And then it was Thursday: Game day. The halls of Bothell High buzzed with excitement. Kids I didn't even know were coming up to me. "Go get 'em!"..."You can do it!"..."We're behind you!"
Game time was seven-thirty. I was in the locker room dressing at six-thirty when Trent came in. He nodded to me, but that was it.
The other guys filed in one-by-one. They were nervous, not talking much. In our first game against Franklin, Trent and I had scored all those points when they weren't taking us seriously. There'd be no sneaking up on them tonight. Half an hour before game time O'Leary went to the blackboard. The chalk banged as he spelled out, in huge capitals, the word TEAM. Then he put about ten exclamation points next to it, smacking the blackboard so hard that the chalk finally broke in half, one piece flying across the room. "This is it, gentlemen. This is what we've been working for. This game. These couple of hours. All of us, together."
Everything moved quickly then. The door leading to the court was thrown open and I was swept along into the throbbing gym. We did our passing drill; the ball boys threw out a half dozen balls and we shot around. The horn sounded, and the next thing I knew the second-stringers were moving to the bench and, along with Darren and Tom, Luke and Trent, I headed to center court. Then the toss went up and the ball came to me. The instant I touched it, I came alive from head to toe. The whole world was a rectangle ninety feet long and fifty feet wide, and what happened inside it made sense.
It's tough to run the fast break early in a big game. The defense is pumped. At every practice, all they've heard is "Get back on defense." Nobody is tired, nobody is discouraged, everybody is hustling. You can blow a team out of a game late in the half or early in the third quarter. But in the first quarter, it's your set offense that's got to carry you.
I'd always run our set offense through Trent, and I started out that night doing the same. But Franklin had scouted us; the second Trent touched the ball, they ran a swarming double-team trap at him.
He didn't panic and he didn't force stuff. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, which was zip the ball back to me. I swung it around to the open man—usually Luke or Darren—on the weak side. Time after time they had good looks at the hoop. Fifteen, eighteen footers, the kind of shots they could make in their sleep. Only now they couldn't get anything to drop.
After three minutes we were down six points. O'Leary called time-out. "Relax," he said to Luke and Darren. "You can make those shots."
But they didn't.
That made Franklin's double-team all the more tenacious. Two Franklin guys would totally commit to Trent every time he touched the ball. They'd even double-team him on rebounds to keep him off the glass. He couldn't score, he couldn't rebound, and Luke and Darren kept missing four out of every five shots they took. Our fans had filled the gym; they were dying to scream their lungs out. But there was nothing to cheer. Franklin's lead grew to seven by the end of the first quarter, eleven at the end of the second.
The locker room at the half was a morgue. Twice O'Leary went to the blackboard and started to write something. Both times he stopped. Finally he smacked the blackboard with his piece of chalk. The noise snapped us to attention. "Gentlemen," he said, his eyes scanning the room, "I know you're hustling, giving me one hundred percent. I'm not faulting anybody's effort. If anything, you're trying too hard. Be yourselves. Play your game."
But the third quarter wasn't all that different from the first half. Franklin stuck with their game plan—double-teaming Trent. I stuck with ours—working the ball to the open guy. But Darren and Luke stayed cold. Their shooting percentage must have been below twenty. Franklin's eleven-point lead grew to fourteen. The score was 53–39 when the horn sounded ending the third quarter.
We had to try something different, and I knew what it was. On our first possession of the fourth quarter, I dumped the ball into Trent; the double-team came; he popped the ball back out. Darren was open to my right, but instead of dishing it to him, I stepped back behind the arc and fired off a three-pointer. I had a nice stroke on the ball, good backspin, good height. It was like all those shots in my back yard—absolutely in the heart.
Franklin missed their shot, and again I brought the ball down. This time I didn't even dump it in. I went to the top of the key, set my feet, and let it fly. Perfect—another three-pointer, the net again snapping as the ball swished through. Our fans came out of their seats with a roar. We'd played twenty seconds and Franklin's fourteen-point lead was down to eight.
The Franklin point guard brought the ball up. I'd been matched up against him all game, and all game he'd been totally in control, cocky even. But now there was something different about him. I could see a little doubt in his eyes, a little fear. Two three-pointers in your face will do that to you. He was tentative with his entry pass. I got a hand on it, deflecting it forward. Darren picked it up and raced toward the hoop. I trailed behind. He drove to the hoop, went up, and then left a soft little pass for me. I was so surprised I actually fumbled it a little. But I got it under control and cozied in the lay-in. Eight straight points—Franklin by six.
They scored on their next trip, slowing our run. But they didn't regain the momentum. I made sure of that with two more hoops in the next couple of minutes. The game that looked out of reach was back within our grasp—and with plenty of time left.
Their coach called time-out. "Look for a change in their defense," O'Leary warned us. "They're going to come after you, Nick. I'm sure of it. So don't force things. If you're not open, pass the ball."
O'Leary called it exactly right. For the rest of the game Franklin smothered me. But confidence is as contagious as fear. Luke nailed a jumper from the corner. Trent scored on a running eight-footer. Darren sank a set shot from beyond the arc, and our crowd went crazy because for the first time in the game we had the lead. Then came another jumper from the corner by Darren. A miss by Trent, but a put-back by McShane. The baskets poured down like rain.
Just before the buzzer I sunk a final three-pointer, pushing the final margin to twelve. The horn sounded and we raced off the court, arms raised above our heads, as our fans chanted: "We're number one! We're number one!"