Gramps drove Lucas and Ryan to Claremont Middle for the Homestead game, which was scheduled for eleven o’clock on Saturday morning.
“Nothing better than Opening Day,” Gramps said when they were inside. “Always feels like New Year’s to me.”
They were the first ones to the gym.
Gramps was underneath the basket, feeding balls to Lucas and Ryan. Gramps even wanted layups shot the right way. He wanted everything done the right way.
“Don’t duck your head when you release the ball, Mr. Moretti,” Gramps said. “You pick a spot on the backboard and fix your eye on it like it’s a bull’s-eye.”
“But Mr. Winston,” Ryan said, “I never miss layups.”
“And if you keep focusing on the fundamentals,” Gramps said, “you never will.”
Gramps fed him another bounce pass. Ryan caught it, then laid the ball in off the backboard. Head up.
“Gramps,” Lucas said. “Sometimes I think you’d rather have fundamentals for breakfast instead of cereal.”
The old man managed a smile that seemed to fight its way through his game face.
The rest of the Wolves began to arrive. The six rows of bleachers began to fill up with parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters of the players. Lucas saw Maria up there too. Her brother, Neil, was the backup shooting guard, and sometimes replaced Ryan at small forward.
Lucas’s mom showed up about ten minutes before they were ready to start. She’d always told Lucas she was more of a game mom than a warm-up mom.
“I never miss the good parts,” she told Lucas.
“And what parts are those?” he said.
“They generally start when the ref hands you the ball,” she said.
Lucas was even more excited than normal today because not only was the Twin Lakes season about to begin, it was beginning with a rivalry game. Claremont and Homestead were neighboring towns. It only took about ten minutes, by car, to get from downtown Claremont to downtown Homestead, and so it didn’t matter what the sport was, at what age level. When it was Claremont vs. Homestead it was like the Yankees playing the Red Sox in baseball, or Duke playing North Carolina in basketball, or Ohio State and Michigan in college football.
First game of the season, or championship game at the end, Claremont vs. Homestead was always a very big deal. And there was another reason why Lucas always loved playing against the Homestead Bulls: Charlie Patten. He wasn’t just a good point guard. Charlie was a great one, even though he was probably the smallest player in the league this season. It always looked like a mismatch, size-wise, when Lucas and Charlie stood next to each other, as if Charlie had gotten caught in a switch. But once the game started it wasn’t a mismatch at all, it was a totally fair fight, even when it was just pickup games in the summer at a park in Claremont, or one in Homestead. Charlie Patten was such a wizard with the ball, so fast and so tricky, that sometimes Lucas called him Harry Potter.
The two of them shook hands at mid court after both teams had finished their warm-ups.
“Here we go again,” Lucas said to him.
They’d been playing against each other in travel ball since the fifth grade.
“We should be sick of each other by now,” Charlie said.
He had a lot of red hair and even more freckles.
“But we’re not,” Lucas said.
“Probably all the way through high school,” Charlie said.
“Fine by me,” Lucas said.
Charlie grinned, then reached out and bumped Lucas some fist.
As small as Charlie was, the rest of his team was tall, and long. The Bulls’ next best player, after Charlie, was the guy Ryan would be guarding, Darrell Zimmer. Zim was built more like a tight end than a small forward. And he was fast. He could handle the ball outside if he had to, and was a bear underneath the basket. Ryan liked to say that when Zim had you boxed out, you felt as if you had to run around a city block trying to get a rebound. But Ryan loved the challenge of going up against him the way Lucas welcomed the challenge of going up against Charlie.
Gramps gathered the Wolves around him, right in front of their bench. As much as his grandfather could talk your ear off about basketball if you let him, he always kept his comments brief once there was a game about to break out. He liked to say that if he’d done a good enough job in practice, once they did get to game day, basketball would be exactly what it was supposed to be: the players’ game.
“Run when you can,” Gramps said. “Run our stuff in the half-court when we have to set up. And you all know what we’re going to do on defense.”
“See the ball,” Lucas said.
Sam Winston smiled then, as happy to be in this gym as they were.
“Where else,” he said to the Wolves, “would any of us rather be right now?”
Where the Wolves didn’t want to be, as things turned out, was down ten points to the Bulls by the end of the first quarter.
They were doing what Gramps had told them to do, fast-breaking when they could. They were running their basic sets in the half-court. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they weren’t making any shots, and the Bulls were making theirs. Simple as that.
It was like the announcers always said on TV: Basketball was a miss-make sport. And the Wolves were missing all over the place.
“We’re fine,” Gramps said when they were back at the bench after the quarter. “Our shots will start to fall. But until they do, let’s press those guys all over the court.”
He subbed in Neil for Sharif, and Liam O’Rourke for Richard. The Wolves got a little smaller in the process, but also got a lot more tenacious on defense. Gramps told Neil and Liam to double-team the ball every chance they got. And he told them to cover for Lucas when he took some chances and went for steals, even in the backcourt.
The press worked right away. The Wolves were the ones playing faster now, and more aggressively. Lucas did make a couple quick steals. The Wolves began the second quarter with an 8–0 run, and just like that, they were within a basket. When Lucas made another steal and fed Ryan for an easy basket, the game was tied.
Lucas gave a quick look over to the bench. Gramps just sat there with his arms crossed in front of him, looking the same way he had when they were falling behind. But the press had changed everything. The Wolves’ not-so-secret weapon had already made his presence felt, in the first half of the first game of the season.
The game was still tied at halftime. It was still tied at the end of the third quarter. Gramps had done plenty of substituting by then, experimenting with different combinations, as if letting the Wolves decide which five would be on the court at the end today.
But with two minutes left and the Wolves up by a basket, he called a time-out and put his five starters back into the game.
He looked down at the scoreboard, then back at the players sitting in front of him.
“Since the game does count,” he said, “and since the other team is Homestead, I can’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t haul off and win this thing.”
As Lucas started to walk back on the court with his teammates, Gramps gave a quick tug on his arm.
“That big kid guarding Ryan is gassed,” Gramps said.
He meant Zim.
“Make him defend the pick-and-roll every single time you can,” Gramps said.
“Got it,” Lucas said.
Lucas started to pull away. Gramps still had his arm. But he was grinning.
“If he can defend that thing,” he said.
The Wolves had the ball in the backcourt. Lucas brought it up. Charlie darted in a couple times, going for the steal. Lucas was ready for him. Lucas didn’t call out “Utah” as he crossed half-court. All he had to do was look at Ryan. They both knew.
Ryan knew. Zim knew. Charlie knew what was coming and so did Lucas.
Let them try to stop it.
Lucas angled to the right side when he got to the top of the key. He was right-handed. Charlie knew Lucas was more comfortable driving right with his dominant hand. But now Lucas crossed over and went left toward the free-throw line.
Ryan was there by then. Zim was behind Ryan, and jumped out as Lucas cleared Ryan, seeing that Lucas had a step on Charlie. So now it was Zim guarding Lucas, Charlie on Ryan.
Charlie had time to get in front of Ryan as Ryan turned for the basket, guarding him as closely as he could, knowing what kind of height advantage Ryan would have down near the basket if Lucas passed him the ball.
But Lucas caught Ryan’s eye. As he did, he tilted his head slightly to his right, telling Ryan to pop out behind the same three-point line they used in their league that players used in high school. He was telling Ryan to go for what the TV guys called the “dagger.”
Charlie, fast as he was, was slow to react when Ryan didn’t make a move for the basket, and ran out to the line instead. Lucas didn’t hesitate. He wheeled and hit Ryan with a chest-high pass. Ryan didn’t even need a dribble. He just put a pure shooting stroke on his shot, even holding his follow-through just slightly.
All net.
Now the Wolves were up by five, 39–34.
The Bulls came back and scored. But then Billy made a baby hook, his favorite shot. The Wolves were back up by five. Twenty seconds left. The Bulls tried to run a pick-and-roll of their own at the other end with Charlie and Zim, but Ryan fought through Zim’s screen, got a hand on the ball, slapped it over to Lucas, who beat everybody down the court. Only Lucas didn’t shoot the ball. They were under ten seconds now, and instead of driving all the way to the basket, he cut to the corner while Charlie chased him, then back toward half-court until the buzzer sounded, ending the game.
Sometimes when you were the open man, all you had to do was dribble out the clock.
They were 1–0.