Gramps treated the players to a pizza lunch in town at Gus’s. The Wolves took up two long tables in the back room.
While Lucas and Ryan waited for their pizzas to come out of the kitchen, Lucas told his friend it felt as if they were celebrating a championship, and not just the first game of the season.
“Fine by me,” Ryan said. “Sometimes I think it’s okay to celebrate the beginning of something the way you do the ending.”
“I thought you were just thinking about your first slice,” Lucas said.
“That too,” Ryan said. “Like you’re not?”
“What I’ve been thinking about is the way you waited until the exact right moment to pop out for that three-pointer,” Lucas said.
“You know I saw you give me the nod,” he said.
“And I knew you knew,” Lucas said.
“Gotta admit, though, the play was pretty chill,” Ryan said. “But if you really think about it, I was only open that much because of you.”
“How do you figure?”
“Zim decided he wasn’t going to let you beat them with a drive,” Ryan said. “So he overplayed right away. And then you beat them with the dish.”
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t make the shot,” Lucas said. “Plus, you’re a better shooter than I am.”
“In today’s game maybe,” Ryan said.
“Only game that matters right now,” Lucas said.
Lucas’s mom and Ryan’s mom were at a table against the wall. Lucas heard his mom say, “Is there anything better than watching hungry boys eat pizza?”
“But aren’t they always hungry?” Ryan’s mom said.
“Even when they’re sleeping, pretty sure.”
Gramps wasn’t sitting with Lucas and Ryan. He was at the head of the other table, his slice of plain pizza untouched in front of him. He was hunched over his napkin, smiling as he scribbled on it.
Ryan followed Lucas’s eyes over to where Gramps sat.
“What’s he doing?” Ryan said.
“I’ll bet you my allowance and yours that he’s diagramming a new play because of something that happened in the game today,” Lucas said.
“Not taking that bet,” Ryan said.
“Chicken?”
“We both know you’re right,” Ryan said. “I’m surprised that Xs and Os don’t come spilling out of his ear sometimes.”
Lucas grinned. “I think his hearing aid keeps them trapped inside,” he said.
Everything felt right today. They hadn’t just won their opener, they’d won a rivalry game. They’d beaten a team they knew they might face for the championship—again—if the season went the way they thought it would go, and hoped it would go. Had they played their best game? No one expected that in their first game. They sure hadn’t looked like much of a championship team in the first quarter. But they had fought their way out of that ten-point hole. Sometimes what mattered most in sports was overcoming something. It brought out the best in you.
When the game had ended Gramps had said, “Anybody can get knocked down. Heck, I used to do it all the time. There’s no trick in that. Any old crumbum can do that.”
It was one of his favorite words: crumbum.
“It’s how you get yourself back up after you do get knocked down, or even knocked back, that tells you plenty about yourself. And the other team, too.”
Lucas knew that Gramps’s wife—his grandmom—had died in a nursing home when Lucas was just two years old. But Gramps said he’d lost her years before that, and that by the time she finally passed, all her memories were gone. Just not his. He still called her his “best girl.”
Now he lived in an apartment within walking distance of Lucas and his mom’s house on Cypress. And while he didn’t have dinner with them every night, he had dinner with them most nights. Lucas’s mom said that the table just didn’t look right to her when it was set for two, instead of three. Julia’s own parents had moved to Oregon, on the other side of the country and what felt like the other side of the world, because her dad’s only brother lived out there. Lucas and his mom now visited them every other year. His other granddad would make sure that when they did come visit, he would get tickets to a Trailblazers’ game. His other grandfather was a basketball fan too. Just not the way Gramps was.
After Gus’s, Lucas and Ryan went back to Ryan’s house and watched college basketball, Georgetown against Villanova. But as soon as it was halftime Lucas suggested they go out in Ryan’s driveway and play a game of H-O-R-S-E.
“But it’s cold out there,” Ryan said. “And nice and toasty in here. And I’m just throwing this out there, but didn’t we just have a game?”
“Now we can have another game, just the two of us,” Lucas said. “You know you want to. You love playing H-O-R-S-E against me. Like I said, you’re a better shooter than I am.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, grinning. “I can’t argue with you on that.”
“Come on, it’ll be a blast,” Lucas said. “We can start getting ready for next Saturday’s game.”
It was a road game, against Essex.
“You look tired to me,” Ryan said, even though he knew he would end up losing this fight in the end. “You should rest.”
“After we play H-O-R-S-E,” Lucas said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of basketball?” Ryan said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of asking me that question?” Lucas said. “Because the answer is the same every single time.”
Ryan sighed loudly, got up off the couch, and headed up the stairs. Lucas already had his jacket back on.
“One game,” Ryan said.
“Promise,” Lucas said.
“And don’t pull that thing where when I win you make me stay out and keep playing until you can win,” Ryan said.
“When have I ever done that?” Lucas said, grinning to himself.
“Always!” Ryan said. “You don’t even want to stop playing when it’s dark out.”
There was still a lot of sun when they got outside, even though it would be December soon. But the day had gotten a lot colder since they’d left Gus’s, so they did some running around before they started, just to get themselves as warm as possible.
Lucas let Ryan shoot first. He used to just stand outside and fire away, because his outside shot really was more pure than Lucas’s. Just not anymore. Lucas hadn’t only been working on his outside shot at practice, and with Gramps at the park, he’d been doing it on his own driveway basket. He knew that the more dangerous he became with his outside shot, the more dangerous he became as a point guard. If the guy guarding him was afraid to give him space, it made it easier for Lucas to drive past him and create a shot for himself or one of his teammates.
Ryan got ahead early. Lucas came back with a couple left-handed floaters, which he knew always annoyed Ryan, because being better with his left hand, his off hand, was about the only edge he had out here.
But when they were finally tied at H-O-R-S, it was Lucas who stepped back all the way to Ryan’s mailbox, and buried two straight shots. Ryan matched the first, but not the second. Because it was game point, he got one last chance.
He missed again.
Ryan said, “I don’t like to make excuses when I occasionally do lose to you.”
“That would be so unlike you,” Lucas said.
“But I think my shooting arm was tired after I made that absolute bomb at the end against the Bulls,” Ryan said.
“Well, now you can rest it,” Lucas said, “because of those two absolute bombs I just made.”
By the time Lucas walked up the street from Ryan’s house to his own, Gramps was waiting for him. It meant he was waiting to talk about the game they’d won. If practice was his favorite thing about coaching, breaking down a game after it had been played was his next favorite.
Then came actually coaching the game.
Lucas pointed that out to him while they ate turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes and green beans.
“That press changed everything today,” Lucas said.
“Even I picked up on that,” Julia said. “The poor boys on the other team looked as if they’d been attacked by a swarm of bees.”
Gramps smiled. “Well, maybe that decision did tilt the game slightly toward us at that point,” he said.
“You think?” his grandson said.
Gramps picked up his water glass. As always, Lucas couldn’t believe how big his hands were, and how long his fingers were. They were old hands, and there were a lot of dark spots on them. But these were great, big basketball hands. When the old man was feeling frisky, he would palm a ball with one hand after he got one spinning on the index finger of the other.
“You boys still had to execute the press properly,” Gramps said.
“Yeah,” Lucas said, smiling. “I heard somewhere it’s a player’s game.”
“Well, it sure as heck isn’t a coach’s game,” Gramps said, “even though there’s a whole lot of coaches who act as if they invented basketball, instead of just putting their players in the best position to win the game.”
“Which is what you did today,” Lucas said.
“Eat your beans,” his grandfather said, “even though you’re pretty much full of beans already.”
“Wonder who he gets that from?” Lucas’s mom said.
“Must be your side of the family,” Gramps said.
After Lucas had finished his apple pie, he said to Gramps, “Hey, we’ve been talking so much about the game I forgot to tell you guys about this cool writing project Mr. Collins gave us in English.”
He explained it, and how it couldn’t be a parent.
“Good!” Lucas’s mom said, sounding so relieved that she wasn’t going to be his subject that they all laughed.
Then she said, “Even though I sort of know what the answer to this question is going to be, gonna ask it anyway: Whose life story are you going to write?”
“Gramps,” Lucas said.
“Oh, come on,” Gramps said. “Can’t you find somebody more interesting than an old man?”
“First of all, you’re not old,” Lucas said.
Gramps turned to Lucas’s mom.
“When was the last time the boy’s eyes were checked?” he said.
“I want to write about you,” Lucas said. “I want to know more about your life. There’s got to be stuff you never told me.”
“I can’t even remember the things I want to remember,” Gramps said.
“C’mon,” Lucas said. “It’ll be a blast.”
He felt the way he did trying to persuade Ryan to go outside for a game of H-O-R-S-E.
Gramps smiled at Lucas now, and reached across the table with one of his old hands and squeezed Lucas’s shoulder.
“You know me as well as you need to know me,” he said, “even if I’m not as great as you think I am.”
“How do you know, Gramps?” Lucas said.
Gramps smiled and said, “Because nobody could be.”
He squeezed Lucas’s shoulder again, got up from the table, and limped out of the room.
“Let’s go watch some basketball,” he said.
They were always on safe ground, Lucas knew, with basketball.