Long Shot - Mike Lupica [12]
“Make every one a thing of beauty!” Coach Cory yelled now. “Like my own dream girl Beyoncé!”
The last pass was supposed to go to Ned, and Pedro thought he’d led him perfectly. But for some reason Ned slowed up just enough, maybe just to get his footwork right for the layup, and Pedro’s pass wound up too far in front of him. The ball kept going all the way through an open door and out of the gym.
Making it look like a worse pass than it really was.
Pedro smacked his hands together hard, in frustration, the sound like a firecracker going off in the gym.
“What’s the matter, Morales?” Coach Cory said. He was smiling, but he usually smiled when he was getting his message across. “Forget how to make a simple chest pass over the summer?”
Now Pedro just put his head down, embarrassed. He knew Coach was playing with him a little, knew it was just their first practice, knew it was a drill he hardly ever messed up. But Pedro didn’t know anybody who liked being called out by the coach this way, even in fun.
“Okay,” Coach Cory said, “now I gotta put the pressure on everybody, right from the jump. We’re gonna run this baby ten times perfect, or I’m gonna make you suckers run ten laps for me.”
It was, Pedro knew by now, Coach Cory’s way. He made basketball fun. Just never easy. Made you laugh a lot. But made you learn more. He wanted you to do even the littlest things right, said it was like building a team from the foundation up, and then from there, once you had the strong foundation, it was just second nature for you to play the game right.
And, boy, did he not want to tell you the same thing twice.
After playing a whole season with Coach Cory already, Pedro looked at it this way: Coach wanted you to play basketball, but made you work at the same time.
Fine with Pedro.
He’d never been afraid of hard work.
They all got through the weave nine straight times. Now Pedro was back in the middle for the last one before they got to scrimmage. Ned was on his left this time, Joe on his right.
Pass, cut behind.
Simple.
Do it again and keep doing it until the last layup, the one that meant they could break up into teams and really play some ball.
The three of them had done the drill so well, so cleanly, that they’d already passed it five times by the time Ned hooked around from the left and Pedro was flying from the right for his layup. Cake. Ned was a dream passer of the ball, whether it was a long pass or a short one, chest or bounce. He’d throw it hard to you but never too hard, always giving you a pass you could not only handle, but do something with, pass it or shoot it or just put it on the floor and start dribbling.
Not this time.
The ball came at Pedro harder than he expected, harder than he ever got from Ned, and just low enough that before Pedro could get his hands down, his knee caught the ball just right and sent it screaming so hard off the back wall that it was as if Pedro had booted it there.
“Soccer season’s over,” Coach Cory yelled. “You gotta catch that ball, my brother.” He blew his whistle then. “So now we run,” he said.
“How many laps, Coach?” Bobby Murray said, maybe hoping he’d forgotten.
“Ten.”
Groans all around.
As they ran, Pedro heard a voice behind him whisper, “Nice going, Pete.”
He thought it might be Ned. Or maybe it was Jeff. He couldn’t be sure. It was one of them, though. Pedro knew that.
He just put his head down and ran harder, promising himself he’d made the last mistake he was going to make for the rest of the night.
Things didn’t get any better when they scrimmaged. If anything they got worse, courtesy of Ned Hancock.
Sometimes Ned would wait a couple of extra seconds when Pedro was open, giving the guy covering him a chance to get back on him. Or he would give Pedro a look the way he always had, but then cut the wrong way, and Pedro would throw the ball away just like he had during the three-man weave.
One time, after Pedro did that and got called out by Coach Cory again, Ned came over and