The Last Shot Read online

  Russell rises to the occasion nonetheless, hitting his signature jump shot from everywhere on the floor. Russell in motion is a lovely sight. Moving without the ball, he stays out by the perimeter, running a slalom course past crowded, multiple picks to lose his man. Suddenly he’s in the clear and snatching a crosscourt pass out of the air. When a player gets the ball in the open court, the urge to dribble is usually overwhelming, like an atavistic instinct. Players who spot up for jump shots must learn not to waste precious moments putting the ball on the floor, though the solution is not to rush one’s shot either. (So many pitfalls in this game, so little time.) When Russell receives the ball, he remains preternaturally calm. His eyeballs enlarge; his eyebrows point down and in. The defender, having fought his way through the wall of picks, may hurl himself at Russell with a full-throated war cry; but Russell lifts off in his own good time, waits for the apex of his jump, then pulls the trigger. Twenty feet away the net dances on its strings.

  Russell has the most complete game of any Lincoln player right now. In addition to his nearly unstoppable jump shot, he plays a fierce game of defense. Though Tchaka and Corey can outrun him, Russell practices his defensive slides—the side-to-side footwork and harassing, intrusive hand movements—with the same devotion as he does his offensive skills, and at Lincoln games Coach Hartstein always burdens him with the toughest defensive assignments. Still, to a large extent, Russell is playing this summer in the long shadow cast by Tchaka’s six-foot-seven frame. When Tchaka plays well, as he did at Nike, the coaches can easily imagine a dominant presence in college. A good portion of the recruiters are here this weekend simply to pay their respects to him. (Last week Rick Barnes drove all the way to New York from Providence to watch—and be seen watching—Tchaka practice for the Empires; Tom Sullivan tried to come in from Seton Hall for the same event but his car broke down. “Tell him I tried, okay?” he said as soon as he spotted me in Albany.) But after Central wins and the New York players shuffle off to their locker room, I do hear one coach remark, “You been watching Thomas? That kid’s got a helluva nice shot.”

  Showered and dressed, Russell and Tchaka ask me for a lift back to their dormitory. Then Steve, Maurice, and Robert show up. Out in the parking lot they all pile into my car—Russell beside me in the front, Tchaka and Robert in the back, Steve and Maurice in the far back with the hatch open and their legs hanging over the bumper. That’s the entire starting line-up for New York City in one ten-year-old Toyota—more than eight hundred pounds of basketball player stuffed in the back like college freshmen filling a telephone booth. After much complaint on the part of my clutch, we achieve forward momentum, driving across Albany with the guys in the back sending their heartfelt greetings to every woman we pass. “Yo, baby, you got some style!”

  “Man, I hate losing to scrub teams,” Tchaka groans. “We just couldn’t break their press. I was so tired by the fourth quarter, I went up for a dunk—I said yes, but my legs said no.”

  “That’s basketball,” says Maurice.

  “Yeah, that’s life,” agrees Steve.

  “Yo, Steve.” Tchaka twists around, facing rear. “How come you didn’t get me the rock that time I was free in the corner?” Tchaka has perfect recall of every play that should have featured him in a principal role.

  “What you talking about?”

  “No one was on me! I was free in the corner!”

  “How’m I supposed to remember when you were free in the corner?”

  “Now Fresh here”—Tchaka reaches over the back seat to slap Maurice’s hand—“Fresh was feeding me alley-oops all afternoon.”

  “My boy!” says Maurice.

  “Yo, my man!” cries Tchaka.

  “Yo, Russell.” Robert leans between the two front seats to get his teammate’s attention. “You got yourself a shot!” Russell, I realize, has said almost nothing since the game ended, and he doesn’t stir now. “Yo, Russell, I said you got yourself a shot!”

  “Yeah, that’s what I do,” Russell replies finally. “That’s my job.” I glance over, and he is stroking his head, looking off.

  “Yeah, well, I love to block shots,” Tchaka announces. “When I hit guys, they’re finished for the day.”

  “When I hit people, they just fall,” offers Steve.

  “Yeah? When I hit ’em, it’s lights out.”

  “Mine just crumple.”

  “Mine don’t crumple. They go straight down.”

  Tchaka leans over to box Steve’s ears, in the process clubbing Robert with his elbow. Robert shoves Tchaka. Steve whacks Maurice. All of them are hooting and slapping each other’s heads, except Russell in front, still staring into space. “Hey,” he says, turning to me, “did you see Rutgers where you were sitting? How about Duquesne? Those are my two schools, you know.” I tell him I saw coaches from those schools and every other one he is considering, but the information doesn’t lighten his mood. “I kept looking into the crowd of coaches and I think I saw them. Man, I hope they came. I hope they saw me play. It don’t matter if your team loses, right? The coaches are here to look at individuals, right?” I pull into the dormitory parking lot, and the contortionists climb out the back. “Man, I hope they saw me play.”

  ***

  As Russell’s friends, teammates, teachers, and coaches have learned over the years, it is foolish to predict what Russell’s state of mind will be from one moment to the next. On his better days, he has some distance from his kaleidoscopic moods and finds the sport of guessing just what in the world is going on inside that bald head of his (“the Russell Watch,” Coach Hartstein sometimes calls it) as absorbing as everyone else. Russell always keeps one college in mind that he wants to attend above all others. And after he announces that “Maryland is the only place I ever wanted to go,” there will come a moment when he senses his own changeability. “Who knows what I’ll say tomorrow?” he says with a laugh. “I change my mind every two days!” But then, inevitably, he stamps his foot and stubbornly declares, “I’m gonna sign with Providence as soon as I can. I don’t care what anyone says—I’m never gonna change my mind!”

  In some ways, however, Russell’s delicate temperament actually makes him a pleasure to hang around; he may be moody, but he never disguises how he feels. Last spring, for example, toward the end of his junior year, Russell got word that Bobby Hartstein had been offered a college coaching job. “You can’t leave!” Russell cried when he ran into Hartstein in the Lincoln corridor. “If another coach comes in, we’ll take advantage of him. We’ll be going crazy, I’ll be taking forty shots per game!” Russell’s occasional excesses with regard to shot attempts was a standing argument (and staple of amusement) between the player and the coach; and by bringing it up now, Russell was shrewdly offering Hartstein an example of what the coach would be denying himself if he left Lincoln. Russell stood in front of Hartstein, gripping the sides of his head. “You know me: I won’t mean to do it, but it’ll just happen!” Hartstein laughed and assured Russell that he was planning to turn the job down—in part, though he didn’t say this at the time, because he felt an obligation to help steer Russell through his crucial senior year. “I just love Coach,” Russell told me later. “He’s always screaming, ‘Russell this! Russell that!’” He shook his head and laughed. “Did you know I got voted Most Ragged-On player last year? But I didn’t mind. For some reason it motivates me. I guess that’s because Coach once told me, ‘When I stop yelling at you, it means I don’t care.’”

  Russell’s ability to examine his behavior and make amends for his mistakes is precisely what encourages people to go out of their way to help him—not only Hartstein, who looks out for him in a fatherly way, but also his teachers, one of whom considers Russell the hardest worker she has had during her thirty-year tenure at Lincoln. But only a few days after Russell begged Hartstein not to leave the Lincoln team, he infuriated the coach when, without any warning, he refused to show for the team’s end-of-the-season dinner. The next morning Hartstein called Russell
into his office for a little chat. Hartstein sat behind his desk, hands clasped in front of him, and stared up at Russell inquisitorially. Russell towered above his coach, but it seemed the reverse. “Where were you?” Hartstein demanded.

  Russell averted his eyes, thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets. “My stomach hurt,” he said softly.

  “Yeah, so what. My stomach hurt too. You show up anyway.” Russell remained silent. The wall clock ticked away like a metronome. “You didn’t come because of something else,” Hartstein said. “You’re just not saying.”

  “No, Coach, I told you; my stomach hurt.” Russell rubbed his belly and kept his eyes trained on the floor, but his lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile.

  “If this were a playoff game, would you have shown up?” Hartstein asked.

  Russell looked up and scratched his head, like a parody of a man in deepest thought, though he was clearly giving the question his usual careful consideration. “Yeah, I guess I would.”

  “Fine, that’s what I thought. The dinner’s the same thing.” Hartstein shook his head and leaned down behind his desk. When he re-emerged, he was holding the two trophies Russell would have received at the dinner. “This one’s for being a member of the PSAL championship team,” Hartstein said evenly. “And this is for being the team’s high scorer.” The trophies were beautiful—elaborately layered, like wedding cakes made of brass—and when Hartstein held them out, Russell’s mouth fell in open pleasure.

  “They’re both for me? This is nice. Thank you.” Russell reached forward to shake his coach’s hand, but Hartstein set the trophies on the desk and turned brusquely to some papers on his desk.

  “I don’t know why you’re thanking me. If you wanted to thank me, you should have showed up for the dinner. I’m really disappointed in you. You make a commitment, you honor it. You’re supposed to be one of the leaders of this team.” Hartstein opened and closed desk drawers, waiting for Russell to exit. “Just think about it.” Russell nodded twice and left the office without another word.

  I have known Russell now for several months, and in many ways he is still a mystery to me. But one thing I am beginning to understand about him is that whenever he acts most inexplicably, it has something to do with his dream of playing college ball. For basketball, having saved Russell from the worst of the Coney Island streets, has yet to deliver him permanently from the neighborhood. And when Russell begins to doubt that it will, his fear erases the careful game plan he has designed for himself, sending him spinning in a hundred different directions. That’s what happened the day he climbed to the top of the roof in Coney Island. It also may explain why he boycotted the team dinner. The day after that event, several of Russell’s friends surmised that he didn’t show because he knew Hartstein was going to give the Most Valuable Player award not to Russell but to a graduating senior, a slight that Russell thought might harm his recruitment chances.

  In the past, Russell has tried to cope with his anxiety about securing a college scholarship by sequestering himself from all the college coaches and scouts and recruiting newsletters—everything but the game itself. For years Russell adamantly refused to play alongside Tchaka and Corey on their summer-league team, the Madison Square Boys Club in Manhattan. All the travel and pressure of summer tournament play were too much for him, and he decided he was better off practicing on his own at the Garden. But in this, the final summer season of Russell’s high school career, Coach Hartstein felt that, anxious or not, the player could not afford to pass up any more exposure in front of the coaches. (It was at a Boys Club game last spring where Tchaka was first spotted by a Nike scout, leading to his invitation to the all-star camp.) Russell reluctantly agreed with Hartstein, and this summer he tried out for the Empire State Games and has worked to adopt a new attitude toward the recruiting that he dreams of and dreads in equal measure. In his mind now, Russell holds an image of a mature, knowing, and relaxed young man, handling the stress of recruiting with grace and aplomb; it is an exacting standard, and he works at all times to live up to it. “I guess it’s good to come up here—you know, get my name out, get some recognition,” he says in Albany, giving his scalp a quick dusting. “Basketball is a business, right? And I’m just trying to use basketball like basketball is using me.” And so, steeling his nerves and determined to prove that his days of instability are behind him, he forges on with the tournament.

  ***

  On the second day of competition, Coach Hartstein drives up from Brooklyn to watch Russell and Tchaka play. As Hartstein takes a seat next to me in the bleachers, several college coaches—following the recruiting dictum that in order to get to the kid, you’ve first got to get to his high school coach—immediately pack up their belongings and move next to Hartstein. “I’m afraid to go into the stands at a high school game now,” Hartstein often mutters at times like this. “The coaches swarm around me like vultures—crazy!” Out on the floor, Russell hits his first two jump shots to bring New York ahead by four. Most of the coaches, though, keep their eyes on Tchaka. “You should have seen some of his moves yesterday,” says Tom Sullivan of Seton Hall. “It’s going to be something to see when he puts it all together.” In the first few minutes, Tchaka picks up three quick fouls and has to sit down; Hartstein seizes this opportunity to steer the coaches’ attention toward Russell. “You know, this kid plays such tough defense, even in pickup games, that his friends don’t want to play against him in the parks,” Hartstein says, to no one in particular. Sullivan can’t stop talking about Tchaka, but Russell keeps lighting up the scoreboard, and soon coaches from Rutgers and Delaware are crowding Hartstein, seeking vital statistics.

  “How big is Russell?” asks the Rutgers coach.

  “Six-two. But he plays very big,” Hartstein adds quickly. “In Florida two years ago, we went up against two seven-footers. Tchaka wasn’t mature enough, so I put Russell at power forward. He said, ‘You want me to guard the seven-footer?’ I said, ‘Damn straight. We play man to man whoever it is.’”

  Out on the court, Russell has entered the zone, as they say in this game. He’s heaving in jumpers from all over the floor. Sweat streams down his face, pooling in his eyes, but he doesn’t pause to mop his brow. Each time Russell sinks a shot, he runs downcourt with his hands in fists, never once cracking a smile. At one point, he catches a pass, trips over his own feet, and sinks a three-pointer while collapsing to the ground like a lame colt. Still no smile.

  “You teach him that?” says the Rutgers coach, laughing.

  “Yes, it’s very advanced,” Hartstein replies. “Freezes the defense. They figure he’s gonna fall on his face, so they don’t do anything. Then he scores! Heh, heh!” Nothing animates Coach Hartstein quite as much as a good performance by Russell.

  “You gonna teach him to fall and hit it off the backboard?”

  “That comes next.”

  The game ends with Russell missing on his final attempt, a twelve-footer, but New York City wins by 3, and Russell finishes with a team-high 18 points.

  As Russell and his cohorts gather at the sidelines, Hartstein stands up in the bleachers, cups his hands to his mouth, and yells, “Hey, baldie! How could you have missed that last shot!” Russell looks up at the stands, his face clouded by sudden worry. “Christ, I’m kidding!” Hartstein laughs. “Don’t you even know when you played a great game?” He walks down to the court and puts an arm around Russell’s shoulder, speaking softly now. “Listen to me. Rutgers and a lot of Atlantic Ten schools are interested in you. You got no problems.” Russell regards his coach with his usual doubtful eyes and furrowed brow. “I’m serious. If you were listed on the New York Stock Exchange, you would’ve posted a big gain today. You get a seven hundred on your SATs and keep doing well in class, and you’ll have your pick of good colleges. So just keep doing what you’re doing.” Hartstein removes his arm and points a finger at Russell. “What you should be worrying about is getting a good night’s sleep. Because if I catch you and Tchaka anywhere
in Albany tonight, I’ll kill you.” Having dispensed his customary blend of exhortation and gruffness, Hartstein returns to the stands.

  ***

  The New York starting five are staying in two small, adjacent dormitory rooms. Every available surface is covered with dirty basketball gear—uniforms, socks, sneakers. With the windows closed, the place smells worse than a locker room, and my eyes begin to tear as soon as I walk in. The obligatory postgame analysis begins: who dunked on whom, and how Steve once again missed golden opportunities to feed Tchaka the ball, and how Maurice felt like Michael Jordan that time he soared between two players and banked a lay-up off the glass. But winning allows for less recrimination, and soon the players are on to more pressing matters.

  The campus is crawling with women, and all the guys with the exception of Russell have found dates either with other athletes or the workers in the food-service line. Steve strides in from his room across the hall, sans shirt, and begins to examine his pectoral muscles in the mirror. By his estimation, they are somewhat larger than they were this time yesterday. “You know what I hate to admit,” he says. “I am so handsome.”

  “I like this life,” Tchaka announces. “Travel all over the place, free food, don’t gotta hear my mom’s mouth every day.”

  Maurice elbows Steve away from the mirror and begins to examine his closely shaved scalp, turning it back and forth with his hands, as if it were a lifeless object. “Does my head look like a missile? Some girl in the dining hall just told me my head looked like a missile.”

  “Do my feet smell?” Tchaka asks. He picks up one of his sneakers and inserts his nose.

  “Jesus, be careful, man!” Maurice cries. “Sniff too much, we’ll gotta revive you for your date.”