Second-String Center Read online

  As if on cue, Coach stuck his head into the locker room. “All right, boys, let’s get out there,” he said. “Four laps, some stretching, the layup drill, and free throws.”

  The small gym was filling up with spectators, mostly parents and kids from the school. The Palisades players were already at one of the baskets, shooting layups. They looked big and quick. Dunk took a deep breath and started jogging around the perimeter of the court with his teammates.

  During the shooting drill, Coach called Dunk and Louie out of the line and over to the bench. “Feeling good?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Jared’s late, obviously,” Coach said. “I don’t know when he’ll get here, but we’ve got to make some adjustments.”

  He looked straight at Dunk and poked him lightly in the chest. “You’ll be starting.” He turned to Louie. “And you’ll be out there plenty. I’ll rotate you two at center until Jared gets here. In and out, like two minutes at a time. We play an up-tempo game, so you’ll have to hustle your butts off, come out for a breather, and get right back out there and run.”

  “Who else is starting?” Louie asked.

  “We’re going with the small, quick lineup. Spencer, Miguel, Willie, and Fiorelli. Remember, we run the fast break. That’s our bread and butter. When you get a defensive rebound, you find the outlet man immediately and get up the court.”

  Both boys nodded. “I’ll give you everything I’ve got,” Dunk said, even though he was suddenly feeling ill.

  “I know you will. Now go warm up some more.” Dunk looked around and spotted some of his friends in the bleachers. His parents and aunt had said they expected to arrive by halftime, but they didn’t seem to be here yet. Just as well, Dunk thought. This might not be pretty.

  He looked down at his sleek new uniform, the nicest one he’d ever had on.

  The red jersey had the number 15 in big bold figures on the front. The knee-length red shorts had wide white stripes down the sides.

  Dunk shook the opposing center’s hand and stepped into the midcourt circle. The guy was at least an inch taller than Dunk—probably a six-footer—but thinner, with narrow shoulders and big ears. He could jump, though, and he easily tapped the ball to Neon Johnson to start the game. Dunk raced to the paint, putting himself between the basket and his man, number 11.

  “Get it inside,” called one of the Palisades forwards. They were certainly aware that Jared was not on the court, and figured they could exploit this new guy. Dunk heard the comment. He pressed into his opponent.

  And here came Johnson’s bounce pass. The center grabbed it and started to dribble, backing into Dunk, who struggled to hold his ground.

  The guy stopped his dribble, pivoted left, then swung toward the basket and shot. Dunk jumped and brought his arm down hard, whacking his opponent on the shoulder. The whistle blew as the shot banked off the backboard and into the hoop.

  “Yeah, Marty!” shouted Johnson.

  The referee pointed to Dunk, then turned to the scorer’s table and said, “Foul on number fifteen, red.”

  Dunk shut his eyes quickly and frowned. Spencer jogged over and put his arm on Dunk’s back. “Good pressure,” he said. “Keep on him.”

  Marty sunk the free throw, so Palisades was up, 3-0, after only twelve seconds.

  “Right back at ’em,” Fiorelli said to Dunk. Spencer was bringing up the ball, shadowed closely by Johnson. Spencer passed to Miguel in the corner. Miguel drove toward the basket, but his path was blocked and Dunk was not in position yet. So Miguel passed back to Spencer.

  Dunk sprinted to the basket, breathing hard.

  The Hornets’ offense was not complicated. The four quicker players passed the ball around the arc, looking for a shot, while Dunk moved in and out of the paint, ready to receive a pass or step up and set a hard screen if one of his teammates drove into the lane. The Palisades center guarded him tightly, keeping a hand between Dunk’s shoulder blades.

  Fiorelli had the ball in the corner. He pump-faked a shot, and his opponent bought it, leaping to block the ball. Fiorelli squirted past him and bounced the ball to Dunk.

  Dunk took it and swung back his arm, pressing into his opponent. Another Palisades player ran over to help out, but Dunk got the shot off anyway as he felt the sting of a wrist against his cheek. The shot missed.

  Again came the whistle. The referee picked up the ball and stepped over toward Dunk and the Palisades center. “Let’s clean it up,” he said. “Too many elbows flying; I’ll call those fouls all day.”

  Dunk walked to the free-throw line. He’d be shooting two. He rubbed his cheek with his fist and waited for the ball.

  “Automatic,” said Spencer, who was lined up to Dunk’s left.

  And the first one was—a nice, gentle arc, just over the front of the rim, rippling through the net.

  Dunk exhaled hard, letting the air make a whistling sound through his rounded lips. Making that shot was like the sun coming up or something. He immediately felt like he belonged in the game.

  The second one was just as true. Dunk ran back on defense.

  Johnson and Fiorelli each made a shot, but Dunk didn’t touch the ball on the next few possessions. When Miguel got fouled driving for a layup, the horn sounded for a substitution.

  Dunk turned and saw Louie jogging onto the court. He walked off, and the spectators gave him a nice hand.

  Coach stood by the bench and put his hand atop Dunk’s head. “Quick rest,” he said.

  David squeezed over so Dunk could sit down. And there was Jared, on Dunk’s other side.

  “Hey,” Jared said quietly. “Nice job out there.”

  “Thanks.” Dunk pulled the front of his jersey up and wiped his sweaty face.

  Jared was dressed to play. Dunk was surprised Coach had put Louie in. Guess that’s it for me, he thought.

  But when the Hornets called timeout a few minutes later, Coach told Dunk to report back in. Palisades had a 9-6 lead. Coach also put Lamont in for Willie, bringing more size into the lineup. Willie was barely five feet tall. Lamont was a husky five-eight.

  “Lamont will move inside with Dunk,” Coach said in the huddle. “Go with the three-guard set. And keep running!”

  Dunk picked up his second foul, but he later grabbed a rebound and scored after a Fiorelli misfire. So the Hornets had narrowed the gap to 13-12 by the end of the quarter.

  Jared took over at center for the rest of the half, but his touch was definitely off. He made only one shot and threw a couple of bad passes. Meanwhile, Johnson got hot for Palisades, helping to build the lead to eight points.

  The Hornets were a frustrated bunch when they left the floor at halftime.

  Spencer smacked his palm against a locker. “Not in our house!” he said to his teammates. “No way they come in here and embarrass us in our gym.”

  “Get a grip, Spence,” Coach said. “I’m not unhappy with our effort or the execution. The shots just haven’t been falling for us.”

  “We gotta get in Neon’s face more,” Willie said. “Give that boy open shots and he kills ya.”

  “True,” Coach said. “We’ll switch out of our man-to-man defense and go with a box-and-one for the time being. Spencer, you stick with Johnson; Willie and Miguel, you need to collapse in on him a bit and help out. And keep feeding the ball inside to Jared. Those shots will fall soon.”

  The new defensive set did slow Johnson down, but the Hornets were not able to cut the gap. Palisades was utilizing a similar strategy, having one player glued to Jared and at least one other always in position to double up on him. Jared made a couple of baskets, but he also picked up his second and third fouls.

  Midway through the fourth quarter, Coach waved Dunk over to sit next to him. “We need more size out there,” he said. “Their big guys are all over Jared—he needs some support under the basket. You report in for Willie, and we’ll move Fiorelli out to the third guard spot.”

  So Dunk checked in.
This felt good; this was the real thing. Quality floor time with the game on the line. Dunk turned and saw his parents and Aunt Krystal in the bleachers.

  The scoreboard showed 3:46 to play, with Palisades holding a 39-31 lead.

  Dunk hadn’t played since the first quarter, so he felt a bit out of sync as play began. But he was fresher than the rest of these players, who’d been sprinting and pounding on each other all afternoon. Be smart, he thought. Don’t choke.

  Johnson had the ball, crouching low as he dribbled, easily keeping it away from Spencer. He gave a quick stutter to his left, and Spencer stumbled back on his heels. Johnson darted the other way and skipped into the open.

  Dunk was guarding a forward near the basket, on the far side from where Johnson was driving. The Palisades center was waving for the ball, locked in a battle for position with Jared.

  As Fiorelli stepped in front of Johnson, Dunk shifted closer to the center, expecting Johnson to pass. And here came the ball. Dunk wasn’t quite quick enough to grab it, but he was right there in the action. The center turned toward the baseline, then pivoted back toward the basket, right into Dunk’s path.

  With a quick swipe, Dunk easily stole the ball and gripped it tightly with both hands. Miguel shouted his name, and Dunk turned and fired an outlet pass. Spencer was already sprinting up the court, five yards ahead of Johnson, and he hauled in Miguel’s long pass and made the layup.

  Fiorelli’s three-pointer a minute later cut the lead to three, but Johnson answered with an off-balance jumper. And when Jared picked up his fourth foul in the final minute, the resulting free throws put the game out of reach for the Hornets.

  “If you’d showed up on time, things might have been different,” Spencer said sharply to Jared in the locker room.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Jared replied. “Some things are more important than basketball, you know.”

  Spencer frowned and took a seat in front of his locker, yanking off a sneaker. “Whatever it was, don’t make it a habit.”

  “Yeah,” Lamont said. “Can’t you schedule things around the games? Especially a game like Palisades!”

  Jared shrugged his shoulders and scowled. “If I could’ve been here, I would have.”

  Coach Davis came into the room and leaned against a locker. “Not bad,” he said to the dejected players. “Today was their day, but we’ll see them again in a few weeks. Spencer, you ran into a machine today in Johnson. And their inside game was better than I’d anticipated. We had some bright spots. Louie and Dunk did a great job filling in underneath. Miguel was sharp. Jared was a little off.

  “It’s just one loss. It’s early. Be here at three thirty tomorrow, ready to work even harder.”

  Coaches were always saying stuff about every guy on the roster having an equal role, that the team won or lost together. That was true, Dunk knew it. But being out there at key moments—most of the first quarter and then again with the game on the line—you couldn’t beat that.

  He peeled off his jersey and wiped his chest with a towel. Coach’s bit of praise had softened the sting of the loss a little. Dunk had played an important part in this game.

  He left the gym with a large group of players heading uptown, including Spencer, Fiorelli, Lamont, and Jared. Most of them were angry about the loss. They didn’t notice that Jared was soon lagging behind.

  Dunk waited at the corner of Fourteenth and the Boulevard for Jared to catch up.

  “You hurt or something?” Dunk asked.

  Jared shook his head and quietly said, “No.”

  “Just one game,” Dunk said. “We’ll get ’em next time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could have gone either way. A shot here, a shot there, and we win it.”

  “Right.”

  Dunk wasn’t getting much of a response, so he quit trying. They walked the next couple of blocks in silence.

  They reached the large digital clock that jutted over the sidewalk from the Hudson City National Bank. Jared stopped and stared at the clock. Dunk looked at Jared, then up. Forty-one degrees at 5:57 P.M. The Boulevard was busy with people going in and out of the restaurants and commuters stepping off the buses and heading home.

  “Worst game I’ve played in a long time,” Jared finally said. “I got eaten up by guys I should have smoked. Couldn’t make a shot. Couldn’t play defense. Fouled everybody who came near me.”

  “You weren’t that bad,” Dunk said. “You actually kept us in the game.”

  “Still should have won it. My fault.”

  Jared leaned against the bank’s brick wall, dropping his gym bag to the sidewalk. “You know where I was this afternoon instead of in school?” he asked, not looking at Dunk. “A lawyer’s office.”

  “Why?”

  Jared let out his breath, and his mouth fell into a deep frown. “So my parents and their lawyers could argue about where I’m supposed to live while they hack out their divorce. Supposedly they wanted my ‘input.’ ”

  Dunk was shocked. He knew kids whose parents were divorced, but he’d never been around anyone while it was happening. He’d never been to Jared’s house. He recognized Jared’s parents, but he couldn’t remember ever speaking to them. “So why are they splitting up?” he asked.

  “Who knows? They fight all the time lately.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Money. What we have for dinner. Who does the laundry. Everything, you know? Stuff that wouldn’t even matter if they weren’t always mad at each other.”

  Dunk thought about his own home. Just him and his parents, and they all got along well. “So what happened?” he asked. “At the lawyer’s?”

  “They decided to juggle me back and forth. Most days I’m still here; some days I’m with my dad. He took an apartment over in Hoboken. As long as my mom stays in Hudson City, I can keep going to school here, even if I spend some of my time at my dad’s.”

  “Lots of people go through that, I guess.”

  Jared shrugged. “I know. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “Sure.”

  “Imagine if I was living full-time in Hoboken?” Jared shook his head and gave a halfhearted smile. “I’d be playing against you guys.”

  “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “Tell me about it. . . . So for now my dad is supposed to pick me up after practice every Wednesday and bring me to Hoboken for the night, then drop me back here Thursday morning. And I’m there every Friday night and most weekends. At least until they work something out for good. If they can’t work it out, then a judge decides.”

  Jared looked away again and wiped his eye. “Don’t say nothing,” he said softly. “To Spencer and those guys, I mean. I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “No problem. Does Coach know about this?”

  “Yeah.”

  They started walking again. They both lived down toward Jersey City, away from the busy downtown area of the Boulevard.

  “So why’d you tell me?” Dunk asked.

  “I don’t know. Everybody knows they can trust you.”

  “They do?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dunk had never heard that before. It made sense, but it felt good to hear it.

  “I feel for you,” he said, “but you know I can’t go easy on you in practice. That’d make me look bad.”

  Jared looked surprised. “I don’t want you to go easier. If anything, go harder. That’s my oasis out there on the court. You keep pounding me. I’ll keep pounding back.”

  “I plan to.”

  6

  Payoff

  Dunk’s parents were almost done eating when he got home from the game. There was a plate of fried ham on the table, macaroni and cheese, and a big dish of peas and corn.

  “We just couldn’t wait any longer,” Dad said. “The game ended over an hour ago.”

  “Yeah. We hung around some after.”

  “You played great,” Mom said. “You want to heat up that ham?”

  “Nah
, I’m sure it’s fine. I’m not too hungry anyway.”

  Dad looked at his wife with an amused grin. “Not hungry, he says. Just wait—he’ll finish every scrap on the table.”

  Dunk stabbed at a piece of the ham and dumped some vegetables onto his plate. “We’ll see.”

  “You really did play well,” Dad said. “I was glad to see Coach put you in during crunch time at the end. Shows that he knows he can rely on you.”

  “That was nice,” Dunk said, chewing as he spoke. “Before you got there, I played almost the whole first quarter. Jared was late, so I started.”

  “Isn’t that something?” Mom said. “Sorry we weren’t there.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll get off early for one of the games and be there for the beginning,” Mom said.

  Dunk shrugged. “Today’ll probably be the only time I start. But yeah, I may see some early playing time. I had four points and I think three rebounds. Plus that steal.”

  “Well,” said Dad, “I promised myself I’d watch the Rutgers game tonight, and I have just enough time to shower first. You’ll clear the table, Cornell.”

  “No problem.”

  “You have homework to do?”

  “A little. I’ll catch the second half of the Rutgers game with you.”

  “And I have to run over to my sister’s,” Mom said. “Can you believe that girl doesn’t know how to sew on a button?”

  “Why doesn’t she bring it over here?” Dunk asked.

  “Lots of studying, she says. I don’t mind. I like to get a look at her place once in a while . . . make sure she’s not keeping it a pigsty.”

  Dunk held back a smile. Krystal was in for it, just as Dunk would be if he kept his room a mess.

  So Dunk ate the rest of his dinner alone, which suited him fine. He had mixed emotions about the game, but he was barely thinking about that. Jared’s news about his parents had him worried.

  Everything seemed cool here—his parents almost never raised their voices, and they seemed like best friends. So he couldn’t see them ever breaking up. But he definitely felt bad for Jared.