The Last Shot Read online

  Mr. Marbury thinks that Stephon and I are playing the same game, and in the paradigm in which we are operating, I suppose we are. When I first met Stephon, he asked me for seventy-five cents for the school’s juice machine. When he found out I planned to write a book about the Lincoln team, he announced: “Every day I’m hitting you up. I’m just warning you.” Hartstein shuddered whenever he overheard his young star making such demands and muttered to himself about how difficult it was to deal with the Marbury clan, but Stephon operated as his father did—without apology. He would stand in front of me, blocking my path, waiting for me to fork it over. And I would. At the time it didn’t seem like much—seventy-five cents; big deal. But now, having watched the recruiters at work—“Twenty dollars’ Christmas money,” Jim Boeheim would say. “Big deal”—I’m beginning to feel a little like a college coach myself. (Maybe that’s why getting pulled into Rick Barnes’s recruiting pitch left such a bad taste in my mouth; one hates to be caught out in public that way.) At any rate, Mr. Marbury is holding out for a deal. I can see why he thinks I’m getting over on him. And now, as I drive down Mermaid Avenue with the players in my car and watch in my rearview mirror as Stephon puts away the second Big Mac I just bought him, I wonder whether there isn’t some way I can meet his father’s demands after all.

  ***

  By the time I reach the tag end of the Coney Island peninsula, where Corey, Russell, and Stephon live, everyone has finished his burgers and fries and we ride down the last stretch of Mermaid in silence. Given its current state of bombed-out desolation, it is hard to imagine that twenty years ago this street was full of businesses, just as the residential areas in Coney Island once had stand-alone houses and hopeful homeowners. During the urban-renewal years, however, the city knocked down not only all the houses in this neighborhood but also most of the storefronts along Mermaid. The strategy was to punch one hole in each block and wait for the rest to self-destruct; then the city could take over all the buildings for nonpayment of taxes. The blocks did fall apart, but once the city moved tenants into the projects, it abandoned much of its commercial-redevelopment plan. Now the only signs of life on some blocks are the drunks leaning against the plywood of boarded-up buildings and the mangy dogs scavenging vacant lots. It’s a sorry enough sight that some buildings on adjacent streets were deliberately built without windows facing Mermaid so that residents could more easily avert their gaze.

  It’s not yet six P.M. by the time I reach Russell’s building, but some of Coney Island’s drug dealers have already taken to the streets. A lot of the dealers in this part of the neighborhood spend their days hanging out by the fried chicken store on Mermaid Avenue, drinking in curbside posses and discussing which new homie will rise to the top while the old guard serves its time in prison. Then they get to work around this time, fanning out into the neighborhood like a night brigade, pausing in front of double-parked cars, disappearing down streets and alleyways when the occasional cop car comes along.

  Russell spots a kid he used to play with at the Garden loping down a project walkway with a rangy gait and his Georgetown cap on backward. “Look at him,” he says sadly. “Just doing the same ol’ same ol’. Shoot ’em up. Bang-bang.”

  Simply put, in Coney Island there is basketball, and when that doesn’t work out, there are drugs. And despite all the efforts of Disco and Mr. Lou to separate the two, the wall seems to have been breached, with washed-up players like Chocolate joining the gangs and getting killed, and dealers disrupting games among the serious players in order to show off their playground moves. “That’s all they do,” Russell says, watching his erstwhile friend disappear down the alley. “And if they ain’t talking or shooting each other, they’re trying to bring the players down.” He turns to me and says his next words slowly and deliberately so that I won’t fail to grasp their import. “This is the toughest area to come up in. It really is. ’Cause once you veer off like them, you’re stuck. Maybe you have another chance, but it’s a little less than you had before. ’Cause what’s here today can easily fall away.” With that, Russell climbs out of my car with his omnipresent stack of SAT review books under his arm. “Those guys ain’t doing nothing with their lives, so they don’t want you to be doing nothing either,” he says through the open car window. “But when we’re in college, they’ll still be in the parks, saying the same thing to someone else. Man, I hate Coney Island. Ain’t nothing gonna change around here except maybe the faces. After I get to college, I am never coming back. Until then, boys”—he gives us a weary salute—“I’m staying inside.”

  I drive down the block to drop off Stephon and Corey. They live on the fourth and fifth floors of the same building, directly over the Garden. Corey climbs out of the car and takes off, whistling the theme song of “Jeopardy.” Then Stephon gets out. After leaning into the window to slap my hand, he starts walking toward his building with that King Marbury stride. I watch as he swaggers across the deserted playground, trailing his hand along the jungle gym. A bunch of guys in their twenties, drinking their afternoon beers, call out to him as he goes by.

  On the streets and courts of Coney Island, Stephon is a legend in his own time. In fact, it may not be too much to say that he is the most gifted freshman point guard right now in the entire country. But for at least another five years, the benefits of his extraordinary talent will accrue only to those people who gather around him, angling for a piece of the action—high school and college coaches, camp directors and sneaker company executives. And though practically every stitch of clothing Stephon owns has been given to him by a coach as a down payment on future services, there remain dozens of obstacles between him and his dream of playing in front of 32,820 fans at the Syracuse Carrier Dome.

  Meanwhile, Stephon returns each night to this neighborhood where the only people who own white Nissan Sentras are the drug dealers, and to this building, an X-shaped slab of concrete rising fourteen stories into the air. I’ve spent some time in Stephon’s building, and it’s not the most pleasant place to come home to after a long practice, whether or not a coach or a reporter has just bought you a meal at Micky D’s. The elevator seldom works; the long halls reek of urine; the dark stairwells, where the dealers lurk, echo with the low rumble of drug transactions. The steel apartment doors don’t even have numbers on them, adding to the sense of menace and confusion, though they must have at one time because just outside the Marburys’ apartment someone has scrawled across the wall I WANNA FUCK THE GIRL IN 3B CAUSE SHE SUCKS DICK GOOD. I’ve never been inside the Marburys’ apartment, but according to a rumor circulating among the coaches at the B/C camp last summer, the family owns so little furniture that recruiters in pursuit of Norman a few years ago had to give their pitch standing up. Dealing with squalor like that, of course, is what makes recruiting such an arduous business.

  Eight

  EVERY LINCOLN PLAYER has his own beguiling vision of what the college experience will be like. For Stephon it involves crazy-loud crowds, star treatment at point, and, as with Kenny Anderson, an early bid at the pro draft. Russell wishes ardently for a “nice small tight school where they’ll look after me and I can get my degree in nursing and I’ll never have to come back to Coney Island.” Corey, though his image requires that he rarely talk about it, once let slip, “I’ve been thinking of going to a Southern school—Florida State, North Carolina, maybe Virginia. I hate it when it gets sharp and brisk out like it does here. My one rule is, I won’t go anyplace where I got to wear one of them Eskimo coats.” And Tchaka wants, more than anything, to find a school where he can develop his offensive skills, secure a starting spot, climb up the NCAA rankings, and maybe have a shot at the pros himself.

  Tchaka must have had a premonition that the promised land was near at hand, because the night before he was scheduled to visit the Seton Hall campus, as we made plans on the phone to drive there in my car, he sounded unusually nervous—as jittery, in fact, as he had before his trip to the Nike camp.

  “What are y
ou going to be looking for?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know—see the life, what to expect if I go there.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”

  “I thought I should get a little dressed up to impress them,” he replied thoughtfully. “Maybe wear some sneaks.” There was silence on the line. “Do you think I can bring Steve along? He’s my buddy, you know.”

  The next morning, when I go to pick him up, Tchaka has given up on the idea of inviting Steve, but he is looking sharp in black nylon sweatpants, a Nike T-shirt, and black Air Jordans. He tells me he’s been up since four, doing his laundry. He downs a quick glass of strawberry milk for good luck, and the two of us drive from Queens to Seton Hall University, just outside Newark, New Jersey.

  Seton Hall is one of those small schools which seem to have been built around their athletic facilities. This is rather fitting, since few had ever heard of Seton Hall until P. J. Carlesimo became head coach in 1982 and built its perennially losing basketball program into one of the finest in the Big East. Today, Carlesimo has arranged for Tchaka to be given a tour of the entire campus—the classrooms, dorms, and libraries—but as it turns out, most of our time is clocked precisely where Tchaka will spend it if he does attend Seton Hall next year: the Brennan Recreation Center.

  Our guide for the day will be the assistant coach Tom Sullivan. Tall, lanky, with a modified Ted Koppel haircut, Sullivan covets Tchaka’s signature on a Seton Hall letter-of-intent form with an ardor equal to his competitors’, but thus far he has kept a respectful distance. Sullivan is a former Fordham basketball star, and however much he may swoon over Tchaka’s play on the court, when he is with the recruit he affects a laconic, lawyerly manner that contrasts immediately with the more baroque styles of Massimino and Barnes; he keeps his eagerness in check.

  “Let me show you our arena,” he says to Tchaka, “though I’m sure you’ve seen it plenty of times on TV.” From Coach Carlesimo’s office, Sullivan leads us down several long, narrow corridors in the bowels of the recreation center to a short, low-ceilinged gangway, and there—all of a sudden—it is: the Seton Hall Pirates’ gym. At this early hour, the place is as empty and still as a Sunday morning—no crowds, no ref’s whistle, not even a ball bouncing off the rim—and Sullivan reserves comment while Tchaka walks tentatively onto the hardwood and examines the polished parquet floor, the Big East banners hanging above one basket, and the thousands upon thousands of bright, empty seats rising steeply to the rafters. It feels as if we’ve boarded the deck of an aircraft carrier in drydock.

  After a couple of minutes of this, Sullivan says, “Let’s take a look at the rest of the place, shall we?” Back we go down the labyrinthine corridors until we reach the Seton Hall players’ locker room. Or is it a men’s club? The royal blue carpeting (Pirates’ colors) is lawn-thick, and the oak grained lockers gleam under deep custodial care like wainscotting in the Edwardian Room. Above each locker hangs a colored portrait of a player on the team, superimposed over a picture of a basketball. In the middle of the room, two gray leather couches are arranged before a state-of-the-art TV and video system. By and large it marks an improvement over the drafty basement digs where the Lincoln players change for their games.

  “You’re six-seven; is that right?” Sullivan asks. Tchaka nods. “Well, you’ll find these lockers are built for you.” Like a well-schooled maître d’, the coach opens a locker and points to its array of shelves, most of them at Tchaka’s eye level. “The guards come in and say, ‘How’m I supposed to get up here?’ Don’t matter.” Sullivan swats the air. “We don’t want guards. We want guys like you.” Tchaka slowly circles the room, running his hand over the smooth wood, the supple leather. Sullivan stands with his arms crossed, letting Tchaka roam as he pleases.

  Our next stop on tour is the players’ weight room. “We insist our guys work out,” Sullivan explains. “Nothin’ fancy. Just give me plates and bars and let me see how much you can put in the air.” Even at midmorning, several Pirates are groaning at their exertions, and Sullivan nods casually toward the sweating bodies. “In our league, Tchaka, you can never factor out strength. The Big East is a rarefied level. Every day you’re going up against the best.” Sullivan lowers his voice confidentially. “And from this league, Tchaka, you can go on to the next one.” This must come as music to Tchaka’s ears. Sullivan is the first coach to say out loud that he thinks Tchaka could play in the pros.

  Our host is now leading us back through the maze of corridors to a small office equipped with three VCRs, a TV, and a computer. As we take seats around a long conference table, Sullivan pops in a promotional tape, “Seton Hall Basketball: A Great Experience On and Off the Court.” Aerial shots of the leafy, suburban campus dissolve, one over another, as various student-athletes provide testimonials: “I love the campus life . . . I chose Seton Hall because of the family-type atmosphere . . . Our academic adviser, I call her my mother away from home . . . ” Then the deep-voiced narrator returns to explain that “the Pirates play their home games at one of the East Coast’s premier facilities—the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands,” which, we are told, once held “the largest crowd ever to see a college basketball game.” Sullivan hits the pause button. “Yeah, we own that number,” he says.

  Next, Sullivan guides Tchaka’s attention toward the computer analyzer. With this, the coach explains, the team’s technical wizards will take tapes of, say, a Georgetown game and string together ten examples of the Hoyas inbounding the ball. Then the Seton Hall team will study all ten plays in a row to familiarize themselves with their opposition. Sullivan turns back to the recruit. “At this level, Tchaka, basketball takes on a complexity. Some are ready, some are not. We try to give you as much information as you need to win. Not because we’re just nice guys”—Sullivan looks Tchaka in the eye, and Tchaka is all there, listening to every word—“but because we like to win too.

  “I saw you play in that Boys Club tournament in Virginia,” he continues, seguing nicely from one winning moment to another. “I saw you hitting those fade-away baseline jumpers.” For a moment, Tchaka looks puzzled—he’s not sure he ever hit a fade-away baseline jumper in his life—but who wouldn’t enjoy the image that comes to mind? “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Sullivan nods. “Now of course at Seton Hall you’ll be playing a power game—” A flicker of concern passes over Tchaka’s face. Sullivan notes this and makes a quick clarification: “But our power forwards shoot the ball just as much as our smaller guys do.” Tchaka smiles, which makes Sullivan smile. “And I know you’re up to it. I’ve seen not just your moments of brilliance, but your games of brilliance too.”

  At the end of the tour, P. J. Carlesimo himself—red-bearded, ever-intense, and wearing his trademark Nike sweater vest—emerges from his inner sanctum to greet Tchaka. While Tchaka stands with his hands clasped in front of him and a beatific expression on his face, Carlesimo and Sullivan have a brief, studied exchange about one of their former players who was recently drafted into the pros.

  CARLESIMO: Where’s he going?

  SULLIVAN: Portland.

  CARLESIMO: Oh, yeah. Signed a big contract with them, didn’t he?

  SULLIVAN: Very big.

  After the tour is over, Tchaka tells me he has worked up a killer appetite, so we head over to a pizza joint just off campus. When we walk in, we see a young couple engaged in some amorous business in a corner booth and a pretty girl about Tchaka’s age standing behind the counter. As soon as Tchaka goes over to place his order, she asks whether he’s a Seton Hall player. “Might be,” Tchaka says coyly.

  “Well, I hope you’ll decide to come,” she says. “If you do, I’ll be seeing you around.” The girl smiles demurely, then disappears to fetch our pizza. (Am I indulging in conspiracy theories, or does the recruiting never end?)

  I glance up at Tchaka. He looks down at me. For a moment he seems unable to speak, rendered mute with excitement. Then a huge smile spreads across his face, and he lifts his arms in an embrac
e that seems to take in the whole place—the campus, the gym, the plush locker room, perhaps even this good-will ambassador behind the counter, now returning with our food. “It’s fly, D!” he cries. “It’s crazy-fly!”

  As I carry our loaded tray across the restaurant, Tchaka rubs his palms together, the future now his to reach out and grasp. “Seton Hall is the up-and-coming team in the Big East,” he says. “I’ll pay my dues as a freshman, start when I’m a sophomore, and be a team leader by my junior year. Then”—he claps his hands together, and the couple in the corner shoots him a caustic look—“maybe win a national championship when I’m a senior.”

  We settle into a booth and Tchaka begins enumerating all the reasons he should sign with Seton Hall and, at the same time, maniacally shaking hot peppers on his pizza. “I like it here. They were straight up with me. Told me exactly where I would fit in—no funny business.”

  He rains more peppers down on his slice.

  “I won’t have to spend all my time posting up against the big guys. They’ll let me face the basket. And by junior year they’ll probably move me to small forward.”