The Last Shot Read online

  On the other hand, a foul shot is the one moment in this most fluid and communal of games that occurs in sheer isolation, and isolation often causes strange things to happen. Imagine. With a shrill blast of the whistle, the frenetic back-and-forth of the game abruptly ceases and the ref awards you two shots, though the spread of stomach acid you will soon feel hardly makes it seem like a gift. It is possible to get nervous shooting foul shots in an empty gym (I know), and this is not an empty gym. Beneath the basket the other players crowd for position into two rebound lines, their very presence an affront, their eager elbowing a sign of their confidence that you will miss at least the second shot. Directly behind the basket a hostile group of fans rise to their feet, screaming and waving their arms and hoping in this manner to distract you from your focus on the rim fifteen feet away. During basketball’s busier moments—when you take an elbow in the ear while contesting a rebound, say, or run backward into a moving pick—the game encourages a certain forgetfulness of the crowd. Not now. Now you feel as if the gym has been plunged into darkness and a brilliant column of light illuminates your every awkward move as you step to the line, alone.

  At the present moment, Russell Thomas steps to the line in the Albany High School gym in upstate New York, and waits there for the official to toss him the ball. Because this is one of the Empire State Games—a four-day tournament bringing together the finest high school players from across New York State—two bleachers filled with excitable fans rise steeply on each side of the court. The Empires, held two weeks after the Nike all-American camp, also lure a portion of the traveling crew of college coaches, here to appraise the players, who are divided this weekend into teams from New York City, Long Island, Central New York, the Adirondack region, and Western New York State. Tchaka, who joins Russell on the New York City squad, could miss all his foul shots and drop all his passes during this tournament and, after his performance in Indianapolis, still have his pick of top colleges. But this is Russell’s principal stop on the summer circuit, his best chance to show the coaches what he can do with a basketball.

  And as if the fans and coaches didn’t increase the pressure on him, Russell has to contend also with the scoreboard, which, above him and to the right, presents a variety of information that could raise the hair on the back of his neck, if he had any. Under HOME, it indicates that the Western team now has 87 points. Under VISITORS (New York players are treated as an invasionary force wherever they go), it reveals that Russell’s team has 86. Other pertinent data include the quarter we are in: fourth. And the time remaining: seven tenths of a second, which is not enough time to complete nearly any task outside the field of particle physics but is—ah, the many pleasures of this sport!—plenty of time for Russell, singlehandedly, to win or lose this game.

  Now the ref tosses Russell the ball. Russell spreads his feet two-and-a-half feet apart (as he has been taught), bounces the ball five times (as is his habit), and stares at his toes. As Russell takes a deep breath and gathers himself for the shot, Tchaka suddenly leaves the rebound line, walks over to him, and whispers in his ear. “Just take it easy and don’t forget to follow through,” Tchaka may be saying. Or, “Don’t fuck up.” It’s impossible to know for sure. Tchaka rubs Russell’s bald head and reclaims his spot in line. Russell resets his feet, bounces the ball five additional times, and gradually lifts his head until he is staring directly at the rim. His face carries absolutely no expression.

  In the stands the crowd turns up the volume on its show. The college coaches, who sit together in the first five rows, lean forward like basketball fans, which by and large they are not. Trekking from tournament to tournament all summer can be jading work; and besides, the matter of which team actually triumphs in the end, of ultimate importance to Russell and the other players at this moment, holds little interest for the recruiters, who are in the business of scouting individual talent. But this game has been restorative. The tournament’s championship game, which will result in a gold medal for one of the five teams, takes place on Sunday. Since many of the coaches will be gone by then, off to the next stop on the recruiting circuit, Russell, Tchaka, and the other players have performed this afternoon with a ferocity befitting the gold-medal round. Both New York City and Western have played tenacious defense, unheard of during the summer season, and this has slowed the game and tested both teams’ ability to run intelligent, half-court offenses. Grudgingly, like old men stirred from their afternoon nap, the coaches have awakened to the pleasures of watching this game.

  And these crucial foul shots may prove relevant to their work after all. If scouting involved merely the estimation of physical ability, the task could be accomplished by a statistician. To predict how a high school kid will play on the highly competitive college level requires (as the coaches like to point out) an astute judgment of character. One day at the Nike camp I overheard two coaches discussing a player, a white kid from an affluent suburb. They concluded that he was “not hungry enough” to compete in college against black players from the ghetto. On another occasion I listened to a coach enumerating the various tragedies that had befallen a kid—orphaned at a young age, living in a foster home, searching endlessly for authority figures. “Bet he’s extremely coachable,” the recruiter said with enthusiasm.

  In Albany for the last two days, Russell has played superbly, and the physical elements of his game—his shooting touch, his reflexes on defense—have won him many admirers in the stands. Now the talk among the coaches veers toward the psychological—whether Russell has the mental steadiness required to make the big plays. As Russell spins the ball lightly in his hands, the head coach of a midlevel Division I school leans toward his assistant. “So what’s your prediction?” he says with a playful look. “Does he make these two or does he choke?”

  Russell raises the ball. “This kid?” says the assistant, considering the question, savoring it, as if there were as much riding on his answer as there is right now for Russell. “From what I hear? This kid definitely chokes.”

  ***

  I had enjoyed watching Russell in his solitary workouts at the Garden last spring, but I didn’t get to know him well until the final weeks of his junior year, when he and I, usually after his last class, would run errands around Coney Island in my car. Russell’s father had moved away from home when Russell was young, and much of the business of taking care of his mother and his two younger sisters has fallen to him. Something of a loner, quiet in groups, Russell would turn surprisingly garrulous in my car, and what he talked about most often was his future. “Maybe I might make the NBA like Tchaka,” he said to me once as we drove to a check-cashing joint a few blocks from Lincoln so that he could pay the family’s telephone bill before their service was cut off. “But to be honest with you, I’m using basketball to go to a four-year school. What I really want is to graduate from college, start me a nice little family, and get me a nice little job as a registered nurse. But first I got to make sure I get that degree.” We were driving beneath the elevated train tracks over Stillwell Avenue, where four of New York’s subway lines come to an end just blocks from the boardwalk. Russell stared out the window at a group of young men standing around in front of a corner bodega, then raked his hand over his bald head, a gesture that often accompanies his absorption in thought. “See, where I live it’s real bad. A lot of drugs, a lot of gun fights. I look at my friends. They were going along okay, but something messed them up. I don’t know.” He fell silent and looked upward at the afternoon sun, strobing on and off through the slats of the train tracks, and added quietly, “I don’t want to be like my friends. I want to live a nice life. They’re my age, but they’re already living on memories.”

  During those afterschool rides, I was always surprised to hear such solemn, thoughtful words coming from a kid who everyone had warned me could be such trouble. Russell, after all, had made the sports sections of several New York tabloids last year not only for averaging 19.5 points per game as a junior and leading the Lincoln t
eam to the city championships at Madison Square Garden, but also for climbing to the top of that building in Coney Island and threatening to jump off. And he often confounded his coach and his teammates with his mysterious behavior—sneaking out of locker rooms and boycotting team dinners, often without a word of explanation. Yet in other ways Russell was the most driven and committed kid on the team. No other player in Coney Island ran wind sprints up his project stairwell or showed up at the Garden to shoot one-handers from a chair. No other kid on the Lincoln varsity spent his Saturday nights alone at his kitchen table, studying feverishly for his SATs. At eighteen, Russell seemed both younger and older than his years, which, given his upbringing, was probably inevitable.

  Russell has never lived anywhere but Coney Island, and for much of his adolescence he seemed to be following on the heels of his older friends—kids who are now in gangs or prison or are just hanging out on street corners looking for something to do. But then organized basketball became the focus and obsession of his life. One day when Russell was fourteen, an assistant coach from Lincoln spotted him playing ball at the Garden and persuaded him to enroll. On the Lincoln varsity, Russell gained confidence in his game and, more important, listened closely to Coach Hartstein’s inspirational speeches about where basketball might one day lead him. In class, though he suffered from years of bad teaching in grammar school and junior high, his hard work slowly began to yield results. For the first time in his life, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that he might even be bright. “I used to think there were smart people and dumb people,” he said to me one day after school. “But that’s not true. Everybody’s got the same brain. They say a human mind can know a thousand words—it’s like a little computer. But you got to practice. That’s how your mind starts to expand and mature.” The idea that he might enjoy a future different from that of his friends—might leave Coney Island and attend college on a basketball scholarship—began to take shape in Russell’s imagination.

  And then came the fight with his girlfriend. Just at the moment when he thought he had broken the grim pattern of young lives in Coney Island, Russell did something ugly: he hit his girlfriend. Terrified that she would report him to the police, that he had blown the college scholarship he was working so hard to attain, and that he would end up in prison just like his former friends, Russell climbed to the top of one of Coney Island’s highest buildings. Coach Hartstein heard the news in the Lincoln cafeteria. By the time he reached the school entrance, it was crawling with police. By the time he was driven in a patrol car out to the projects, Russell was in great distress. For almost half an hour Hartstein stood fifty feet below, shouting up to Russell reassurances that he wasn’t going to jail, that he still had a future in college ball. Finally Russell agreed to step back from the edge.

  Since that fateful day, Russell has woken up each morning determined to atone—to show that he has outgrown such headstrong adolescent behavior and to prove to the world that he was worth saving from the edge after all. He has worked even harder in school and on the court, skipping his lunch periods to study and carrying around his vocabulary flash cards in his back pocket. Now, when Russell is finished with his afterschool errands, he goes straight home, does his push-ups, takes his vitamins, finishes his homework, and combs through college recruiting brochures until bedtime. “I want to go so far this year,” he said to me one day as I dropped him off at his project building out at the end of the Coney Island peninsula. “I want everything to go right for me. There just ain’t nothing in Coney Island for me no more.”

  ***

  The Empire State Games are an annual event, and this summer they are being held on and around the campus of the State University of New York at Albany. SUNY/Albany, with a student population of seventeen thousand, consists of several colossal white concrete buildings (designed by the architect who created the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington), and organizers of the games have transformed the campus this weekend into a miniature Olympic village. Next to the university’s track-and-field house stands a tremendous yellow-and-white-striped pavilion, where spectators can pick up schedules of the games. In addition to basketball, there is competition in archery, wrestling, swimming, diving, water polo, cycling, track and field, and scores of other events. Opening ceremonies feature a parade around the outdoor track by the more than five hundred participants, all of them wearing yellow nylon warm-up suits with the Empires logo. And soon the campus walkways are filled with athletes in canary yellow, walking from event to event under the hot July sun. The games themselves have taken over much of the city, and buses circulate throughout Albany bringing athletes and spectators to the various competition sites. Walking through a quiet residential area the first day to look around, I step off the curb—and am quickly pulled back on by an official—just as fifty cyclists whiz around the corner and shoot past me in a blaze of color.

  Russell, Tchaka, and the other athletes will sleep in campus dormitories and eat their meals in student dining halls. Tchaka has traveled widely, even visited some college campuses as a prospective student-athlete. This, though, is one of Russell’s first opportunities to get out of Coney Island and see what college life is like. At dinner the first night, Russell spots Tchaka in the food line and walks up behind him with his tray. “So, I heard you did good at Nike,” he says, glancing down at Tchaka’s brand-new Nike high-tops and socks. “It was lovely in Indianapolis?”

  “Yeah, it was cool. We got free sneaks, played our games where the Pacers practice. And we were on TV all the time—it was hype.” Gone are the days of Tchaka’s uncertainty; he is now a veteran of the summer circuit and acts like one, responding to Russell’s queries but keeping his eyes trained on the dinner options, calculating how much he can heap on his tray. As it turns out, quite a lot: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, chocolate cake, chocolate milk, and Jell-O. Russell, not sure what to eat, looks at the pile on Tchaka’s tray and asks for all the same things.

  “Lotta coaches in the stands?” Russell inquires.

  “Oh, yeah. And no slouch schools either.”

  “So who’s recruiting you?”

  “The whole Big East,” Tchaka replies. “Syracuse, Providence, Villanova, Seton Hall . . . ”

  “You’ll never get playing time there!” Russell says sharply. Most of the schools recruiting Russell right now are a step below the Big East, one of the nation’s top college conferences, and this distinction often causes a certain tension between the teammates. “They already got power forwards,” Russell goes on. “You should go to a place where they’re recruiting a whole new class.”

  “Pipe down!” Tchaka pushes his way through the crowd of yellow-suited athletes, looking for a free table. “If you got talent, you can play anywhere.” He surveys the room. “Hope the girls eat here too,” he says to me. Then he turns back to Russell. “Who’s recruiting you?”

  “Rutgers, Duquesne. You see them out at Nike?”

  “Who?”

  “Rutgers and Duquesne!” Russell cries. “Yo, you listening to me, man?”

  “Yeah, I told you, everybody was out there.”

  Tchaka has chosen a seat near the corner where he can watch the tide of athletes roll in. Russell immediately lowers his head and digs in; Tchaka works his way through his mountain of food but keeps an eager eye cocked. And here they are—the women’s track team from New York City! Tchaka watches the runners with his mouth open and his fork suspended in midair. When an especially attractive woman settles into an empty table, Tchaka wipes his mouth, collects his tray, and immediately sets forth to introduce himself.

  “Where’s Tchaka going?” Russell asks me, picking up his own tray. But Tchaka spins and glares. “Why you putting on that face like you ignore us?” Russell says angrily. When Russell gets upset, his vocal cords tighten and his voice jumps to a higher register. “I hate that, nigger!” But then he catches sight of Tchaka’s destination. “Oh, sorry,” he mumbles, and immediately returns to his station.<
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  Soon two other members of the New York team—Tchaka’s friend from Queens, Steve Walston, and Maurice (Fresh) Brown—sit down with Russell and me. Russell returns to his food, prodding the stuffing suspiciously and bringing himself considerable grief by inquiring of his dinner companions what it is. When two women sit down at the table next to us, Steve and Maurice exchange salacious looks and jump to their feet. This time Russell stays put, finishing his meal with me. I think he’s decided to ignore his teammates’ antics. A few minutes later, though, Tchaka gets up to leave with his new friend, and Russell calls out to him, “Yo, bus your tray, man! Where do you think you are?” Russell, having once traveled in the company of serious delinquents, now has the zeal of the newly converted. He looks at me and frowns. “Where does he think he is?”

  ***

  The basketball tournament is being held across town from the SUNY campus at the high school gym. Because this tournament features only players from New York State, fewer coaches fill the stands than at Nike, a national camp. But several of the schools Russell is interested in—Rutgers, Duquesne, Delaware—are in attendance. And since the Empires, unlike Nike, is open to the public, a nice crowd shows up as well. As Russell warms up for his first game, against the team from central New York, I realize that I have never actually seen him play anywhere but the Garden. And I find myself wondering how well he will maintain his composure when he’s in the throes of official competition.

  The New York City team has by far the most talented players in this tournament. Three of the starting five—Tchaka, Maurice Brown, and another Brooklyn player named Robert Blackwell—are newly minted Nike all-Americans. Because most of the New York players have arrived in Albany directly from other camps and tournaments, however, they have practiced as a team only once. Meanwhile, their competition, eagerly awaiting their showdown with the New York stars, have been working out in groups since May. (One kid on the Adirondack squad is said to have driven three hours to attend weekly practices.) So it is disappointing, though not a complete surprise, that in its first game New York City succumbs to a smartly executed pressing defense by Central—which all the other teams will henceforth imitate—and loses by five.