s future.”

  “Your son is a wonderful player,” Wes’s dad said. “Same as my son is. But the best way to have a future in this game is by making everybody around you better. That’s how you become your own best self.”

  “I don’t need somebody telling me what’s best for my son,” Mr. Rey said.

  He wasn’t backing up at all.

  Michael Davies smiled.

  “What I’ve found,” he said, “is that sometimes the best thing is to let them teach us.”

  Coach quietly said, “We need to start the second half.”

  Wes’s dad nodded in agreement, but then looked at Dinero’s dad.

  “What I think is the best thing for everybody right now is for you to come up into the stands and watch the rest of the game with me,” he said.

  Mr. Rey said, “Is my son going to play?”

  “Sure,” Coach said, making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. “Who knows, we might just now be moving up on the good parts.”

  Mr. Rey turned and stared at Lt. Michael Davies. But Wes could see the fight and the anger had gone out of him.

  “Let’s go,” Dinero’s dad said, and then started walking around the bench and up into the stands, as if he were the one taking the lead. But as Wes’s dad started to follow him, Coach stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “In all ways,” Coach said to him, “thank you for your service.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE HAWKS PLAYED WELL AT the start of the third quarter. But the Grizzlies played better. Much better.

  Wes missed a few open shots. Dinero made one spectacular double-crossover move, got inside, blew by the Grizzlies’ bigs. And missed a layup he could usually make with his eyes closed.