They were back the next afternoon, this time at the Community College of Rhode Island about twenty minutes down I-95 in Warwick. It was another one of Nyblom’s extra games against good competition, and the first thing I heard was that Angel had gotten into an accident the night before following the dance, skidding in a minor snowstorm on Route 10 at 1:30 in the morning. Eli Lewis and Aaron Lynch had been in the car with him. No one had been injured.
“They’re idiots,” said Wayne. “They could have been hurt.”
He was getting dressed in the small locker room.
“Where’s Quenton?” Rob Whalen asked.
“SATs,” came a voice.
“SATs?” Wayne said. “What’s he smart or something?”
Also in the locker room were two kids who had just enrolled in Hope from West Virginia. They were both African American, one about six-foot-five or so, the other smaller. Did they have a Rhode Island connection? Were they eligible to play? Were they any good? No one seemed to know anything, including Nyblom.
These kinds of games were good for Hope because they gave everyone a chance to play, especially the ones who didn’t get a whole lot of time in the league games. At one point in the first half the Hope lineup was Aaron Lynch, Marquis Young, Devante Youn, Eli Lewis, and Ben Vezele, the only regular starter of the group.
“This may be the only time all season all ten guys are smiling,” Nyblom said, also with a smile.
For that was the dirty little secret of all sports, regardless of the level: the ones who don’t get a lot of playing time are rarely happy. And one of the Hope players who wasn’t happy right now during halftime was Eli Lewis, who was on the bench while everyone else was on the court warming up, a disgusted look on his face.
“You either get up and go out there,” said Nyblom, “or you sit the entire second half.”
Eli continued to sit there and stare straight ahead.
Finally, without looking at Nyblom, he got up and walked onto the court.
“Oh, well,” Nyblom said with a rueful smile. “That little rebellion lasted all of fifteen seconds.”
They were playing Norwich Free Academy, a high school in nearby Connecticut, and if the game was another snapshot of Hope’s flaws—their inconsistency being the biggest—they played well before eventually losing by six. More important, everyone had played a lot of minutes.
“What killed us?” Moors asked rhetorically. “Last night killed us. What time do you think these guys went to bed last night?”
But they were back again just two nights later in the locker room at Cranston East in their blue road uniforms with gold-and-white trim, and their assortment of different-colored socks and sneakers. Cranston borders Providence to the south, a once solidly middle-class city that now is more demographically complicated. It’s a city of contrasts, with the spacious new houses of western Cranston and parts of eastern Cranston that are suburban in tone, and other parts of the city that have become Providence overflow. Forty years ago Cranston East had been one of the top hockey teams in the state; now they no longer even have a hockey team. If once you could walk through the corridors of the high school and never see a person of color, now there were three black starters and a crowd of about two hundred people that would make you think you were in a city school.
But the locker room seemed new and clean and the gym was bright and big for a Rhode Island high school. This was a huge game because Hope was simply running out of time, only four league games left after tonight.
“Our last two games we’ve lost two big leads and one game, gentlemen,” Nyblom said.
“Who’d we lose to?” asked Devante Youn.
“Norwich Free Academy, two days ago,” Nyblom said, staring at him.
“Oh, yeah,” Youn said.
“And he’s an A student,” Wayne said, rolling his eyes.
A few kids start to stretch in the locker room, while the others were oblivious.
“We even stretch like a 5-7 team,” Moors said.
The jayvee game had ended, the players standing in the hallway, many with their uniform shirts out and their shorts riding low on their hips: hip-hop basketball players.
“Someday you’re going to look at pictures of yourselves with your pants falling off your butts and you won’t believe how ridiculous you look,” Nyblom said as he walked by them.
The National Anthem was played, the players were introduced. And for most of the first half the game was awful, rough and chippy, both teams struggling to score. By the end of the half Hope was leading 29-13, and Moors said to me, “We play down to our competition.”
The second half was more of the same, a rough, chaotic game, several times coming close to getting completely out of control. At one point Wayne was knocked to the floor on a fast-break drive to the basket, and when the game mercifully ended there was the sense that this had nearly become ugly.
“Just sit down,” Nyblom said as everyone came into the locker room. “Sit down and be quiet. You guys let them push you around. You let them out-tough you.”
He pointed to Ben.
“You’re not freakin’ tough enough, and you won’t get into the weight room and do anything about it. You could be the best player on this team, but it’s up to you.”
He pointed to Johnson Weah.
“You’re not ever going to get a call because you’re running your mouth to the refs.”
He pointed to Eli.
“And this kid sits on the bench with his hood on, sulking.”
He pointed to Marquis Young.
“With just a few seconds left you don’t want to go in? That’s ignorant, with your family here to support you. If you don’t want to go in, go home. Do you want to go home?”
“That’s not what I’m sayin’,” Young shot back.
“TEAM, gentlemen,” Nyblom said.
* * *
Four nights later they were on a yellow school bus to East Providence, a city that bordered Providence to the east, across the Seekonk River. It was a short ride, through the East Side of Providence with its wealth and charm, then over a short bridge.
But the bus hadn’t gone two blocks when Ben Vezele realized he had left his sneakers back at Hope. So the bus turned around and went back.
“My coach would have kept on going,” muttered Moors.
On its second trip the bus went out to the front of the building on Hope Street, took a quick left on Lloyd Avenue past Moses Brown, and cut through the East Side until it hit Blackstone Boulevard, arguably the most prestigious address in Providence, then across the Seekonk River into East Providence.
“Ben, what are you saying?” Nyblom asked Ben, who was sitting a few rows behind him.
“Randy Moss is the best receiver ever in the NFL,” Ben said.
“Ben,” Nyblom countered, “you’re stoned.”
There was a timeless quality to these bus trips, one that cut through the generations. The coaches up front. The muffled conversations. The sense of expectation, like soldiers going off to war. The bus dark, winter outside the windows. I had ridden on so many of them in my life, all through high school, then a year of prep school, then four years of college basketball, and in many ways they all were the same. I had always felt a mix of emotions on these rides, part anticipation, part expectation, part nerves. Pregame jitters. I had them even now. For I wanted Hope to do well. If I had started out little more than an observer, the detached reporter, that separation was long gone. I wanted Hope to win, because they needed to win; needed it for respect, for validation, for some tangible proof that if you worked hard enough and cared hard enough there would be some reward. It was a lesson all kids needed to learn, I realized, but maybe these kids most of all. In a certain sense it was the lesson Nyblom was always preaching in his various ways, the lesson that you can transcend your neighborhood, your family, even society’s expectations for you, if you only worked hard and did the right thing.
Once, East Providence had called itself the biggest town in the United States, and its teams were still called “Townies,” even if East Providence has been a city for decades. It has a big, sprawling, tan high school that had been a showplace when it first opened in the ’50s but now wore its age. The gym was old, with bleachers on all four sides, but the ones behind the benches were not rolled down anymore for games. The court was old too, worn by too many kids playing on it for too many decades. This was also the place where Wayne Clements and Angel Rivera had been caught stealing a couple of basketballs last year, the reason why they were banned from entering the gym this year and were not on the bus.
“See that camera,” Moors said, shaking his head, as we walked through the small hallway that led to one of the locker rooms. “Wayne and Angel took the balls right in front of the camera.”
The locker room had several small individual stalls surrounded by white shower curtains, but nowhere to sit.
“This is a very big game, fellas,” Nyblom said. “We need it to get to .500, but now we got two guys down. But good teams pick it up when guys don’t play.”
It was Senior Night at East Providence, and as part of that celebration the four Hope seniors there—Manny, Delonce, Johnson, and Aaron Lynch—were also honored, along with the East Providence seniors, the senior cheerleaders, and the parents of each. It was a reminder that East Providence was not an inner-city school, but existed in that place between the inner city and the suburbs, a place where high school sports were part of the community in ways they weren’t in the Providence public schools. For decades now, East Providence drew more people to its football games than any other high school in Rhode Island, and even if tonight’s attendance didn’t reflect that, this was a school where sports were still important in ways they no longer were in the city schools.
East Providence was coached by Alex Butler, a light-skinned black man who had been a great player at East Providence, then at Rhode Island College, a Division III school. Once upon a time I had played high school basketball in this same gym against his father, a great athlete of his era named Junior Butler. In so many ways Rhode Island was a small place, six degrees of separation everywhere you looked.
Shortly before the game began the Hope team was again in one of their pregame circles.
“BLUE WAVE, BLUE WAVE, BLUE WAVE … AH, AH, AH!” they shouted.
Hope fell behind as soon as the game began, and trailed 24-21 at the half. Once again they were bothered by a zone defense, as if the very sight of one brought out all their worst basketball instincts, especially without Wayne as a point guard. Instead, they stood around too much, didn’t pass the ball very well, and never seemed to make two perimeter shots in a row. It was one more reinforcement of the stereotype that inner-city kids didn’t like playing against zone defenses, as if they were somehow not real basketball but rather some white version of it. A zone defense slowed Manny down and forced him to be a jump shooter—not his strength. And when Manny didn’t score, all too often Hope didn’t score.
The second half was another one of those close down-the-stretch games that Hope always seemed to be in, games hanging in the balance, games that could go either way. With just thirteen seconds left to play Hope was down two, the gym a madhouse, when there was a scramble for the ball. Somehow Delonce was fouled taking a three-point shot in the game’s dying seconds. Not Hope’s best foul shooter, but nowhere near its worst, either.
So there he was.
At the foul line with three shots.
Make them all and Hope is probably going to win.
Make two and the game is probably going to overtime.
Make just one and there still would be pressure on East Providence to score.
So he stood at the line in his blue-and-white uniform, bounced the ball a couple of times, took a deep breath, then let fly.
The ball hit the back rim and bounced off.
He went through the same routine, shot the ball, and it hit the rim softly, seemed for an instant like it was going in, and instead rolled off the rim.
Nyblom called time out.
“WARM UP THE BUS.… WARM UP THE BUS,” a group of East Providence kids sitting in the stands chanted.
The time out over, Delonce went back to the foul line and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart. He stared at the rim as people yelled and screamed. He shot the ball.
It seemed to hit all sides of the rim as it popped around, only to spin out.
Hope went through the customary postgame handshakes, moving through the line silently and devoid of expression, like zombies, then returned to the locker room with the individual little stalls with the white shower curtains and no place to sit. No one said anything, the room funereal. Delonce bent over a shower stall, his head in his hands, distraught.
Manny came over and tried to comfort him. The coaches came over and tapped him on the shoulder. Still, he didn’t move.
“There’s not a whole lot I can say right now, gentlemen,” Nyblom said softly. “It shouldn’t have come down to the free throws.”
The room was still silent.
“The two guys sitting out tonight for doing something stupid last year cost us,” he continued. “We need everyone to win, gentlemen.”
The silence hung in the room.
It had been a crushing defeat, one that left them 6-8 in the league, with just three games left, the playoffs now very much in doubt.
But if Nyblom had been low key in a crushed and demoralized locker room, his tone was different three days later. The day after the East Providence loss there had been another nonleague game out of state, this time at East Boston High School, a team Hope had been playing similar games with for years now. It was meant to be great for morale as everyone played and in the big picture the final score didn’t count in the Rhode Island Interscholastic League standings. But Hope hadn’t played well, and afterward in the locker room Aaron Lynch had said something derogatory to Johnson Weah and Johnson had chased him and put him in a headlock before being pulled off him.
And now on this Monday afternoon in early February, in the middle of another disappointing practice, one in which a couple of kids had walked in late, Nyblom told everyone to sit at center court.
“The way you carry yourself is atrocious,” he said, as if making casual conversation. “You act like idiots. The way you treat each other. You act like you don’t care, and if you don’t care why should we? You’re under .500 in the league and you don’t seem to care. How many points did I get? How much playing time did I get? That’s what you seem to care about. You’re an embarrassment to yourselves, and the way you were brought up. You think you can act a certain way and everyone is just going to forget about it.”
He pointed to Johnson.
“You pick on him. You bust his balls. If everyone played like him, had his desire, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now. But you don’t think about that.
“We will not make the playoffs if you continue to do what you’re doing. But it’s not just basketball. The football team should have been more successful. The soccer team. I don’t get it. It might be too late for the seniors. But this can’t go on, gentlemen. We haven’t had a captain in five years, because it’s very difficult to tell your peers what to do, to be a real leader.”
He pointed to Delonce.
“Did anyone call him over the weekend to see how he’s doing? Because here’s a guy who busts his ass every day. Any one of his so-called teammates call him? This is what I’m talking about, gentlemen. Basketball is an extension of school, community, life. And you can’t go through life sitting on your ass.”
He pointed to the four seniors, Manny, Wayne, Delonce, Johnson.
“Money is being handed out, and because you’re minorities you have a chance to get some. There are schools that will take a chance on you. But you have to do your part too. Because you don’t work hard enough, and you don’t respect each other enough. And I know you don’t want to hear this. But guess what? I couldn’t care less. My job is to prepare you for real life.”
He paused.
“And hopefully we can win a few basketball games.”
But it wasn’t much better later, about a half hour into practice, that Nyblom told Marquis Young to leave the gym. By chance it came on one of the days when his older brother, Malieke, was there, sitting in the first row of the blue bleachers.
“Why?” Marquis Young said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
“Leave the gym,” Nyblom said, louder.
“I didn’t do anything,” Young said.
“LEAVE THE GYM,” Nyblom said forcefully.
“Why?” Young yelled back. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
“If you don’t leave the gym everyone is going to run until you do.”
Marquis Young stood there.
“LINE UP,” Nyblom said loudly.
The players went to the far baseline.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Marquis Young wailed.
“Yes, you did,” Nyblom said.
“I DIDN’T,” Marquis Young yelled as he started to walk to the door.
Wayne started to defend Marquis.
“Shut your mouth,” Nyblom said to him.
It had been an ugly little scene, the first time a player had openly defied Nyblom all season, and because it was Marquis Young it was emotionally loaded, Marquis being Laurence Young’s nephew in addition to being Malieke’s half brother. Marquis also was the unofficial leader of the group that included Ben Vezele, Eli Lewis, Aaron Lewis, and Quenton Marrow, all of whom lived in the same neighborhood in South Providence. He didn’t get a lot of playing time, and it had become obvious that this bothered him, as if he weren’t living up to his family’s storied basketball lineage. But he was a good student on a team where too few of his teammates were, said his ambition was to one day be a lawyer just as one of his grandfathers had been, and always was a presence even if the relationship between him and Nyblom had become complicated. That was no insignificant issue because Nyblom has a longtime relationship with Marquis’s family, which is why he had attended the funeral of Laurence Young back in December of 2011.