Long Shot - Mike Lupica [19]
As they were running down the court getting back on defense, Bobby made sure to run past Pedro. “Dude,” he said, “what just happened there?”
“Thought Alex was reading my eyes,” Pedro said.
“But I had him,” Bobby said.
“Just couldn’t pull the trigger,” Pedro said, then acted as if he were looking around for his man.
Bobby wouldn’t let it go.
“I saw that,” Bobby said. “What I’m not getting here is why.”
The half ended with the Knights still comfortably ahead, 36-20. Out of the corner of his eye Pedro could see his dad stand up as the Knights ran past that part of the bleachers toward their locker room. Pedro could even hear him clapping harder than anybody around him.
He kept his head down and kept running, thinking that if Luis Morales was cheering the way Pedro had just played, then it really was official that he could do no wrong in his dad’s eyes.
The second half felt more like a scrimmage than a real game. The Knights’ lead got back to twenty points and pretty much stayed there no matter who Coach Cory had in the game.
He pulled Ned and Dave about four minutes into the third quarter, and put Pedro back in. He told him to make sure to work the ball on offense, and even to run through plays twice sometimes as a way of not running up the score.
In one huddle he told the guys, “There’s a way to take it easy on them without making it look as if we are. You hearing me on this?”
Everybody nodded.
“This isn’t college football,” he said, grinning. “We’re not trying to win by fifty so we can move up in the polls.”
Even if he could find his old game somehow, Pedro knew he couldn’t really play it. Couldn’t be what Steve Nash was, what Chris Paul was, what all the great point guards were: creators.
The Knights were making the extra pass now as a way of not getting an easy basket, passing just to keep passing. It was basketball about as much fun as diagramming sentences in English class.
Pedro scored a couple of baskets on layups, and got a couple of assists to Joe when he would have looked stupid not passing him the ball underneath the basket. He even played the last two minutes of the game with Ned, both of them having been told by Coach Cory to feed the ball to Jamal, the one guy on the Knights who’d had a terrible shooting day.
“I don’t want J walking out of here feeling bad about himself on a day when we had such a good win,” Coach said.
So Ned passed it to Jamal for a baby hook which he made, and Pedro fed him a bounce pass that produced a layup.
On their last possession, Jamal got a rebound and kicked it out to Ned on the left side. Pedro, going on instinct, cut toward the middle. Like they were starting one of their three-man weaves. And for one moment, basketball felt fun again for him.
They hadn’t been running fast breaks the whole fourth quarter, but as Pedro caught the pass from Ned, he was running right at Coach Cory, who made a waving motion with his hand, like he was telling them to go ahead and let it rip one last time.
Pedro did.
He led the break now. Ned had cut behind him and gotten out on his right. Jamal was on his left. Pedro threw it to Ned, who threw it back to him. Then Pedro gave it back to Jamal.
Now I’m playing, Pedro thought. Even if it’s just one play.
Pedro’s plan was to let Jamal finish, have him go hard to the basket and finish strong. He threw it to Ned one more time, knowing he would throw it back, as the two Camden kids who were back on defense pinched over toward him when he got the ball again.
Only the ball didn’t make it back to Pedro, even though Ned was eyeballing him the whole time.
Grinning at him, even.
His eyes stayed on Pedro as he put the ball down on a right-hand dribble, then whipped this amazing bounce pass off the dribble and past the defenders, the ball catching Jamal in perfect stride, and Jamal laying it up with his left hand as the horn ending the game sounded.
Everybody in the Knights’ cheering section jumped up, and the Knights on the court went running for Ned as if his assist had won the game by a single basket.
Pedro went over