Full Court Press (10 page)

We all settled onto the bench in front of Mr. Roberts.

“You wanted to try something a little different,” Mr. Roberts said to us.

“Did you like it?” Kia asked.

“I hated it!” Dean said.

“Yeah, they were driving me crazy!” Bojan added and Mohammed nodded his head in agreement.

“You five have obviously been practicing,” Mr. Roberts said.

“Not that much,” Marcus said. “Just this
weekend for a few hours.”

“On both Saturday and Sunday,” Kia added.

“We worked hard. It's not that easy,” I said.

Kia and I had agreed that the worst thing was to do all this work and then have Mr. Roberts put two other players out there instead of us and have us sit on the bench.

“Who's idea was this?” Mr. Roberts asked.

“Kia's,” Marcus said. “She had the idea, asked us to come over, and then convinced us that it would work.”

“She's convinced me!” Dean said. “Can the rest of us learn how to do it?”

“It's not that hard,” I said.

“But it takes time, so we couldn't show you before tomorrow's game,” Kia added.

Mr. Roberts didn't say anything. He knew she was right. It wasn't possible to teach anybody enough to take my place or Kia's. Either he was going to play us and we'd help to put the press into place, or he wouldn't and there wouldn't be a press. The question was whether he was tired enough of losing to risk putting Kia and me back in the game.

I heaved up a shot at the net. The ball missed by a mile. Maybe my eyes were on the hoop, but my mind was elsewhere. I was wondering what Mr. Roberts would do. Or I guess let us do. Would he let the five of us play the press? Would he even let Kia and me on the floor?

The ref whistled to signal the game would start in two minutes, and Mr. Roberts waved us to the bench.

We all took seats on the bench and Mr. Roberts paced in front of us.

“Our opponents have played five games. They've lost four and won only the one game.
They're not that good,” he said.

If they weren't very good and had won one more game than us, then what did that make us?

“This is a winnable game. I want us to go out there and give it our best shot. And if we do that, even if we lose we can still walk out with our heads high.”

That wasn't exactly the inspirational pregame talk I'd been hoping for. Basically he was saying that we were not very good, but they weren't very good either, so because of that we had a slight chance of winning — but if we didn't win, it would be okay.

At least this game was being played at another school. Usually you were supposed to like playing at home, in front of the kids from your school. That had just been embarrassing. It was better to lose in front of strangers and then walk away, hoping you'd never have to see them again.

The ref blew his whistle again. It was game time.

“Okay everybody, listen up. Start off we're going to go with Marcus, Kingsley, Dean, Mohammed and Bojan. Go out there and play!”

The five of them stood up. Marcus looked at me, shrugged, and gave me a ‘what can you do about it' sort of look.

Roy shifted down the bench until he was right tight beside me. I had a rush of fear and had to fight the urge to quickly move away.

“Don't worry,” he said quietly. “He wants to see what the other team looks like before he puts us out as a unit.”

“You really think so?”

“If he doesn't, then maybe we have to try and convince him. Besides, who knows, maybe we don't need the press for this —”

Roy stopped as the other team came down and scored the first basket of the game.

* * *

“This isn't too bad at all,” Mr. Roberts said.

What game was he watching, I wondered. It was half-time and we were down twenty-seven to seventeen.

“This is the closest we've ever been at half-time before,” he continued.

“Great, so we have our closest loss of the season,” Roy grumbled.

“With that attitude we don't have a chance
at winning,” Mr. Roberts said.

“It's not my
attitude
that's the problem!” Roy snapped.

“I don't think that's a fair statement to make, Roy,” Mr. Roberts said. “We've been losing, but I don't think any of your team-mates have given up.”

“I'm not talking about my teammates or
their
attitude. I'm talking about you.”

There was stunned silence. Nobody said a word. Nobody seemed to even breath.

“We can beat this team,” Roy said. “If you let us.”

“He's right, sir,” Marcus agreed.

“Let us put on the press,” Kia said.

“Just to see if it works,” I added.

“The press would work,” Dean chipped in.

“Give it a chance,” Rajinder agreed and everybody else nodded their heads in agreement.

“And if it doesn't work, then we shut up. All of us,” Roy said.

We all sat there, waiting for Mr. Roberts to say something… anything. He looked like he was thinking. That was a good sign. Unless he was thinking we were a bunch of rude kids who he didn't want to coach anymore.

“I've already listed the starting five on my clipboard,” he said quietly, tapping the board with his finger. “And nothing that you've said has changed my mind in the least about that.”

He weren't going to let us play — everything that was said was for nothing.

“That isn't —”

“Button it!” Mr. Roberts said, cutting Roy off. “And here are the starting five for the next half,” he said, turning the clipboard so we could see it. In big red letters were the names Marcus, Kingsley, Roy, Nick and Kia.

He was going to play us all along!

“Now let's get out there and play!”

We got up and everybody cheered and screamed, the sound echoing off the walls of the change room as we ran out the door and into the gym. The other team had been warming up already, but they all stopped and stared as we came out yelling.

It was the other team's ball to start the second half. As I walked up court to take up my position, I felt that strange sensation in the pit of my stomach that had been missing when I knew I wasn't going to play. It was a cross between that feeling you get Christmas morning as you're running down the stairs
to open your presents, and the feeling you get while sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's, and hearing the drill going in the other room.

“Let's get ‘em,” Marcus said as he walked over and gave me a low five.

The ref gave the ball to their throw-in man. They weren't reacting to what we were doing at all. One man was back to take the in-bounds pass, while the other three were far up court. I could just barely see their player, hidden behind Roy.

“Come on, ref, he's only got five seconds to throw it in!” Roy bellowed.

The player we were covering hardly moved. It was like he didn't understand any of what was happening.

“Come on, move! Get open!” the throw-in player screamed.

The ref blew his whistle. “Time violation. Ball turns over to Clark!”

Roy stepped out of bounds, took the ball from the surprised player and then tossed it to the ref. The ref immediately handed it back to Roy who instantly passed it in to Marcus. Before the other team could even think to react, he put up an easy two-pointer and I heard our
entire bench scream out!

Nobody on the floor made a sound though. We'd agreed that we wouldn't congratulate ourselves or lose our focus after the baskets. We were just going to get more and more intense each time we scored or stole the ball. More intense, more serious… more scary.

Their man took the ball from the ref and got ready to in-bounds it again. The ball was hardly in his hands when he threw out a wild pass. Marcus gobbled it up, passed over to me, and I completed a pass to Roy who was right underneath, uncovered. He put it up and in!

Suddenly it was twenty-seven to twenty-one. This game wasn't just in reach. It was in the bag.

* * *

We all hooted and hollered as we ran into the change room. The final score was forty-three to thirty-seven. Not only had we won, we'd limited them to ten points in the whole second half!

They were so fr ustrated that in the end
they'd started pushing and shoving us. That didn't go on for long though. One of their players had stuck out a leg to trip me as I went to go by him. I went crashing to the floor. Roy went right over to that player and stood right beside him. I couldn't hear what he said — nobody could because that was the way Roy would have wanted it — but the player came right over and apologized to me. Maybe Roy could still be a scar y jerk, but now he was a scar y jerk who was on
my
side.

We'd played almost the whole third quarter and then Mr. Roberts had put out the other five. That was good because we were starting to get tired. He'd put us back out a few minutes into the fourth and we played until the game was pretty well decided.

“Congratulations!” Mr. Roberts said loudly. “We are no longer the last-placed team in the league. We are tied for last place!”

Another cheer went up. I couldn't believe how excited everybody was… I couldn't believe how excited I was!

“Actually we're not in last,” Kia said. “Technically, because we
beat
the team we're tied with, we're ahead of them.”

“All right!” Roy screamed out. “We're number eight! We're number eight!”

Everybody started chanting. Mr. Roberts even chanted along in his loud, rumbly voice. Finally he stood up and raised his hands above his head to silence us.

“We have two things we have to take care of. First, I'd like to present the game ball to the player of the game.”

“We have a player of the game?” Kingsley asked.

“We've never done it before because I didn't think we necessarily had one before,” Mr. Roberts explained.

He walked over and handed the ball to Kia. “Congratulations on being the player who used her brains as well as her abilities to turn things around.”

The whole team cheered. That somehow seemed almost more amazing than our win. Who would have predicted this happening a week ago?

“And the second matter,” Mr. Roberts continued. “Can everybody please leave me their sweaters. Now that we don't stink anymore, it's time that the sweaters didn't stink anymore.”