Long Shot - Mike Lupica [28]
He waved his dad off now, chased the ball down himself, placed it on the floor and soccer-kicked it as hard as he could toward the opposite end of the gym. Pedro was trying to kick it in the direction of the other basket, but hooked it badly so that it bounced off a tall stack of chairs.
Right to where Ned Hancock was standing.
Pedro had no idea how long Ned had been there or how much of his pathetic shooting display he’d seen. Just saw Ned calmly walk over, grab the ball, then throw a perfect football pass the length of the court.
Pedro didn’t even have to move.
“Wow, dude,” Ned called out, like they were best basketball buds still, Pedro thinking it was more for his dad’s benefit than his own. “Now you can’t even boot it straight.”
FOURTEEN
Their next opponent was the Wilton Warriors, one of their big rivals.
No matter what sport you played in Vernon and no matter what your record was, your season wasn’t a total loss if you could beat Wilton.
Now the Knights were getting the first of their two chances, the first game of a home-and-home series against the Warriors, the second game to be played in a week in Wilton.
Pedro knew what everybody else on their team knew: that the Warriors were 4-0, that they still hadn’t lost as a group because they’d been undefeated champions of the league as fifth-graders, and that their backcourt of Kyle Sullivan and Nate Clark was already lighting up their league, same as last year.
Neither one of them was a pure point guard. Neither was a pure shooting guard. They could both pass, they could both put the ball on the floor, and they could both fill it up from the outside if they got even a sliver of daylight so small it was like it was trying to sneak through your blinds.
The Knights’ guards were going to have to “man up” today—it was probably Coach Cory’s favorite expression in the world—or the Warriors’ two-year run as the best would continue.
“What we have here, gentlemen,” Coach Cory said, “is an early-season contest with serious playoff implications.”
Joe had mentioned once to Pedro that he sometimes thought that Coach Cory was like somebody from a foreign country who’d learned how to speak English watching SportsCenter on ESPN.
“To be the best,” Coach Cory said in the locker room right before they went out the door, “you’ve got to beat the best.”
Pedro was where he usually was at the start of the game—the far end of the Knights’ bench.
Yet one thing was clear from the opening tip: Dave DeLuca had no chance against Nate Clark. Or Kyle Sullivan, when Coach switched Dave over to him. It was actually even worse with Kyle. When Dave backed off, Kyle hit from the perimeter. When Dave tried to crowd him, Kyle got to the basket so easily it was like he was wearing one of those E-ZPass gadgets that got you right through tollbooths.
Kyle was scoring at will. And frustrating Dave so much that he got two early fouls. Even as Pedro was kneeling next to Coach Cory, with Coach trying to get Dave out of there and get Pedro into the game, Dave managed to commit his third foul.
Coach Cory pushed Pedro toward the scorers’ table, saying, “I don’t care what you give me on offense today. But I want you to man up on that young man right now.”
Meaning Kyle.
“Done,” Pedro said.
“You know how we change games on this team, right?” Coach Cory said.
Pedro turned and nodded as the scorer blew the horn, sending him into the game. “One stop at a time,” Pedro said to his coach.
Pedro immediately stole the ball from Kyle the first time he was on him, flicking his hand out as Kyle tried to use the same crossover move he’d been punishing Dave with, slapping the ball away, beating Kyle to it, then lofting a pass toward the Knights’ basket almost in the same motion.
For a moment it might have looked like a pass to no one. Except that Pedro knew better. Pedro had heard Joe say “hey” even before Pedro had control of the ball, and Pedro knew that meant one thing: He had taken off like a wide receiver on a fly pattern.
So as the ball came down near