The Sheridan Sonics hadn’t been one of the better sixth-grade teams last year, but had certainly been the biggest.
Their center, Robbie Marino, had been the tallest player in the Twin Lakes League, by a lot. And when they showed up at the gym at the Sheridan YMCA, they saw that Robbie had just continued to grow.
“I was hoping that he’d gotten shorter somehow,” Ryan said to Lucas.
“Don’t worry, you showed last season you can guard that guy,” Lucas said. “And I know you can do it again.” He paused. “If the refs allow you to stand on a chair.”
“Is that your idea of a pep talk?” Ryan said. “Seriously?”
“No,” Lucas said. “That was just me trying to lighten your mood. Or your load.”
“That guy is a load,” Ryan said.
“I’ll try to do better,” Lucas said. He grinned. “But that sounds like a pretty tall order.”
“You’re not funny,” Ryan said.
“You know I’m funny,” Lucas said. “It’s just that right now you don’t think I’m funny.”
Ryan was still staring at Robbie, shaking his head slowly and sadly.
“Don’t worry,” Lucas said. “You just stay between him and the basket as much as you can. And I’ll drop off and help out whenever I can, same as we did last year when we shut them down.”
“I don’t know why I even have to guard him,” Ryan said. “He’s their center and Billy’s ours.”
“Gramps told me he likes your quickness staying in front of him,” Lucas said. “And how long you are.”
“You know what’s really going to be long?” Ryan said. “This day.”
“You want my real pep talk?” Lucas said. “He’s bigger. You’re better. End of speech.”
He thought that Gramps had been quieter than usual on the twenty-minute ride from Claremont to Sheridan. But Lucas had to remind himself that Gramps did tire sometimes, that he did act his age, especially if the pain in his knees had prevented him from getting a good night’s sleep.
He just hoped that the closer they got to the game, the more Gramps’s disposition would improve. And that’s exactly what had happened by the time he gathered the Wolves around him in front of their bench, a few minutes before the ref would hand Lucas the ball.
“Just gonna give you boys one thought before we start today,” Gramps said, smiling his Santa Claus smile. “You all can handle one thought, right?”
“Unless we count that question as a second thought,” Ryan said.
Gramps raised an eyebrow and looked at Lucas.
“The truly amazing thing,” he said to Gramps, “is that he actually thinks he’s funnier than me.”
“I’m just trying to keep my mind off guarding a guy who looks as big as Zion Williamson,” Ryan said.
“Anyway,” Gramps said, “here’s the thought: Let’s not wait until the second quarter to start playing our best ball this Saturday the way we did last Saturday.”
The Wolves didn’t.
This Saturday they came out hot. Smoking hot. And it all started with their defense. Ryan made it his mission not just to stay in front of Robbie, but to bother him in every way he could, whether he had the ball in his hands or not. Every chance he got, he forced Robbie into one of Lucas’s double teams. He boxed him out on missed shots at both ends of the court, beating Robbie to his spot time after time as a way of beating him to the ball.
Every once in a while Robbie would reach over him and come out with the ball.
Not very often.
Ryan had told Lucas that he didn’t care if he scored a single point today. He wasn’t going to let the big guy beat them. But Ryan did get his points, mostly because of the outlet passes he was making, and the way he kept busting it to fill lanes on the fast break.
The Wolves were ahead by ten points at the end of the first quarter. They were ahead by fifteen at halftime. Up and down their lineup, no matter which five was on the court at a particular time, they looked exactly like the team Lucas had imagined they would be coming into the season. It wasn’t just Ryan on defense; they were all D-ing up, all over the court. They were sharing the ball on offense, and making their share of shots from the outside, starting with Lucas, who’d even made one over Robbie when Robbie had his arms in the air and looked as tall as a Christmas tree.
Lucas had a pretty good idea about how many assists he had by halftime. But in the end, he never cared about his own stats. Gramps had always drummed into his head that the only stat that mattered for a point guard wasn’t a number. It was a letter:
W.
For wins.
He still knew he had a boatload of assists today. And also knew that at the half, everybody who’d been in the game for the Wolves had at least one basket.
All Gramps said to them at halftime was this:
“Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re making me look like a genius.”
The Wolves slowed things down in the second half once it became clear that the Sonics were never going to cut into their lead. They stopped fast-breaking. They ran more set plays on offense, and worked more clock. Nobody wanted to embarrass the Sonics. Gramps always told them to imagine what it would feel like to be on the other side of a beatdown like this. By the start of the fourth quarter they had proved, in just about every way, that they were the better team today. There was no need to rub it in.
Gramps always talked about playing the game right. This was what that felt like. He always said if you did enough things right, the results would take care of themselves. And so they had against the Sonics.
The best result? They walked off the court 2–0.
If last Saturday had been a great day because of the way they had come back, this one felt ever sweeter. They hadn’t just shown the Sonics the kind of basketball of which they were capable.
They’d shown themselves.
You couldn’t ask for more than that, especially this early in the season. Couldn’t ask for a better day.
Until dinner that night.