Story

The Basketball Beast

There were 3 seconds left as I dribbled out on the ark, down by one. I drove with Elijah on my side as I drove my shoulder into his stomach. I jab stepped him back and moved my foot back as I rose into the air and let go of the ball as I heard the buzzer sound and the ball moved towards the hoop. It was…
It started to rain as I walked down the sidewalk of 13th street. I could smell the alcohol and cigarettes as I passed the dudes hanging out by the corner. As I passed the stands and stores, ball tucked under my arm pressed against my hip, I caught the first glimpses of the courts up on the hill. There were 3 courts, every one filled up except for one, the one everybody called, “the bad one”. No net on the hoops, horrible backboard, and cracks in cement every which way. While I walked up the stairs to the courts, guys watched, as if I was some sort of alien. I didn’t mind, because I knew why they were staring. Last year in high school when I was still a junior, I lead my team to the National Championship game, where we won. I was voted the MVP of the game, with 33 points, 9 rebounds, 9 assists, 5 blocks and 4 steals. This was my first time back in the city for about 2 months now, and this senior season, everyone expected even more out of me.
The tryouts were Wednesday, and when I got there, I only saw about 5 other people. As tryout time moved closer, more people came. As I was slipping on my old Adidas Commanders, I counted 40 people. Only the best of the best will make it I thought as I finished lacing up my shoes. That’s when Abdul my best friend and our team’s best power forward came over. As he slapped my hand he said,
“Yo James, haven’t seen you in awhile man. You ready for another championship season?”
In a calm voice I replied, “I sure as heck hope so.”
Last year there were only two seniors on the team, so we didn’t lose much. Only twelve players could make the A team, and another twelve would make B. Sixteen of them would get rejected. During the tryouts, I was taking looks around, seeing what the other guys had. This new kid, named Drew, had some serious game. He had said earlier on his other team he played shooting guard. There was one other kid that stuck out, and his name was Drake. He was about 6’9, and could do anything and everything in the post. There were some other decent players that we had last year too. Three hours and a sweat stained jersey later, the tryouts ended. I pretty much had the whole team figured out in my head.
When the letter finally came after about a week, telling us what the teams were, my phone was ringing once every 5 minutes, always being someone different telling me about what they thought about the teams. I thought they did a good job on ranking everyone skill wise, but I didn’t agree with one pick. Carter. He was the best player next to me, but he had a bad history of fights, and had a huge attitude problem. He had made B, and he was a junior. Two years in a row now. My phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it was Carter.
I flipped open my phone as I said, “Yo, what’s up man?”
“This is unbelievable!” he said, “Coach even told me he thought I had the talent to be something special!” I could hear the anger in his voice.
“I know, I know,” I replied “Everyone knows you should of.” I tried to calm him down by saying this over and over again, until he finally hung up.
Our first practice was in September, and everybody was there, except for Carter. Drake was the first to ask where he was.
Coach looked down at his clipboard, back at us, then back at the clipboard and simply replied, “He quit,” right before he had us get into drills.
After an hour, the two teams split up and went to their own court. We scrimmaged the rest of the time, and then headed into the locker room before we were out of the door onto the warm streets of Akron, Ohio. Abdul and I walked down the streets together, shirts sticking to our skin. We passed a broken newsstand, and I was on the front page, dunking the ball. The headline read, “Hometown Great Wins it All”.
As Abdul looked at it, he smiled and muttered, “Good times,” right before he smashed his foot through the glass. He grabbed two of the newspapers and tossed one to me. “This is going up on my wall” he laughed, with this big goofy smile.
I gave him this weird look as I looked down at the newspaper, as I hear the sound of a whistle, and someone yell, “You two! Come over hear now!” I looked over my shoulder, and saw a fat policeman eating a doughnut sitting on a chair.
Next thing I know Abdul is taking out a bunch of other newspapers and throwing them at the policeman yelling, “Oh! I’m sorry, did you want some too?”
Now the policeman was mad. He got up from the chair, dropped his precious doughnut into his pocket, and started chasing us down the street. As we ran, we could hear him talking into his walky-talky, “Need back up! Two boys running down Town Street.”
This is when Abdul started to throw chairs and other obstacles in the way. Then he turned and yelled back over his shoulder, “No chance of catching us doughboy!”
That’s when Abdul suddenly took a sharp turn down an alleyway, and jumped into a trash bin. I kept running, hoping he would follow. After about 5 more minutes of turning and twisting down different streets and alleyways, I stopped and looked around. No Abdul. That’s when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I took it out and looked at who was calling. It was Abdul.
I flipped my phone open and asked, “Where are you!?”
I heard him laughing on the other end of the phone.
I repeated, “Where are you!?”
Finally he calmed down and said, “I’m on 1st street, hiding in a tree.”
I sighed as I said, “Meet me on 13th street, in the alleyway by the bakery.”
I waited for 20 minutes before I finally got worried and called him. No answer. I tried again in five minutes, and still no answer. Finally I decided to go home. As I was entering my apartment, I heard my phone ringing. It was Abdul. I picked up as soon as I could.
Sounding worried, I yelled into the phone, “What happened!? Where are you?”
Abdul replied slowly, “I’m kind of at the police station. I got caught climbing out of the tree and now they’ve taken me in. I was kind of wondering if you could come down here and pay the ticket. And don’t worry because you’re not in trouble and I’ll pay you back.”
I sighed, “Sure I’ll be down in 15 minutes. How much is it?”
“Two Franklins.”
I walked into my room and slid open my dresser drawer and took out an envelope and took out the money. As I walked out the door I took my keys to my car and locked the door behind me. I walked into the parking lot, unlocked my old Honda Accord, and drove off to the station. Man, I washed a lot of dishes for that cash.
Our first game was October 7th. It was against the Wizards, the last place team from last year. We blew them out from the start. Final score, Erasers 67, Wizards 23. I finished with 29 points, 3 steals, 7 rebounds, and 4 blocks along with assists.
Then came a crack in the concrete. In only the second game of the season. We are up by 29 with 8 minutes left. I’m coming down the court, with long strides. Wide open lane to the basket. I split the seam, until I’m about 10 feet from the rim. Another player from the other team comes in and tries to block my shot. I rise up and he makes contact…hard. I go flying down to the ground after I manage to throw up the ball. I try to brace myself, but I’m turned the wrong way. I land on my foot, as I feel my ankle twist and give out from under me. I hear it crack. Next thing I know I feel my head land hard on the wood floor. I hear a scream in the back of my head, then nothing.
When I open my eyes I’m lying in a hospital bed, my mom and dad next to me. As I regain consciousness, I feel extreme pain in my ankle and head. That’s when I heard another voice.
It was the nurse telling me, “Don’t squirm around, because it will only make it hurt worse.”
Then I heard my dad say, “You have a broken ankle, and a concussion. He looked down and grimaced, “You are going to be out for a while, but you should be back with about 2 or 3 games left in the season.”
My mom had tears in her eyes and I could feel the fear in her voice. “What was that idiot thinking? He has no chance to win the game! What was that? Payback? He had no business hitting you like that!”
I replied, “What happened after I went down”
My dad said, “The ref called him for a technical, and this kid started to argue it was an accident, so he threw him out. Then it took 5 minutes to get you out of the building, and then into the ambulance and here you are.”
I smiled weakly and asked, “Can I go back to sleep now?”
My mom replied, “Try to stay awake honey. That’s what the doctor said to do with the concussion.”
It was a slow and boring season, sitting on the bench, picking splinters out of my butt. We won most of our games, and lost two close ones. We were second in our division, next to the Huskies, and they were undefeated, so we would have to win our remaining two games, and one of them one against them.
I was back now and warming up with my team, last game of the season, and we needed this win to get into the playoffs. As I was scanning the other team, I noticed one player that stuck out from the rest as I saw him let go of the rattling rim. Carter.
It was bad from the start. Carter was hot, and my ankle was killing me. To make it worse, I was guarding him. No one could make a shot, and we went into half time down 39 to 19. Coach made us hear it in the locker too. He screamed at us so hard the metal lockers vibrated and said if we really wanted to win, we still could.
After the chewing out, I had the trainer retape my ankle and then retied my shoe. I prayed my ankle hurt less, and took a couple of Advil.
Coach’s lecture either worked, or we just decided to show up on our own. We couldn’t miss. Drew was nailing everything beyond the three point ark, and Drake was doing great in the post, snatching every rebound. Plus, I was shutting down Carter and my ankle wasn’t hurting. Before I knew it, they called time out midway through the forth, and we had narrowed their lead to three. My girlfriend was sitting behind the bench and wanted to show me my stats.
I told her, “The only stat that matters is on the scoreboard”. And then of course, I looked at my stats. Hey, I’m human. In the second half I had 15 points, 3 steals, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocks. More importantly, I had held Carter to just 3 points. I knew if we wanted to win, we had to score more points, get a couple rebounds and be solid on defense.
Everyone on the team was pumped up when we broke down in the huddle. I jumped a few times and walked back on the court, to find Carter, giving me the hardest stare I had ever seen.
He was the first to speak. “Ready to go down loser?”
“You’re the one who quit. I never did anything bad to you.”
“You’re coach did.”
Then I heard the ref blow his whistle, telling us it was time to start playing. They inbounded the ball to Carter We weren’t pressing unless we fell down by 5 or more with 3 minutes left. He brought the ball up steady and calm, in no rush, just wasting time off the clock. That’s when both Drew and I ran at him screaming at the top of our lungs, and the rest our team dropped into a two one zone, just as planned.
However, Carter didn’t panic, just called for a guy to come and then delivered a perfect bounce pass to him. They swung it around the arc to the corner, and their man hit a three. Down by six. Drake passed it into me and I dribbled it up as fast as I could, stopping about a foot beyond the ark, releasing the ball at the top of my rise, right over one of their players and hit nothing but net. Their lead was back down to three.
I looked up at the clock, and there was three minutes and twenty-seven seconds left. Their point-guard dribbled up, and worked it around. Crisp passes, hard drives, and just like that, there were only two minutes left. Finally, when Carter drove, I stayed in front of him, and Drew came from behind and tipped the ball out of Carter’s huge, meaty hand. Drake snatched the ball up as Drew flew out to the outlet spot, and I raced down the court. Drew took four dribbles, got beyond half court and threw the ball up for the hoop. I knew what he was doing. I took my last long stride, and jumped. As I rose, I found the ball floating in mid-air. I caught of glimpse of Carters face, and he had that poor me face of his on, telling the ref he got fouled. My head was almost at the rim when I grabbed the ball out of midair, put two hands behind my head, and dunked a tomahawk. The crowd went cashews.
Now coach was calling for a press. A diamond and one press to be exact. Carter brought the ball up, weaving in and out of our guys, until it was just him and me, one on one. I was the last line of defense, and he had that same hard stare on, eyes glaring at me like lasers. He took that first hard step of his to the basket, trying to hook his leg around mine to get an advantage. I had seen this move enough times I knew what he was trying to do so I dropped my left foot back. Still going hard, only about 5 feet from the basket, he slammed his shoulder into my chest and rose up. I fell, and he dunked right over me as he let out a big whoop. I was not only embarrassed, but to make matters even worse, I got a foul called on me. He made the free throw and we were back down by three.
Even though Abdul was our second biggest player, no one knew he could shoot the lights out of the ball except for us. We set up a play for him with 45 seconds left, where he gets a screen and runs out into the corner. He sunk the three. Tied.
We pressed. This time it was a man to man, with Drake all the way back. I was on the ball concentrating as hard as I could. I followed the in bounders eyes and timed my jump perfectly. I grabbed the ball with one hand, slammed it into the other and took one step towards the basket for the two handed slam.
We were up by two with 35 seconds to go when they inbounded the ball to Carter. It took them 6 seconds to break the press, and he was letting the clock tick down. We had 3 fouls to give before they went in bonus so we had to plan it perfectly. Their team called time out with 15 seconds left. Coach told us what to do in the huddle.
“I want you to foul them with as close to 2 seconds left as you can! Then they will re inbound the ball and then foul again immediately!”
It worked out perfectly. We fouled with 1.9 seconds left, and then with .9 seconds left. Then we just waited back and watched as they chucked up a shot, that was an air ball. I raised my hands high as the crowd went pistachios.
Pretty soon they were all chanting, “REPEAT! REPEAT!”
That’s when Carter came up behind our coach, tapped him on the shoulder getting him to spin around and as soon as he did Carter delivered a hard blow to his temple, knocking him to the floor. Next thing I saw was Drew, hopping onto Carters back, and swung. Almost everyone on each team got involved to break it up. Everyone on my team was trying to break them up except for me. I knew better than to get involved and risk a suspension. In the end, Carter couldn’t play 6 games the next season, went to jail for 48 hours, did 48 hours of community service, and paid a fine of $350 dollars. Drew ended up getting suspended for the whole state tournament, which we all thought was stupid for two reasons. The first being he was protecting our coach, and the second being it was the state tournament, not the regular season.
We won state anyway. Won all 7 of our games, but there were a lot of close ones without Drew. Coach had still seemed a little shaky from the blow he had received from Carter.
Next we would have to win 6 games in two weeks to win the national championship. There would be 64 teams, one from each state with 14 additions. First we played Wisconsin Lutheran, and they gave a good fight, but in the end we won by 8. Abdul had the greatest game of his life. He snatched 11 rebounds and scored 23 points, for a double double. I played okay, but I could have done better. I wasn’t hitting like I normally was but it was no biggy.
Our next game the very next day was against New York. They had blown out Massachusetts, 73 to 37. They had a star named Rasheed, and if I hadn’t won the MVP last year, even though he wasn’t in the finals, he would have won it. The only problem was he didn’t have much of a team, because he went to a school in one of the parts in New York that wasn’t that popular. We had played them last year in this tournament too, but we beat them on a game winning shot, that was almost pure luck. We knew this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, so we would have to give it our all. Coach obviously knew that, and he made sure we knew it.
“Do you guys want it!? Because here is where you show how good you are. Not in the championship game, or any other! You’re going to be playing against one of the best players in the nation! I’m sure most of you remember Rasheed from last year. He has probably has even gotten better too! So it’s going to be hard, and you are going to have to play as a team, because he can’t guard everybody! Antonio, I want you on him for defense to start, and if that doesn’t work then I will let James cover him.” Everybody looked at me and nodded. After that coach drew up a few plays, how he wanted us to be playing on defense and so on.
The loud speakers were playing the latest hits, as we warmed up. Rasheed made sure everyone saw the dunk he was about to perform. He went over to the sound box, turned it down dramatically, and everyone glanced over. He took three long strides to the basketball as he executed a 360 tomahawk perfectly. His whole team let out a whoop and gave him high fives as he stared down our team.
We were down by two with 5 seconds left. The play was designed for me, a double screen where Drew drove and kicked it out to me on the wing, and if I had the three I would take it. If I didn’t have the three open, I would pass it to Abdul just inside the ark to tie. It worked out just as planned. Drake and Paul set the screens perfectly; Drew drove and kicked it out to me. I was squared with the basket, centered perfectly, bent my knees, got air born and released the ball. I knew it was going in from the start. It went straight in just as the horn sounded. I looked to my right to find Rasheed, looking at the ground laughing. He looked up at me and just smiled. He came over and slapped my hand, and pulled me into him as he gave my back a soft slap. A man hug many people call it.
“Good shot dude! You nailed that sucker, and you deserved it.” He left as my team piled on top of me.
Our next games weren’t extremely hard, because the teams didn’t have one star player, just a lot of good ones. We made our way to the championship, and had a few days off. The championship game was in New York, and we played in the Madison Square Garden. We played against the Saginaw Warriors from Michigan. They had this one beast named Elijah. He was about my height, 6’6 or 6’7. He also played my position, so that meant I was probably going to be guarding him. While we were off, we hung around New York in our hotel. Finally after 4 days of waiting, the day of the game came.
I showed up the Garden three hours before the game started. By now my ankle had stopped hurting, but I had a trainer tape it anyway just to make sure. I tied up my new Adidas Super Naturals, and grabbed a ball out of the rack. I bounced it a few times and started warming up. I started in close near the basket, and worked my way out the ark. After about 30 minutes of that, I shot free throws until my teammates started showing up. Once we were all there, we got into a circle and started stretching.
Our coach got us into a circle, and gave us one of the lengthiest speeches he had ever given us before. He talked about how he was proud of us, what we had to do to win, why we were here, how we hadn’t come this far to lose, and how to just go out there and have fun and play our hearts out.
The music was playing loud as the Garden started to fill up with by standers and fans. I saw ESPN guys setting up their cameras. The tip off was 30 minutes away as we went through the lay-up lines.
We won the tip, and the game was back and forth from then. I was guarding Elijah, and I was holding my own. By the end of the third it was all tied up, and I was hot. I had 21 points, and 13 of those were in the 3rd quarter. One more quarter, of high school basketball. They went on a quick 7-nothing run to begin the quarter. Despite that however, we battled back. With one minute left, they had just made two free throws to put them up by 3. We came back and I quickly hit a three. Elijah brought up the ball and dribbled it out by half court. With 11 seconds left I went up and fouled him swiping for the ball. He got to shoot free throws because they were in the bonus. He made the first, and missed the second. Drake grabbed the ball for his 9th rebound of the game and passed the ball out to me on the wing. I dribbled up fast, and then slowed down as I watched the clock.
“This is what I’m here for,” I thought. I started to make my move. There were 3 seconds left as I dribbled out on the ark, down by one. I drove with Elijah on my side as I drove my shoulder into his stomach. I jab stepped him back and moved my foot back as I rose into the air and let go of the ball as I heard the buzzer sound and the ball moved towards the hoop. It was…GOOD! The crowd walnuts as my team piled on top of me once more. It felt so good to be interviewed by the ESPN reporter and know that this would be the number one story of tomorrow morning. I knew there were college coaches watching, and that made it feel even better. The icing on the cake was when I held up the trophy, as I was hoisted up into the air by my teammates. This was truly the greatest moment of my life.
Later that year when I finished graduating, I had 22 division one colleges looking at me. I chose to go to Duke, my favorite college. Even though I knew I probably knew I wouldn’t have to wait all that long for people to be questioning me about whether I was going to enter the NBA draft, but I already knew my answer. I was going to go all four years, like I had promised my parents I would do when I was 16. Abdul went to a division 2 college, along with Drake. Drew went to Washington, the home of the Huskies. My dream had been accomplished, and now I had a new goal. To win the NCAA championship, and after that, to make the NBA all-star team.