The Last Shot Read online

  She glances over at me. “I explained to Russell, ‘You want friends? Fine. But I don’t want you attached to anyone. You will go to college alone, and so will Terry.’” Russell can’t bear to hear his mother’s words, so he puts on his Walkman and begins his tone-deaf accompaniment. “A girl like Terry could make him do something stupid,” she goes on. “He gets carried away. He’s very emotional, you know.”

  At first I am appalled by Mrs. Thomas’s harsh words and seeming indifference to her son’s pain, though the more she talks, the easier it is to hear what lies beneath it: a desperation to get Russell away from Coney Island, and a suspicion of anyone who might stand in his way, that are so great, she will do anything she deems necessary, even if it means persuading him to give up the one most stabilizing influence in his life at a time when his need is the greatest.

  “Russell got a second chance on this planet,” she says, referring to Russell’s suicide threat last year, “and no one gets that! No one!” She stares at me again, this time with such unblinking intensity that I have to fight the urge to look away. “He’s got a lot of decisions ahead of him. Important decisions. Business decisions. Without that scholarship, he’s nothing. Nothing!” Mrs. Thomas looks to her son to gauge his reaction, but Russell has checked out completely. He’s turned his Walkman up to full volume, and he’s singing as loud as he can.

  Ten

  THE LINCOLN TEAM’S most important game of the season—and the last one I would watch before my time with the players came to an end—took place right before the Christmas holiday. Abraham Lincoln plays William Grady twice a year, and each game is an all-out war. These are the two schools that sit directly across from each other on Ocean Parkway in Coney Island. They boast the two finest basketball programs in the PSAL, and their meetings are the most highly anticipated and hotly contested in the league. Both schools have reached the city’s quarter finals in each of the last six years. Lincoln won the city championship at Madison Square Garden last year; Grady won it the year before. And the two schools have traded off their division title every year but one since it was established almost ten years ago. Perhaps the most memorable Lincoln-Grady game took place in 1986, when Lincoln snatched a one-point victory after Dwayne (Tiny) Morton stole a Grady inbounds pass with five seconds left, directly in front of Villanova’s Rollie Massimino, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, and Maryland’s Lefty Driesell. (He still ended up, like most of his teammates, having to attend a junior college.)

  Since most of the Lincoln and Grady kids come from the same Coney Island projects, and a few players are also related to each other, their games serve as an extension of the great summer playground contests at the Garden—neighbor plays neighbor, cousin guards cousin, and, as Disco once put it, “the bragging rights of Coney Island are at stake.” Among the players, the Lincoln-Grady rivalry is considered a friendly affair. Not among the coaches. At Grady, they often snicker about how few of Bobby Hartstein’s players ever make it to four-year schools. “They say my players never go to college?” Hartstein retorts. “Who’s the most successful guy ever to graduate from Grady? The guy who invented axle grease?” For a while, in fact, Hartstein and the head Grady coach, Jack Ringel, did not speak to each other. And in large part because Jock McMahon, Ringel’s assistant, was recruiting so many Coney Island athletes who at one time would automatically have enrolled at Lincoln, Hartstein hadn’t had the satisfaction of beating Ringel in three seasons. The last five games in the series had all gone to Grady.

  At the team meeting in a Lincoln classroom an hour before tip-off, Hartstein makes his way through the Grady roster, trying to determine the various skills of the opposing players. Pacing back and forth in front of his team, Hartstein goes through all the starters, getting the local scouting reports. “What about Ronald Cromer?” he asks. “Can he shoot?”

  “Oh, yeah,” says Stephon, sitting in the first row of desks. “He can hit it.”

  “And Lorenzo?”

  “He’s got a shot,” Stephon replies. “But not from deep.”

  Throughout the meeting, the team managers, told to keep an eye on things in the Lincoln gym, keep returning with news from the front. The Grady team has arrived and is downstairs changing in the weight room . . . such a crush of people have come to watch the game that both bleachers are already full . . . there’s even a rumor that Spike Lee, the Brooklyn-based film impresario, has called the school to reserve a ticket. (“Must be coming in his capacity as Stephon’s agent,” someone jokes.) Each time a manager comes or goes, Hartstein barks at the player sitting closest to the door to keep it shut. Soon a group of Lincoln students is crowding in the hallway, peering through the classroom window at the team’s star players. But Russell, Corey, Tchaka, and Stephon sit calmly while their coach tries to walk off his excess energy. “The kids aren’t very emotional, are they?” Neil Steinberg, one of Hartstein’s assistant coaches, whispers to me. “Bobby’s nervous though. He won’t admit it, but have you seen him sit any time in the last half-hour? You could say, ‘Bobby, someone just died on the court.’ He’d say, ‘Is that right?’ and keep on talking.” At times like this, I have trouble aligning my current image of Hartstein with the low-key father figure he seemed eight months ago. But I realize that he is no less devoted to his players now than he was back then; he just seems, like every coach I have met, also devoted to winning.

  At last, having worked his way through the Grady roster, Hartstein comes to the opposition’s one truly great player: Maurice (Fresh) Brown, their extraordinary senior point guard who played alongside Tchaka and Russell at the Empire State Games and has recently signed with Saint John’s University. As all the Coney Island players know from having grown up with Maurice—he lives in the Carey Gardens project, eight blocks from Corey, Russell, and Stephon—he can destroy a team in two ways: with his deadly three-point shooting or, if he is allowed to keep his dribble alive, by penetrating the defense and creating easy shots for his teammates. However, if Lincoln can separate Maurice from the ball, denying him the chance to shoot or pass, Grady would have to rely on its other, inferior weapons. Hartstein decides that Russell will guard Maurice; with that one move, the game is put almost entirely in his hands.

  With twenty minutes to go before tip-off, I walk into the Lincoln gym. The place is filled to capacity. So many students and teachers from both Lincoln and Grady have crowded onto the bleachers that all subsequent arrivals are told to find a place on the gym floor behind each basket. Little kids are standing at the door, yelling to their older brothers, “Yo, can you get me in?” The noise, even at conversational pitch, is overwhelming; I feel it rumbling inside my chest. And when I scan the bleachers, I realize that just about all of them are there—all the people I have got to know over the past eight months with the Lincoln team: the high school sports reporter for Newsday, a scout from the most influential talent report on the East Coast, Disco, Mr. Lou, Willie Johnson, Donald Marbury, Joyce Thomas, the street agent Rob Johnson, and several generations of past Coney Island players—the few who went away to college and are home for Christmas break, and the many more who never left the neighborhood and have nothing else to do on a weekday afternoon but show up at their old school to watch a game.

  Over by the Lincoln bench, Coach Hartstein is airing his familiar grievances about alleged recruiting violations at Grady. “It’s really a disgrace,” he says to his assistants. “One kid just got kicked out of his old high school, another never shows up for school, and I heard they got some South American player in his sixth year in high school. We should make them submit their names to the eligibility committee.” Just then, Jock McMahon walks over to Hartstein for the obligatory pregame greeting. He says, “Good luck,” and shakes Hartstein’s hand, but neither man will look the other in the eye.

  When I catch up with the Lincoln players again, they have already dressed in their blue and white uniforms and are gathered at the head of the stairs that lead from the basement locker room up to the gym door. In previous months
the players would stand here, nervously shifting from one foot to the other, waiting for their opposition to arrive on court. Then they would carefully arrange themselves in a row, fling open the door, and make their big entrance by splitting into two lines and sprinting opposite ways around the court while the other team watched and the crowd went wild. But Grady is still getting changed in the weight room, and no one is in the mood for such adolescent antics anyway. “Just run out, man,” Russell says impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go out.”

  “Yeah, it’s just another game,” Stephon says. “Let’s go to work.” And so they do.

  As soon as the ball goes up, Tchaka gets his first dunk, Stephon hits a three, and before I know it, Lincoln has jumped to a 7–0 lead. But just as quickly the momentum shifts the other way as Maurice Brown, shaking off Russell with picks and screens, organizes an efficient Grady counterattack. By the end of the first quarter, the score is tied at 16 each, the crowd is growing more hysterical, and it looks as if we’re in for a long afternoon.

  As the second quarter begins, Lincoln seems to convert each time downcourt. So does Grady, though, and the score climbs in equal increments. With five minutes to go in the quarter, Grady ekes out a 23–22 lead, and I realize we have now arrived at a crucial moment—not only the first time Lincoln has fallen behind in this game, but the first time all season the team has lost a lead this far into a game. And Maurice, like all great players, knows how to capitalize on his psychological advantage. In quick succession he dumps four three-pointers on the Lincoln team, saving the final indignity for last, when he launches from well beyond NBA range with one second left in the half. In sixteen minutes of playing time, Maurice has scored 20 points, and the Grady players trot into the locker room with a 40–33 lead.

  At halftime, Russell, Corey, Stephon, Tchaka, and their teammates sit on the stairs just outside the gym. Hartstein takes up position on the landing below, where he can pace and look up at his team. He is silent for a minute, and the only sound in the echoing hallway is his footfall and the players’ heavy breathing. Then the coach explodes. “Russell, you’re supposed to be guarding Maurice and he’s hit nine threes in your face!” he screams. “You’re wasting your time trying to guard him! You’re a disgrace! You can’t guard anybody!” Russell, his head between his shoulder blades, doesn’t stir. “You don’t listen; you don’t pay attention. We said Maurice is not to shoot a three. He’s got nine threes in the half.” Hartstein looks around at the rest of his players. “No one is rebounding! No one is moving without the ball! No one is playing any defense whatsoever! Whenever Maurice drives, no one helps out on defense—you all stand around watching!” Getting no argument from his players, Hartstein lowers his voice. “All right, this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna form a box-and-one defense—four players in a zone, and Russell, you just stay on Maurice wherever he goes.” Russell looks up now, his face drained of expression. “You don’t help out on any other coverage, okay? You just stay on Maurice. Don’t let him shoot the ball. Don’t let him even touch the ball. You got it?” Russell nods. The players climb to their feet and trudge back out to the court.

  The second half begins, and Russell gets to work right away. He hits back-to-back three-pointers, bringing Lincoln to within one, and the whole team seems to shake off its torpor at once. The key to Lincoln’s offense all season has been the fast break. Most high school coaches avoid run-and-gun ball in favor of a disciplined half-court offense. But the extraordinary confluence of Tchaka, Russell, Corey, and Stephon on one team was like a force of nature, impossible to resist. So Hartstein had built this year’s varsity into a simulacrum of the great UNLV-Running Rebels teams of yore. After every opponent’s shot now, missed or made, Lincoln runs the break.

  This is how it works. Tchaka inbounds the ball to Stephon, who flies down center court while Russell and Corey fill the outside lanes. If Stephon sees that either wingman has a clear path to the hoop, he looks one way, passes the other, and Lincoln gets an easy two. If the initial break is covered, Stephon keeps his dribble alive while Russell and Corey finish their sprint, then turn in at the baseline, running directly past each other beneath the basket. Usually in the traffic and confusion this creates, one of them loses his man and emerges at the opposite corner, free for a three-point chance. If Russell and Corey are still covered, Stephon can pull up for a jump shot himself or wait for Tchaka, trailing down the middle for a thunderous jam. That’s six different scoring opportunities in under ten seconds, and with Stephon leading the charge and making the right split-second decision almost every time downcourt, the chances of putting some points on the scoreboard are very, very good.

  And now, with Russell chasing Maurice all over the court, the Grady offense begins to falter. Maurice dodges this way and that, trying to work his way back into the game, but Russell won’t stop harassing him. When Maurice has the ball, Russell plants one hand on his back and keeps jabbing the air with the other until Maurice gives up possession. When Maurice is moving without the ball, Russell never leaves his side and keeps flapping his arms like a maniac, making it impossible for his man to receive a pass. This works precisely as Hartstein had hoped. The other Grady players struggle to score and, in their frustrated attempts to get the ball back to Maurice, commit foolish turnovers. The Lincoln fast-break is hard enough to defend against after a made basket; activated by an opponent’s turnover, it occurs like a bad dream—swift and irrevocable. At the end of the third quarter, Lincoln has scored 22 points and held Grady to 8 and they go into the huddle, leading 55–48. During the time-out, Hartstein, evidently pleased by his team’s performance, says little, except to whisper in Stephon’s ear, “Russell’s on fire. Look for him.”

  Back on the court, Russell goes on a rampage. Stephon gets him the ball and Russell hits a three. Stephon feeds him again and Russell shoots one off the dribble. Now Russell goes one on one in the lane and banks it off the glass. Tchaka heaves a full-court pass, and Russell, alone under the basket, honors his vow: he flushes the ball with two hands, giving the backboard a seismic jolt, and the crowd is on its feet, chanting, “Here we go, Lincoln! Here we go!” With two minutes left in the game, Lincoln is up, 78–64, but Russell still won’t let poor Maurice touch the ball. And each time he runs downcourt after scoring a basket himself, Russell looks anxiously toward Hartstein, certain he has committed some new and unforgivable sin.

  The game is punctuated in the final moments when Russell pulls down a rebound and feeds the outlet to Stephon. Stephon dribbles through a two-player trap until he reaches half court. From there, Stephon spots Tchaka downcourt, the Grady defense beat yet again. Stephon lobs the ball to Tchaka, who could go up for an easy dunk. Instead, Tchaka spins around so that he is facing all his teammates and with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, flushes the ball over his head for one final, triumphant reverse jam. This is too much for the crowd to bear. Everyone starts stamping on the bleachers. A couple of Lincoln students jump onto the court and perform a manic dance. “Man, I love the way Russell play!” cries one of the team’s freshmen. In the last seconds, Stephon holds the ball at center court until time runs out, then throws it high into the air.

  All told, Lincoln has scored 55 points in the second half—a staggering total for a high school game with only eight-minute quarters—and the final ledger reads 88–73. Russell led five Lincoln players in double figures with 23 points, which is, astonishingly, a slightly subpar performance for him on the offensive end. But he has also done this: throughout the second half, he held Maurice Brown completely scoreless until only 1:40 remained on the clock and victory was assured. After the game, the Newsday reporter pushes through the deafening crowd to get some comment from Maurice on why the Grady game plan fell apart. Maurice, ever gracious, smiles and shakes his head. “Russell Thomas,” he says, “is a great defensive player.”

  In the locker room, the Lincoln players are dancing around. Some of the younger guys have removed their jerseys and wrapped them around
their heads like turbans. “Three years we been waiting for this!” they yell. But the Lincoln starters—the seniors and Stephon—are the first to break away from the group and return to their lockers. Surprised by this—I’ll never forget Stephon going nuts last summer when he threw that full-court alley-oop pass to Corey at the Garden—I join Stephon and ask why he isn’t celebrating. “Oh, that feeling only lasts about four minutes now,” he answers quickly, throwing on his street clothes. “Then it’s back to usual.”

  I walk over to Russell, alone at his corner locker. “Congratulations,” I say, offering my hand. “You played magnificently.”

  “Yeah?” Russell looks up, genuinely surprised.

  “Well, how do you think you played?”

  “All right, I guess,” he replies, and I know better than to argue with him.

  I go back over to the younger guys, who are replaying every lovely moment of this game. A few minutes later, I spot Russell in street clothes, throwing his book bag over his shoulder and heading up the stairs. He has—just as he did at the Empires—single-handedly won another game. In this case, it is the biggest game of the PSAL season, arguably the finest high school basketball game I have seen this year. Having just driven himself beyond most limits of human performance, he leaves the school building looking exhausted, defeated, like a factory worker at the end of a long shift.

  ***

  My time with the Lincoln team has come to an end. After the NCAA banned me from all the Big East campuses, I saw no point in trying to accompany any of the players on their recruiting visits. Besides, now that Tchaka has signed with Seton Hall, there aren’t many recruiters interested in the remaining seniors.

  Then, one day right before the Christmas holiday, I ran into Mr. Marbury. I hadn’t spoken to him since my discussions with the NCAA, so I told him about the organization’s ruling: that if I struck a deal with any Lincoln player’s family, the kid would lose his eligibility to play college ball. A moment or two passed as he took in the information. “Oh, you got so many angles, don’t you!” he cried furiously. “First it’s your reporter’s rules. Now it’s the NCAA, is it? Let’s just forget it. Let’s just forget the whole thing!” He pushed by me and stormed away.