True Legend (20 page)

FORTY-TWO

S
eth Gilbert was still shouting.

“He's not suspending anybody!” he said. “Unless Mr. Billy DiGregorio is under the impression he hired himself!”

They were in his living room. Or one of his living rooms. Lee had dropped Drew off. Lee only lived a few minutes away and told Drew to text him when he was ready to be picked up.

Drew had said he didn't think he'd be long.

“Don't be so sure,” Lee said. “That guy can talk the way Michael Phelps can swim.”

Then Lee had wished him luck, saying Drew was going to need it.

He'd been right. Drew hadn't moved from the couch, watching Mr. Gilbert pace. Listening to him yell.

“Suspend
you
?” he said now, dialing it down a notch. “With the Park Prep game about to be on national TV? Where I put it, by the way? I . . . don't . . . think . . . so.”

Drew said, “This isn't about Coach.”

“No? Who's suspending you, then?” Mr. Gilbert said. “The Board of Ed?” He was red-faced, out of breath, like he'd been running sprints in this room, which was big enough for that. Chest heaving underneath a T-shirt that had the picture of a pit bull on it and read, “Alpha Dog.”

Drew, trying to calm him down even though he knew he had no chance, said, “I'm the one who took the car.”

“Forget the stupid car! You want the car? Take it. Take five more just like it.”

“Mr. G, you're not hearing me. None of this happens if I don't drive the car and lie about it.”

“Your buddy lied right along with you.”

Now Drew shouted at him. First time ever.
“To take care of me! It's what everybody does! Takes care of
me!
”

Now Drew was the one who felt like he was out of breath, just like that.

“It's about time I started taking care of myself,” he said.

“No,” Seth Gilbert said. “That's my job.
I
take care of you.” Standing over Drew now, looking down at him. Like this was some kind of mismatch.

Doing what he did, talking down to people without even thinking, without hearing himself.

“When did you start thinking for yourself?” Mr. Gilbert said.

Drew slowly stood up, giving the man a chance to move back, to give him room. “Today,” he said. “I started doing it today.”

“You know what I mean,” Mr. Gilbert said. Backing up in all ways.

“I know exactly what you mean, Mr. G,” Drew said.

“How am I gonna look, you getting suspended before the biggest game of the year?”

Still not hearing himself, still making it all about him. Still thinking he was the big player here.

Drew wanted to tell him,
Figgeritout.
But Mr. Gilbert was still his mom's boss. One more time, he heard her inside his head, telling him the same old thing, mind his manners.

In a quiet voice he just said, “All due respect, Mr. G? This isn't about you. It's about me.”

Then he was walking past him, toward the front door. He'd wait until he was outside to text Lee, because he needed to be outside, get himself some
air.

When his hand was on the doorknob, he turned around.

“You're always calling me
the man,
” Drew said. “Maybe I finally figured out how to act like one.”

FORTY-THREE

H
e should be here by now,” Drew said to Lee in the layup line.

Talking about Legend, who was still nowhere to be seen in the gym.

“He'll be here,” Lee said. “But we're
already
here. With sort of a big game to play.”

“Maybe he ran away again.”

“That's crazy talk,” Lee said.

He repositioned Drew so he wasn't looking into the stands, so he was facing their basket.

“The game,”
Lee said.

The championship game.

Oakley versus Park Prep.

Park Prep's gym.

Coach had given Drew a two-game suspension. The Crespi game and the Park Prep game to end the regular season. Oakley had lost them both. Lost to Crespi by a basket. Lost to Park Prep by twenty in this gym, got hammered on ESPN2, national television, Lee saying afterward when they made themselves watch on TiVo that Drew had gotten more face time on TV watching the game than King Gadsen had gotten
playing
it.

Now they were back in the Park Prep gym, having won their first two tournament games at home, against Conejo Valley and Crespi. They were back for the best kind of game there was in sports:

The big game.

The kind of big game Drew had convinced himself—or let Mr. Gilbert convince him—wasn't really coming for him until he got to the pros.

But now here they were against Park Prep, against King Gadsen, for a game that mattered more to Drew than he ever thought it could.

He wanted this game as much for himself now as he did for Coach and Lee and the guys. He'd found out that Coach had been right all along, even if it had taken Drew such a long time to hear him—that if you didn't have a team, you had nothing.

Now, where is Legend?

Ten minutes to the tip. The Park Prep gym, not as big as the Henry Gilbert Athletic Center, but big enough, was insane with noise and excitement, not just because of the home crowd, but because a lot of Oakley fans were here, too.

Just not the fans Drew's eyes kept searching for in the stands.

His mom, Callie.

Legend.

Lee actually shoved him toward the basket now, and Drew took a bounce pass from Tyler, laying the ball in, running to the end of the line on the other side of the court.

He saw them then.

Saw his mom and Legend coming through the double doors at the other end of the gym. Callie right behind them.

And one more surprise guest walking with her: Coach Fred Holman.

Drew caught Callie's eyes. Pointed to his wrist, to an imaginary watch, like asking her where she'd been. She mouthed,
Traffic.
Then she was the one pointing.

Toward the court.

Telling him the same thing Lee had been telling him: the game.

Lee clapped Drew on the back now, seeing what he was seeing, that Drew's real cheering section had arrived.

“Now can we do this?” Lee said.

“True that,” True Robinson said.

Didn't matter if this was a road game or not.

Drew felt more at home than he ever had.

FORTY-FOUR

K
ing Gadsen kept trying to get Drew to engage, all the way through the pregame introductions, eyeballing him hard, nodding his head, talking to Drew, even though he knew Drew couldn't hear.

Then, when they were lined up for the tip, King on the other side from Drew because he was guarding Lee, King came over to him, like he wanted to be a good sport, shake Drew's hand.

Right.

“I
know
I know you from somewhere,” he said.

Drew looked off.

“Wait,” King said, “now I remember. You're that True-or-False Robinson guy can't get a game off me. Couldn't even get on the court last time, I'm remembering right.”

“Have a good one,” Drew said. Wanting to add,
if you can.

“By the time this one's over tonight,” King said, “you're gonna
wish
you were still suspended.”

Drew looked past him, wondering what the holdup was, and saw the refs at the table talking to the guy doing the clock.

Now he couldn't help himself—he turned back to King.

“Ask you something?”

“Why not?” King said. “I'm gonna have all the answers, all night long.”

Drew said, “Talking as much as you do . . . you ever run out of
spit
?”

Drew didn't hear his answer. He went over and bumped chests with Tyler.

The two-game rest had done his knee good. What Sellers liked to call the law of unintended consequences. This one a good consequence.

If he wasn't at full speed, he was close enough. That meant close enough to being his bad self.

Park got the tip. Ball went to King. First time down, right out of the blocks, he took Lee down to the low blocks, posted him up. So focused on that he didn't even notice Drew coming from his blind side, didn't hear his teammates yelling at him to look out as Drew knocked the ball away, beat everybody down court for a layup, floating to the iron.

Imagining himself flying in that moment.

Gave a quick look to where his mom and Callie and Legend were sitting. Saw Legend leaning forward. Like he was back in the game himself.

King came out firing. But Drew doubled on him every chance he could. Coach had decided that was the best way, not having one of Oakley's bigs come over to help, not worried about Park's point guard beating them tonight from the outside. Tonight or any night.

So Drew would get right up on King, as close as he could without making contact or drawing a foul, not just trying to make it harder for him to get his shot, doing something even more important than that: trying to annoy him.

With eight minutes to go in the half, it finally worked. Oakley was ahead by four, having just gone on a 10–0 run. Drew doubled down again, King missed, then shocked everybody by actually following his shot, going for his own rebound.

But Drew had him boxed in. Frustrated, not making everything he looked at tonight, behind in the game, King shoved Drew with two hands, into the basket support.

Hard.

Foul.

And technical foul.

It would have been a dream moment if Drew's knee hadn't hit the floor when he fell.

He tried to get up, but quickly sat back down. He was limping when Brandon pulled him up. Lee started to go for King before Tyler Brandt grabbed him, held him back. Then Coach was moving all the Oakley players back, and they were all around Drew, asking him if he was all right.

He smiled at Coach and his teammates.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “look at Number One, boarding up like that.”

Lee wasn't buying it. “You sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine,” he said.

He'd promised himself no more lies.

But this was the championship game. And good enough was fine.

• • •

They were tied at halftime.

King finally found his shot right before the half. Lee, who'd come out hot, had finally started missing. So had Ricky, who'd hit his first four shots when his man tried to help out on Lee.

When they got to the visitors' locker room, Drew asked Mr. Shockey for some ice, saying it was just a precaution, he didn't want his knee to stiffen up.

Another championship-game lie.

The knee was throbbing.

I really have turned into Legend,
he thought,
because now I feel like I'm the one fell down a flight of steps.

But with all that? He felt good. Sore knee and all. Looked at a stat sheet while Mr. Shockey got the ice pack, didn't look at his points—he'd seen from the scoreboard he had fourteen—but at his assists.

Nine already.

He'd missed one shot from the field, a mid-range jumper that was halfway down before it spun out somehow. King had twenty. But on twenty-two shots.

At the half.

Not a team game in the other locker room, just a one-man team.

“We just keep playing our game,” Coach said.

He never had much to say at halftime when he thought they were playing well, so he didn't say much tonight.

“We're better than they are,” he said. “We know it, they know it. Just keep in mind: it's not us against him, even if he thinks it is. It's still us against
them.
” Then he said, “Every loose ball, every possession, every pass, every rebound.
Ours.
This is our moment. Ours. Not his.”

Drew understood perfectly.

At last.

He passed even more in the second half, not able to get the elevation he needed to be sure of his jumper. Even now, dinged up this way, he had enough burst to beat their point guard off the dribble when he had to. He could still get to the basket and score or get fouled.

But that wasn't his primary focus tonight. He was here to pass the ball. Like the kid from Crotona Park in the Bronx who'd passed his way into the game with the bigger kids.

Three minutes left.

Drew beat his man, got to the hoop and King fouled him, knocking him to the floor again—nothing dirty or flagrant this time, just a good, hard foul so Drew couldn't get a shot off.

Drew made sure not to show anybody the slightest sign of a limp. Just picked himself up and knocked down the two frees. He wasn't hearing Mr. Gilbert anymore, telling him not to get himself hurt. Just the cheers from the Oakley corner of the gym.

He did catch Callie's eyes on his way back up the court, big eyes of hers on him.

You okay?

He nodded.

Oakley by two. King made a three, though, only his second of the game. Park by one.

Drew went back inside with the bigs, put up a teardrop shot before they expected him to, before he'd even left his feet, drained it. He still hadn't missed from the field in the second half.

Oakley back up by one.

“Lucky shot!” King yelled at him.

Now the voice inside Drew's head was Callie Mason's.

“Not if it goes in,” he said.

Forty seconds left. King got fouled by Tyler Brandt on a drive, but only made one of his two free throws.

Oakley 74, Park Prep 74.

Billy DiGregorio called time.

Before they were all in the huddle, Coach put his arm around Drew, grinning. “Got a good play for me, Number One?”

“Yeah,” Drew said. “Give me the ball.”

“One score, one stop?”

“Let's get our one, let them worry about theirs.”

Coach put his hands on Drew's shoulders now, turned him around. “This is why we both came here,” he said.

“Hundred percent.”

“Whatever it takes,” Coach said.

The teams took the court.

Drew wasn't going to wait too long to make his move. He hated it when he was watching a game and a point guard, college or pro, would wait too long to get a team into its play. Too often, someone ended by throwing up the kind of forced shots Drew had thrown up in that first game against Park, what felt like a thousand years ago.

He came down, threw the ball to Lee on the wing, got it back. Saw his opening, made his move into the lane, just like he had in the first game.

One of their bigs and King sealed him off with a double-team, but Drew went up anyway, making them think he was doing it again. Forcing the last shot.

But he didn't shoot. As he came down, he threw a no-look pass to Lee on the left wing, seeing the other nine, just like Coach Calipari had said. Seeing the whole court.

For a second, it must have looked as if he'd thrown the ball into the stands. But Lee knew where the ball was going and where he was supposed to be. He caught it at his waist, no dribble, knocked down a three.

Fifteen seconds left.

Oakley 77, Park 74.

King Gadsen didn't hesitate. He took the inbounds pass and raced up the court, no fear—pulled up short of the arc and buried a three of his own. The boy could talk. Lord, could he talk. But he could also shoot the rock.

Game tied again, ten seconds left.

Coach waved his arm at Drew.

No time-out.

Play.

The game they had both come here to play.

With his eyes, Drew told Tyler to come out for a high pick-and-roll. Where it had always started with Drew, all the way back to New York City.

Tyler set the pick with six seconds to go.

Drew went to his left-hand dribble. He was in the paint now. King came over to double one last time.

But then King saw what Drew saw—Ricky Colson had beaten his man, was streaking to the basket from the left.

Somebody yelled, “Cutter!”

King turned and went to cover Ricky Colson at the same moment that Park's point guard got his feet tangled up with Drew's, tripping them both up.

Drew felt himself losing his balance, about to lose control of his dribble at the same time.

Starting to fall.

In traffic, crowded from his right by the point guard, out of time, knowing he was never going to get a whistle, that no ref was going to decide the game on a foul call.

But he could still see the other nine.

Could see Lee cutting to the basket from the other side.

Before he hit the floor, Drew got him the ball the only way he could.

By bouncing it off King's shoulder.

Whatever it takes.

The old New Heights bank-shot pass.

The ball caught King just right, caught Lee right in stride, his friend laid it in one tick before the horn sounded to beat Park Prep by a bucket and win the championship.