Summer Ball

by Mike Lupica

  “Every pass, every shot,” he said, once more in that voice of his that made you strain to hear, pointing his finger at them. “Play every play as if the whole game is riding on it. From the time you step on that court in a few minutes, you keep one picture in your heads: You picture what the faces of the other team will look like if they beat you. And then you do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t.”

  Now Coach Powers was standing up, raising his voice at the same time, like he was giving a sermon in church.

  “Are you going to let them beat you?”

  “No!” they yelled back at him.

  “Are we going to win the game?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then let’s do this!”

  They ran back inside.

  They got back into layup lines for a couple of minutes, then shot around until the horn sounded. Will always waited until everybody else on the team was finished shooting and then stayed out until he made one more three. Danny always waited with him, and did now. So they were the last two back to the Celtics’ huddle, Will a few feet ahead of him.

  Before they got there, Danny got popped from his blind side like you did when somebody on your team didn’t call out a pick in time.

  He should have known who it was.

  “Sorry,” Lamar Parrish said to him. “You’re so little I didn’t see you.”

  For the whole first quarter, neither team was more than a basket ahead. Lamar was taking most of the shots for his team, Rasheed was doing the thing he did best for the Celtics, letting the game come to him, doing everything he could to get everybody else on his team involved. They had come out in a man-to-man, Coach Powers putting Rasheed on Lamar. The Lakers were in a zone because they were always in a zone, because as talented as Lamar was, there was no place you could hide him in a man-to-man—he was that lazy when the other team had the ball.

  He didn’t care about defense the way he didn’t care about anything except shooting.

  And himself.

  The Lakers scored three quick baskets to start the second quarter, extending their lead to eight. That was when Danny got into the game. It did more to hurt the Celtics than help them. The other Laker guard, a redheaded kid named Tommy Main, was as tall as Lamar and impossible for Danny to guard. With Lamar taking a rest—because nobody at Right Way, not even him, was allowed to play all four quarters, not even in the play-offs—Tommy Main started posting Danny up almost every time the Lakers had the ball.

  By the time Coach Powers realized what he was watching and put the Celtics into a zone, the Lakers were ahead by fourteen points.

  With two minutes to go before the half, Coach Powers got Danny out of there. As Danny went past him to take a seat at the end of the bench, Coach snapped, “In a championship game, defense wins.”

  The Laker lead was still fourteen at the half. Coach Powers hustled them back outside, sat them down and immediately laced into the whole team, his voice a raspy whisper somebody even twenty feet away wouldn’t have been able to hear.

  This was his kind of trash talk, that voice you had to strain to hear, those blue-looking veins trying to pop right out of his forehead.

  “I thought you wanted this as much as I do,” he said. “I thought winning a championship still mattered in sports, as long as it was the championship of something. But apparently I was wrong. You’re all playing like a bunch of quitters.”

  They all just sat there, some of them with their heads down, just taking it from him. He didn’t allow for one second that the Lakers might just be playing better, that the Lakers might want to win the game, too. As usual, Coach Powers was putting it all on them, calling them the worst thing in the world:

  Quitters.

  What Richie had called Danny.

  All Danny could think of was getting back inside, doing whatever he could do to help his team win, and then leaving this one gym knowing that this guy was never going to be his coach ever again.

  He would try to win the game for himself and for his teammates, and then he was gone. In the language of Tarik Meminger, he was taillights.

  “Am I making myself clear, Mr. Walker?”

  Danny knew he’d missed something. He just didn’t know what he had missed, the way it was in class when your mind wandered and then you realized the teacher was talking to you. So he just said, “Yes sir.”

  Coach Powers said, “For the rest of this game, if you don’t guard, you don’t play.”

  He was standing over Danny now.

  “But between you and I,” Coach Powers said, “you haven’t guarded anybody yet, have you?”

  Danny heard his mom before he saw her.

  “Between you and me,” Ali Walker said.

  Coach Powers turned around. Danny’s mom was standing right there, a bottle of water in her hand, Tess at her side.

  “I beg your pardon,” Coach Powers said.

  “It’s not between you and I,” Ali said. “It’s between you and me.” She was smiling pleasantly, but Danny knew the look, it was the same as if she was hitting him right in the teeth.

  “And you are?”

  “Ali Walker.”

  “Oh,” Coach Ed Powers said. “Mr. Walker’s mother.”

  “Danny’s mom,” she said. “Richie’s wife. I’m sure you remember my husband.”

  There was something about her body language, the way she was looking at him, that smile fixed in place, that let Coach Powers know he shouldn’t tangle with her, not here. “I’m not too good with words sometimes,” he said.

  She said, “So I’m told,” and walked away.

  Coach Powers took a couple of steps away from his players, as if he wanted to say one more thing to her, but didn’t. Tarik took the opportunity to whisper in Danny’s ear, “Oh, baby. Your mom…from downtown!”

  Coach Powers came back to them now, trying to act as if nothing had happened. He talked about what they were going to do on defense and offense to start the second half. All the while Danny kept thinking, However much I thought I was buried before with this coach, this time they’re going to need heavy equipment to dig me out.

  As they started back toward the gym, Coach Powers caught up with Danny, stopped him with a tap on his shoulder.

  “Between you and me?” he said. “I meant what I said before.”

  “I know you did, Coach.”

  “You don’t guard, you don’t play, whether your mother likes me or not.”

  Danny stopped at the outdoor fountain for a drink of water, splashed some water on his face, trying to get himself fired back up after everything that had just happened.

  He didn’t need to worry about that.

  When he walked back inside, the first person he saw, just inside the door, was his dad.

  26

  HIS DAD LOOKED THE SAME AS ALWAYS: PLAIN GRAY T-SHIRT, JEANS, unlaced Reebok high-tops. He needed a haircut. From a distance, anybody who didn’t know him could have confused him with one of the counselors.

  But there wasn’t much distance between Danny and his dad for long. He ran right for Richie Walker and hugged him, not caring whether his teammates were watching or not.

  “You came,” he said.

  “I would’ve been here for the start of the game, but JetBlue picked this day to have equipment problems at JFK,” his dad said.

  “You’re here now. That’s all I care about.”

  His dad pushed back, looked down at him. “I’m always telling you that you gotta let stuff go eventually. So I followed my own advice for a change. I was sitting there at the breakfast table this morning, thinking about you and your mom being here and me being there by myself…” He grinned at Danny and shrugged, looking even more like a kid.

  Danny pointed to the scoreboard. “You haven’t missed much.”

  “Can you beat these guys?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer,” Richie Walker said, but he wasn’t looking at Danny now. He was looking over him and past him, in the directi
on of the court.

  “Hello, Ed,” he said.

  Danny turned. There was Coach Powers, standing a few feet away from them with his arms crossed.

  “Richie,” the coach said. “Long time no see.”

  Neither one of them made any kind of move to get closer, maybe shake hands. Danny just stood there, feeling as if he were between them now in more ways than one.

  Finally Coach Powers said, “I’m sorry to break up this reunion, but we’ve got a game we’re trying to win here,” and started walking in that slow, straight-backed walk of his toward the Celtics’ bench.

  Richie Walker squeezed his son’s shoulder.

  “So go do that,” he said. “Go win the game.”

  “He might only play me for, like, a couple more minutes.”

  “If he does,” his dad said, “then make them the best couple minutes of your life.”

  Rasheed kept them in the game in the third quarter, getting inside the Lakers’ zone just enough, drawing the guys on the Lakers to him who actually wanted to play defense before he’d get another shot or feed David or Ben or Alex. And Tarik was doing a decent job on Lamar, bumping him every chance he got, whether Lamar had the ball or not, even getting Lamar to retaliate a couple of times and get called for fouls.

  Still, the best the Celtics could do was trade baskets, and it was getting too late in the game for that. They were still too far behind.

  Coach Ed wouldn’t change his defense, though, wouldn’t double Lamar or go to a zone. His way, to the end. The Coach Ed Powers My-Way-or-the-Highway Basketball Camp. Every once in a while, he would allow the Celtics to press for a couple of possessions. But as soon as Lamar or somebody got an easy bucket, he’d take the press off.

  And through it all, Danny Walker was dying. Because he was just sitting there, feeling more like a cheerleader again than part of the team, trying to remember a time in his life when he couldn’t get off the bench in the second half of a game like this.

  Only he couldn’t.

  Maybe Coach Powers planned on sticking it to the whole family this time.

  At the end of the third quarter, the Celtics were still down nine points, 47–38.

  In the huddle Coach Powers said, “Now, listen up.”

  Rasheed Hill said, “No. You listen up.”

  Not raising his voice even a little bit. Just talking to Ed Powers the way he had always talked to them.

  Rasheed pointed to Danny and said, “Put him in the game. Or take me out.”

  The only change of expression from the old man, Danny saw, was that big vein on his forehead.

  “You’re a great player, son,” he said to Rasheed. “And I need you. But this is still my team.”

  “Play both of us or neither one of us,” Rasheed said, standing his ground. “You got to declare now whether you want to win as much as you say.” Rasheed looked at Danny. “How would you play these guys?”

  Danny looked at Rasheed so he didn’t have to look at Coach Powers, swallowed hard, then did something he’d wanted to do since the first day of practice:

  Pretended Ed Powers wasn’t even there.

  Behind them he heard the buzzer from the scorer’s table that meant the quarter break was over.

  “Box-and-one,” Danny said. “Me on Lamar, just to make him mad. Extend the help I get, and I’ll need a lot, all the way to the three-point line. And press every chance we get, our zone press, except with me still on Lamar.”

  Nick Pinto, reffing the final, tapped Powers on his shoulder. “Coach, I need your guys to get out there.”

  Coach Powers nodded. He looked older than ever, sad and old. His eyes were on Rasheed when he said, “Walker, get in for Tarik.” Then he went and sat down.

  “Yesssss!” Will hissed in Danny’s ear.

  It was Celtics’ ball to start the fourth. Danny and Rasheed went to take it out. Danny allowed himself one quick look at his dad, who put his right hand down next to his knee and made it into a fist.

  Danny said to Rasheed, “What just happened back there?”

  Rasheed, his face as much a blank wall as ever, said, “I thought I told you I didn’t come here to lose.”

  He took the ball out, Danny brought it up, head-faked Lamar at the top of their zone, got past him as easily as if he were walking through his own front door, no-looked a bullet pass to Rasheed on the right wing.

  Rasheed for three.

  Game on.

  Lamar reacted to Danny guarding him pretty much the way Danny expected him to.

  “Shoo, fly,” he said.

  But right away you could see how much it annoyed him. When Lamar didn’t have the ball, Danny shadowed him wherever he went, getting in his space, bumping him the way Tarik had.

  Turning the tables, finally.

  Getting under his skin now.

  Every chance Danny got, he would put a hand on him, the way guys did all the time on defense, trying to keep their man located. As soon as he would, Lamar would say, “Get offa me!”

  Danny didn’t say a word back to him, didn’t react even when Lamar would wait until he thought the refs weren’t watching and slap his hand away. Or just give him a shove. It was like tetherball. Danny just kept coming back.

  With five minutes left to play and the ball on the other side of the court, Danny was the one who gave Lamar a little shove. This time Lamar slapped his hand away so hard you could hear it all over the House.

  Nick Pinto, who happened to be looking right at them, immediately whistled him for a technical.

  “He hit me first, man, are you blind?” Lamar said.

  Nick, already walking with Rasheed toward the free throw line, stopped. “I didn’t quite catch that?”

  “Yo,” Lamar said. “He’s got his hand on me all the time and doesn’t get a whistle on that, is all I’m sayin’.”

  “You play, Lamar. I’ll ref. Let’s see if we can make that work for both of us.”

  Rasheed made two free throws on the technical. Celtics ball, side out. Danny threw a bounce pass to a cutting Rasheed for an easy layup.

  And just like that, the Lakers’ lead was down to two.

  Lamar, steaming now, came out of the time-out their coach called and made a three. “See that right there, midget?” he said to Danny as he held his pose. “That right there is a man shot.”

  With a minute and a half left, the Celtics were still down a basket. Tarik got another rebound and Danny did a run-out, trying to beat the Lakers down the court, Tarik threw him a perfect pass at halfcourt.

  Danny was flying to the basket, ahead of the pack, when the lights went out.

  Lamar had actually made a play on defense.

  He had come from the other side of the court, come flying himself, blocked Danny’s shot, knocked him right off the court and into one of the closed doors that opened into the front hall.

  The lights hadn’t actually gone all the way out.

  It was like somebody had put them on dimmer.

  Somehow Danny hit his head and his knee at the same time. Right away he took the kind of inventory you did when you got hurt and knew his right knee—the one he’d tried to use to get himself out of here—hurt much worse than his head.

  He didn’t even think about rubbing it.

  Just rolled over and sat up, like the whole thing was no big deal.

  The first people he saw over him, no big surprise, were his parents. Behind them, he saw Coach Powers, not over to see how Danny was doing but in Nick Pinto’s face, yelling at him about a foul.

  Ali Walker said, “You okay?”

  “I’m good.”

  Richie Walker made a face and knelt down next to Danny. He had only spent his whole life taking hits like this. “You hit that knee hard.”

  “I’m good, Dad, really.” Danny made himself pop right up like he was shooting out of a toaster, somehow fixing a smile on his face as he did, remembering a Will line as he did:

  Nobody fakes sincerity better than I do.

  He heard himse
lf get a big ovation.

  “You don’t have to prove anything,” his dad said.

  “Yeah, Dad, I do,” Danny said. “More than I ever have in my life.”

  Coach Powers was arguing for a flagrant foul, as it turned out. But Nick said, “Coach, I know he drilled him pretty good, but he was playing the ball. Two shots, that’s it.”

  Now Coach Powers came over to Danny. “Are you okay to take these free throws? Because if you aren’t, the other team can pick anybody off our bench to shoot them.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “We need these.”

  No kidding, Danny wanted to say.

  “If you’re hurting, I can take you out after you shoot them,” Coach Powers said.

  “You’re not taking me out of this game.” Danny walked away from him, went over to the line and took the ball from Nick.

  Made both.

  Celtics 60, Lakers 60.

  They were tied for the first time since 2 all.

  One minute left now. Lakers’ ball. Lamar took a pass out on the wing, but rushed his shot, the ball banging off the back of the rim. The rebound came out to Tarik. He took a couple of dribbles, then spotted Rasheed at the other end cutting to the basket, hit him with a long pass. Layup.

  Celtics by two.

  Lamar took the inbounds pass, dribbled up the court, took a three over Danny right away. Didn’t run any clock, didn’t look to pass. Kobe to the end.

  Drained a three.

  Lakers by one.

  Before Tarik inbounded the ball, he gave a quick look to Coach Powers, knowing they had two time-outs left. But the old man just made a sweeping motion with his hand like he was throwing a ball underhanded.

  Push it, he was saying.

  Tarik gave it to Danny. Danny pushed it. On his first dribble, he felt his knee buckle underneath him and nearly went down. But he stayed up, got past half-court, wanting them to clear out for Rasheed.

  Rasheed looked him off with his eyes.

  Somehow Danny knew what he wanted.

  Rasheed was out at the three-point line, on Lamar’s side of the court, open. Lamar started to cheat out there, probably thinking everybody was like him, that Rasheed was going to hoist up a three.