The Last Shot Page 13

  In Hartstein’s locker right now, there are over 250 letters for Corey from midlevel Division I schools like Bowling Green, Rutgers, and Fordham. But Hartstein hasn’t given them to Corey for the same reason that the college coaches, though they admire his stylish play, have held back from recruiting him: as his brother feared, Corey is spending too much time with girls, and his grades are still among the worst on the team. Stephon has just arrived as a freshman this month, and the coaches (some of whom have been sending him mail since he was in seventh grade) all ask Hartstein to introduce them to the Wunderkind. In fact, most of them would go ahead and dress the fourteen-year-old in a college uniform right now, but the NCAA might have a word or two to say about that. So the majority of coaches come, for the time being at least, to recruit Tchaka and Russell.

  Most of them already know their way around the Lincoln corridors. As soon as Tchaka displayed glimpses of his potential last spring, Carlesimo, Massimino, and Barnes began dropping in on Coach Hartstein, just to tell him how much they liked Tchaka’s game, to compliment Hartstein on his expert coaching skills, and to scan the school cafeteria for other men in suits. When they couldn’t visit, they would write. Every afternoon now, Hartstein stops off at his school mailbox, filled with greetings from the coaches—one or two for Hartstein, dozens for Tchaka and his teammates.

  Here’s a note to Tchaka from the Providence assistant coach Fran Fraschilla, who sends along a snapshot of himself standing by the side of a lake holding up a fish: “Tchaka, growing up in Brooklyn, I never got a chance to fish much. Last weekend, I got a chance to fish and it’s a good thing that it’s not my occupation because I’d be in trouble. Can’t wait to see you!—Coach Fran.”

  An assistant coach from Fordham takes a more direct approach; he tells Tchaka about one scholarship recipient who became rich beyond his wildest dreams and later donated $10 million to the school. “Tchaka, this may be you someday. See how Fordham can change your life?” The coach ends his letter with the salutation “Health, Happine$$, and Hundred$.”

  Fraschilla touches base with Tchaka again, this time while on vacation in Florida: “Tchaka, I’m sitting here watching the Bulls and the Pistons on Sunday afternoon. You have at least one thing in common with them: You play hard! Hope you’ll keep thinking about the Friars.”

  John Olive, an assistant coach at Villanova, drops Tchaka a postcard just to let him know that “I’m here with Charles Barkley at Villanova. Hope to talk to you sometime during the week.—Coach O.”

  And yet another postcard from the peripatetic Fraschilla (“just a note to say hello”) while vacationing with his wife on some tropical island.

  “Jesus, these guys could send Tchaka a scholarship just with their postal fees!” Hartstein grumbles. He reaches into his mailbox and disappears up to his shoulder. The letters come out in an endless stream, like a scarf from a magician’s hat. “Here’s one for a T-E-H-A-K-A Shipp,” Hartstein notes wryly. A lot of coaches send form letters like this one to the Lincoln players. As Hartstein sees it, that’s twenty-nine-cents’ worth of interest—less, actually, since the schools mail in bulk. “The kid’s got an unusual name. If they can’t spell it properly, it doesn’t show much interest, does it?” Hartstein rips that one up and tosses it into the trash.

  The recruiting process inspires in Coach Hartstein both amusement and annoyance—the former because he watches up close the supplicating postures the coaches are willing to strike to woo his players; the latter because of the enormous time it requires on his part to monitor all the calls, visits, and mail. “If a college coach calls a player when I tell him not to,” Hartstein says flatly, “then forget about recruiting that kid.” But for all his protestations, lately Hartstein has not looked like a man who objects too strenuously to the attention his star athletes are bringing him. “He says he doesn’t like the recruiting,” Tchaka once remarked. “But I think he likes it more than me.” That—and the complications it creates—became evident one afternoon in Albany last summer when a group of college coaches—Tom Sullivan from Seton Hall, John Olive from Villanova, and Steve Lappas from Manhattan College, a lower-level Division I school—invited Hartstein to join them for lunch at the local Ground Round.

  The first half of the meal was devoted principally to shop talk: first a spirited debate over whether the three-point line in college should be moved back four feet in accordance with the pros; then a discussion of how the NBA has become so desperate to integrate its rosters that if you’re tall and white and have the good sense to keep passing the ball to the black, $3 million-a-year superstar on your team, the front office will let you stay around the league for ten years; and finally a critique of the State University of New York at Albany, then hosting the Empire State Games. “What a waste of money to build such a huge campus,” observed Sullivan. “Imagine the heating bills. And it’s only Division Three!”

  Hartstein was just beginning to enjoy this inside chat with the Big Boys. Then burgers and fries were delivered all around, and the coaches nudged the conversation toward more urgent matters. “You know, I think Tchaka could hold his own in the MAC division,” offered Lappas, the Manhattan College coach.

  Hartstein laughed and pushed back from the table slightly. “I knew there was a reason you were hanging out with a high school coach like me. You never do that except when you want one of my kids.”

  “Yeah, and how many of them have I gotten over the years?” replied Lappas.

  “That’s not my fault. I’m not telling Tchaka not to go to Manhattan,” Hartstein said evenly. “In fact, I do more for you than I would for most coaches on your level.”

  “I tell you,” Seton Hall’s Sullivan interrupted, poking his head between the two, “if Tchaka winds up at Manhattan, there will be an investigation.” This was meant as a joke, but no one at the table laughed.

  “Seriously,” Lappas went on, “Tchaka should come to Manhattan, ’cause he’ll play thirty minutes a game there.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hartstein replied with a smirk. “And if you were still an assistant at Villanova, and Tchaka was considering Manhattan, you’d say, ‘What the hell does he want to go there for when he can go to Villanova?’ You college coaches are all the same. You’ll say whatever it takes to make your school sound better. And I understand that. That’s your job.” Hartstein shrugged. The conversation retreated to more neutral territory. When the waiter brought the bill, however, Hartstein pulled out his wallet, which prompted Lappas to nod in the direction of the Villanova and Seton Hall coaches. “With Tchaka on your team I’m surprised you don’t have these guys buy you lunch,” he quipped.

  “If you weren’t around,” Hartstein shot back, “I’m sure they would.”

  Everyone laughed, but the meal concluded uncomfortably, leaving Hartstein stranded in that awkward zone, halfway between the kids he is obliged to protect and the coaches who bring him and his school whatever small degree of fame they enjoy.

  ***

  “What’s happening!” Rollie Massimino shakes Tchaka’s hand and clasps his shoulder warmly. “How’s your mamma? How ’bout school, kid?” In person, the Villanova coach is less imposing than he appears on TV; he is short and a bit round, with an ample jowl and thinning gray hair combed over a well-tanned scalp. He wears a dark pinstriped suit and huge gold wristwatch with a large V on the dial, and he carries a monogrammed briefcase. Immediately Massimino notices a small cut over Tchaka’s right eye, suffered in a recent game, and he reaches up to inspect it with kindly, country-doctor hands. “You need to get that looked at,” he says.

  As he lays his case on the table, Massimino catches sight of a lush, four-color brochure from Seton Hall. As of last month, the NCAA banned colored recruiting brochures (along with, for certain arcane reasons, stationery printed in more than two colors and recruiting tapes longer than three minutes), and Massimino wonders aloud whether Seton Hall is distributing an old brochure to get around the rule. “That would be a good trick,” he marvels, mostly to himself. C
ompetition among college coaches may be fierce, but a shared contempt for the niggling NCAA rulebook always builds solidarity.

  Massimino has arrived today with his son Tom, who is a Villanova assistant coach. As Tchaka, Coach Hartstein, and I take seats across from them, father and son click open their briefcases and remove six three-ring binders, each with a color-tabbed section: WHY THE BIG EAST, MEDIA AND TV, NCAA TOURNEY, and so on. Massimino arranges his fingers in a steeple, draws his breath, and begins the presentation in a rich, grandfatherly baritone. “In life, there’s perception and there’s reality, Tchaka. And believe it or not, life is more about perception. As a coach, I’ve been through it all—high school, small college, major college. So you can believe me when I say that the reality of Villanova is this: we’re a family—very close, very selective. And I’m talking to you as a friend, telling you like it is, because I’m not a recruiter.”

  Massimino removes his reading glasses and, holding them by the stem, tries to lock eyes with Tchaka. “A lot of players want to come to Villanova—I don’t need to tell you that. But we’re only interested in a very few. When you come visit our campus, we ask the kids on the team what they think of you; no one else does this. And if our players don’t like you, we won’t recruit you. That’s the truth. Why? Because we’re a family, a family that wants happy people. That’s one of my mottoes.” Massimino returns his glasses to the bridge of his nose and lets his motto linger in the air.

  Over the past few days, Tchaka has begun to notice a striking similarity among the coaches’ maxims. “This is the second biggest decision you’ll ever make—after you pick your wife” finds expression with some frequency, as does “Your next four years will dictate your next forty.” But each coach sounds a slightly different theme, usually inspired by some bit of intelligence they have gathered about Tchaka—his home life, his buddies, whom he goes to for advice—anything to help the coaches make what they call “that essential emotional connection.” One of the first details Massimino learned about Tchaka was how close the player had grown to his mother and sister in the years following the death of his father. Perhaps that is one reason the coach has arrived today with his own son.

  “You want to go to a place that will give you the help, the guidance, the love,” Massimino continues, with more vigor now, sculpting the air with his hands. “At Villanova, you’ll come over to my house to eat. I’ll even cook for you. Because at Villanova, we play together, we eat together, we win together, we lose together, we cry together . . . ”

  On cue, Tom slides over to his father a three-ring notebook. “Here’s something to show you the family component, “Massimino offers. He turns to a page with mug shots of all the players he has coached since he arrived at Villanova in 1974, with a one-line description of each one’s present occupation. The page heading reads: SEARCHING FOR YOUR POT OF GOLD. Massimino draws Tchaka’s attention to a set of photos. “We have six brother combinations and one three-brother combo. No one in the country ever had three brothers on the same team!”

  “True, true,” Tchaka concurs. When Massimino first began talking, Tchaka was smiling and sitting, literally, at the edge of his seat, tipping it forward and balancing himself with both elbows on the table. Now he settles back and moves warily in his chair.

  “What are the three things you look for in a college?” Massimino asks.

  “Academics, athletics, and social life,” Tchaka answers swiftly, having been asked this exact question twice by other coaches.

  Massimino shoots his son a look. “Pretty perceptive kid, huh?” He turns back to Tchaka, places his hand over his heart, and declares, “I have never—not on my five children—asked that question that way and heard such a perceptive answer.” He shuts the binder in front of him. “Tchaka, you are the perfect and ideal candidate for our program. I could have put away my books twenty minutes ago and said, ‘That’s it. There’s no doubt.’ And I don’t say that a lot. Why do I say it now? It’s the way you project yourself and exude your personality. It’s because of what you can do—somebody a little bit bigger, a little bit better than the rest.” Tchaka is now in full retreat—back tensed against his chair, arms crossed, chin tucked in.

  Massimino leans toward the receding Tchaka and says, “Now we’ve got to talk about when you’re going to sign. You’re our number one guy, of course, but you should know that we’re recruiting three or four other players at your position. As I say, if you sign with us early, it’s all over. But I gotta tell you, the rest are ready to sign right now.”

  “What if I’m not?” Tchaka asks from his hideaway. Although the NCAA allows players to sign beginning on November 15, they can also wait for the so-called late signing period the following April if they want time to consider more schools.

  “Look, ninety-five percent of the top players will sign early. That’s just a fact.”

  “And if I want to wait?” Tchaka repeats with unexpected firmness.

  Massimino seems taken aback by Tchaka’s resolve. “So you’ll sign next June, eh? With Hofstra? Or Queens?” His tone suggests that Tchaka might also take up girl’s volleyball. “As I said, the other guys want in right now. So that’s the chance you take. But”—Massimino draws his gold pen from his breast pocket and levels it at Tchaka—“if you want to pick your school instead of having the school pick you . . . ”

  “But all you coaches are looking to move,” Hartstein suddenly interjects, with a small laugh. This is a daring remark, which explains the silence that follows it.

  When a player signs a letter of intent to attend a certain school, the college’s conference requires him to honor that commitment, whether or not the coach who recruited him stays around to honor his commitments. Now that many top coaches are compensated in the high six-figures (not to mention their million-dollar stipends from the sneaker companies), they regularly migrate from school to school, shopping for the best deal, unrestricted by the same rules that bind the players.

  Massimino laughs lightly and says, “Twenty years ago, Tchaka, I could have promised you that if you came to Villanova, you and I would have a forty-year relationship. I’m older now, so I’ve got to say it’ll be a twenty-year relationship. But ten years from now, you’ll call me just to talk things over. Because if you don’t”—Massimino points his pen at Tchaka with a severe expression, then lets his face break into a folksy grin—“I’ll kick your ass!”

  Tchaka’s own smile arrives a second late, out of synch with the coach’s quip, as he takes in Massimino’s words. Among Tchaka’s many talents, I have never observed one for clairvoyance. However, it is also a fact that were Tchaka to join the Villanova family next year, Massimino would be dispensing his help, guidance, and love three thousand miles away, to the players at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

  ***

  After his session with Massimino, Tchaka leaves the locker room and runs into Russell, heading for his meeting with Rod Baker, the head coach at the University of California at Irvine. The two players have seen little of each other since the school year began, but the tension that marks their encounters arises right away. Trying to get past each other in the doorway, Tchaka and Russell move back and forth in perfect syncopation, blocking each other’s path. Finally, Russell says, “So, you pass your SATs?”

  “Yeah, I took them the day after the prom last June. Man, I was so tired the pencil kept slipping out of my hand.” When Tchaka talks to Russell now, he sometimes looks past him into space. “You pass yours?”

  “I got a six-ninety,” Russell answers. “Only ten points to go.”

  “How ’bout Corey—he pass?”

  “Nah, I don’t think he’s even taken them yet. He’s relaxed about it, though. I’m relaxed about it, too,” Russell adds, looking anything but. “Man, can you believe we’re seniors already? High school is going by fast!”

  “Not fast enough,” Tchaka says. “Soon as I get to college, I ain’t never gonna step in this school again.”

  Rod Baker comes aroun
d the corner. Russell and Tchaka back away from each other. Russell follows Coach Baker into the locker room.

  ***

  “My apologies for not coming to see you before, Russell. It’s not that we don’t think you’re a good player. It’s just that ten days ago we didn’t need you. But the fact is, one of our players just failed out and suddenly we need another guard.” Coach Baker is a trim, handsome black man, one of the younger generation of Division I coaches coming to the helm at programs a step or two below the Big East. “And the first person we thought of was Russell Thomas. I’m not bullshitting you. Now, I know we’re not a very good team at the moment. We won eleven last year, five the year before. But that’s why we need guys like you. Frankly, I think you could be a pioneer at Cal-Irvine, an impact player, a franchise player. A year from now, when you’re a freshman and we’re playing for a conference championship, it won’t take a brain surgeon to figure out it was Russell Thomas who got us there. And five years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are saying, ‘Remember when Russell Thomas came in and completely changed the fortunes of Cal-Irvine?’” Baker runs a finger down each side of his well-groomed mustache. Russell smiles uncertainly.

  “Cal-Irvine’s old coach—he was successful, but his teams never guarded anyone. They gave up one hundred points eight times last year. The thing that excites me about you is that you can lock people up. Sure, you can bring the ball down and score, but you can also guard. One thing this team has never done is dig in its heels and say, ‘You’re not gonna score against us!’ Sure, you’re gonna have bad offensive games now and then, but you should never have a bad defensive game. It’s gotta end, and it’s going to end this year.” As he listens to Coach Baker, Russell nods with every word.

  “Now let me tell you about California. Ever been there?” Russell shakes his head. “Well, you’re gonna think you died and went to heaven. I’m serious. What is it today—seventy degrees? Nice and sunny? In California this is a shitty day in December. That’s the God’s truth. Look at this guy.” Baker gestures toward his white assistant coach, Greg Vetrone. “Just look at his tan. He’s darker than me! When he opens his apartment door, he’s ten feet from a pool!” Baker tosses his head back and laughs. Vetrone nods and says, “It’s true.”