Long Shot - Mike Lupica [24]
Pedro wasn’t great, despite all the good intentions he’d brought with him to Sherrill. A few times, in his determination to start making things happen again, he forced passes and caused turnovers.
He didn’t care. His attitude was that when he saw an opening, he wasn’t going to let it go. He was through playing scared.
In the end, he wound up with more assists than turnovers, including assists on both of Bobby’s baskets. And even though outside shooting remained the weakest part of his game, Pedro had even managed to sink a three-pointer of his own.
For the first time this season, he felt as if he’d helped the team more than he’d hurt it.
Ned, of course, was playing like a total star, at both ends of the court, dominating the game in almost every possible way when he was out there. He wasn’t just making Dave look better today, he was making everybody around him look better, maybe even making the Knights look better than they really were. And as soon as he got back out to start the third quarter, the Knights’ lead went from five points to ten in what seemed like a blink.
With five minutes to go in the quarter, Coach Cory took out Dave and put Pedro in at the point. So this was different than the second half of the Camden game, when Pedro and Ned had only played together during what the announcers loved to call “garbage time” at the end of blowout NBA games.
This was real ball now. Even though they still had a nice cushion, Coach Cory told them during a time-out to “put these suckers away.”
For a few minutes, the five on the court were last year’s starting lineup from the fifth-grade team: Pedro, Ned, Joe, Jamal, and Bobby. Maybe things were getting back to normal after all. That’s what Pedro thought, mostly because that’s what he wanted to believe.
Badly.
And for those last few minutes of the third quarter, it was like they were all in sync again, sharing the ball, keeping their lead even though Sherrill’s best player, a kid named Dwan, who was built like a football tight end but had a sweet shooting touch from the outside, was doing his best to keep his team in the game.
The Knights were in charge, though, and had been in charge for most of the game. Everybody in Sherrill’s tiny, old-fashioned middle school gym knew it.
They only had a few set plays, with a couple of options for each one. And while most of them technically started with the point guard making the first pass, the plays really started with the point forward.
Ned.
So even with Dwan staying hot, the Sherrill Sonics never pulled closer than eight points. And everyone on the court knew that Ned would never let them pull closer than that.
Maybe that was why he decided it was safe to start playing puppet master again with a minute to go in the quarter.
Sherrill had gone into a zone by then. Pedro had the ball up on top, Ned over on the right wing and Bobby on the left. When the Knights went to a 3-2 offense like this, Joe and Jamal would take turns coming out from under the basket, setting up at the foul line.
They were working a little clock now, passing the ball around, all five of them getting touches, all five knowing that Coach Cory was loving life as they did, especially because they hadn’t practiced much against a zone.
The ball was a blur now, moving that fast, from Pedro to Ned and then back to Pedro and into the post and back out and over to Bobby and then back around the horn.
Finally, when Ned was alone on the right side, everybody else having cleared out, he clapped his hands.
Pedro knew what that meant from last season. It wasn’t a designed play, just one he and Ned Hancock used to run all the time. Just the two of them.