Full Court Press (9 page)

I gave her a questioning look. “And what exactly is the answer, or answers, that you've figured out?”

“I can't tell you. I have to show you.”

“Okay, go ahead and show me.”

She shook her head. “I can't. Not here and not now.”

“Then where and when?”

“Tomorrow, at your house. But first I have to talk to a few other people and convince them to come.”

“Who do you have to talk to?”

“Marcus, Kingsley and Roy.”

I bounced the ball on the driveway. I felt anxious. I looked at my watch. It was almost noon and nobody had shown up yet. Not even Kia. What if nobody but Kia came? No, that didn't make sense; Marcus would come. What if Roy got here before either of those two? What was I going to talk to him about: how much he hated me, and where he'd like to punch me? Actually I didn't know why I was wasting my time thinking about that. Roy had made it pretty clear to Kia that he wasn't coming. He said he had to spent too much time around us during the week, so there was no way in the world
he was going to show up at my house on the weekend.

I'd hardly finished my thought when Kia appeared around the corner. She waved and then started to jog.

“Nobody here yet?” she asked.

“Not yet. Maybe not at all.”

“They'll be here. At least some of them will be for sure.”

“I still don't know why you had to invite Roy. Couldn't you have asked Dean or Bojan or anybody else?”

Kia shook her head. “Roy is the guy. He'll be perfect.”

Now it was my turn to shake my head. “Those are two words you don't usually hear in the same sentence — Roy and perfect.”

“That depends,” Kia said. “What about if the sentence was something like, ‘Roy is a perfect jerk'.”

I laughed. “So are you going to explain things to me now?”

“Not yet. I hate having to say the same thing twice.”

“And I hate waiting.”

“Then we're both in luck,” she said.

Kia pointed up the street and I turned around.
Marcus, Kingsley
and
Roy were coming down the street. I felt a rush of relief, excitement and dread all rolled into one.

“Hey guys, sorry we're a bit late,” Marcus said. Kingsley nodded hello and Roy scowled.

“That's okay. I just got here myself,” Kia said.

Marcus looked at me. “Say, Nick… I was wondering if maybe your mother…”

“Four dozen,” I said.

He smiled.

“Four dozen what?” Kingsley asked.

“Cookies,” Marcus said. “Chocolate chip cookies. Nick's mother makes the best cookies in the world.”

Roy chuckled. “So you've been coming here with your little buddies for milk and cookies.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said defiantly, taking a step toward Roy. “You want to make something of it?”

Roy came toward Marcus, but before anybody could say or do anything, Kia stepped between them. I didn't know if that was really brave, or really stupid.

“How about if we make something of this team instead?” she asked.

They both stopped.

“I want to explain to you, to show you how our team can win,” she said.

“Our basketball team?” Kingsley asked.

“Of course, our basketball team.”

“That would be some trick,” Marcus said. “So what have you got in mind?”

“I've been watching our games,” she said.

“You've had plenty of time to watch,” Roy said, “since that's all you've been doing.”

She ignored his shot. “And I think I know how we can win, and I think the five of us are the best people on the team to do it.” She paused dramatically, leaving everybody waiting.

“Well?” I finally asked, breaking the silence.

“We need a press… a full court press.”

“A press?” Roy and Kingsley said in unison.

“Full court. I've noticed that none of the teams have a press —”

“That's because it's hard to do right,” Marcus explained.

“Hard, but not impossible. And I've also noticed that any time anybody even puts the least bit of pressure on the other team, it really creates trouble.”

“Maybe, but what makes you think we can apply a press?” Kingsley asked.

“We can if we practice,” Kia argued.

“And Mr. Roberts has agreed to this?” Marcus questioned.

“No. I thought that before we told him about it we should do some practicing.”

“When and where?” Marcus asked.

“Starting today. Here.”

“Here!” Roy exclaimed. “You want me to come here and spend even more time with a couple of grade threes?”

“And a couple of grade fives,” Kia said, pointing to Kingsley and Marcus.

“What a waste of my time,” Roy snapped.

“Why, do you like losing or something?” Kia asked.

“No, I don't like losing, and I wouldn't have to if we didn't have a couple of little kids on our team!”

“And who do you think we have at the school who is better than these two?” Marcus said, gesturing to me and Kia.

“I'm out of here!” Roy snapped.

He started to stomp away when Kingsley grabbed him by the shoulder. “Hang on a second,” he said. “I have a question. When the three of you beat us in the three-on-three
tournament, did you come here to practice?”

“All the time,” Marcus said. “That's how I know about Nick's mother's cookies, and her lasagna and stew too.”

“That's the only reason we were able to beat your team. And if we practice the press then maybe, just maybe, our team can win a couple of games,” Kia said.

Nobody said anything, not even Roy, but I could tell everybody was thinking about it.

* * *

“Okay everybody, I'm going to divide you into two groups and we'll scrimmage,” Mr. Roberts said.

I looked at Marcus, who nodded at Kingsley, who was looking at Roy.

“This is the time,” Kia said as she tapped me on the arm. We all knew what we had to do. If we could get on the same side, we could try the press and show it to Mr. Roberts.

We'd practiced it for hours on Saturday and then on Sunday for another three hours. We'd been at my house so long that first day that my father ordered pizza for the five of us for supper, and we all sat around on the
porch munching it.

Mr. Roberts started to toss out the red bibs. The five players who received them would be on the same side against the remaining five. We had to be on the same side.

Marcus, Kingsley and Kia were among those who got the bibs. I looked at Roy and shrugged. He scowled back. He then walked over to Bojan, who had received a bib, said something to him I couldn't hear, and Bojan handed the bib to him. Roy turned my way and pitched me the bib. I slipped it on over my head. Roy approached another player with a bib and took that one from him, putting it on over his jersey.

“Okay everybody, let's…,” Mr. Roberts stopped mid-sentence. “These aren't the teams I selected.”

“We just wanted to try something different,” Kia said.

“How about if we just do what I want to do since I'm the coach.”

“I know, sir, it's just —”

“We thought it would be good for me to be out on the same line as Kia and Nick,” Roy said, cutting her off. “You know I'm pretty big and I can help take care of them so nobody
pushes them around too much.”

“You want to take care of them?” Mr. Roberts questioned. His tone of voice and expression left little doubt he was pretty surprised by Roy's statement.

“Yeah. Why wouldn't I want to take care of one of my teammates?”

“Well… sure… I guess we could try this line combination for a little bit… in practice,” Mr. Roberts said.

That's what I wanted to hear.

“We'll even give them first ball,” Roy offered.

This may have sounded like a nice offer, but it was just what we wanted — them with the ball to in-bounds.

Roy picked up the ball and slowly rolled it down to the baseline. He then took up a position directly in front of Dean, who was going to throw the ball in. Roy began jumping up and down, waving his arms in the air like he was going to try to fly.

Marcus and I took up our positions. We sandwiched Bojan between us.

“What are you guys doing?” Bojan asked.

“It's called coverage,” Marcus said. “Coverage like a blanket.”

Without looking away from Bojan I knew
where Kia and Kingsley were — Kia just on this side of center and Kingsley just a little bit on the other side.

“Come on, you going to throw in the ball or try to hatch it?” Roy demanded. “You only have five seconds you know… that's the rules… come on!”

“But I can't —”

“One… two… three,” Roy started to count.

Dean tried to move out of Roy's way and tossed in the pass. It just deflected off one of Roy's outstretched arms and bounced off target. Marcus and Bojan scrambled after it. Marcus got the ball and fed it to me. Dean came toward me and I lobbed it over to Roy who was under the net, alone. He put it up for an easy two points.

I heard Kia whoop and turned around to see her giving Kingsley a high five.

Roy picked up the ball and handed it to Dean. “Try it again,” he said.

Before Dean could even get ready to toss it in, we were back all over Bojan again. He jumped and dodged and spun and turned to try to get away from us. The ball came in to the left just as he spun to the right. It shot
pass all three of us and was grabbed by Kia. She instantly fed the ball over to me and I sent it to Marcus as he broke for the net. Another easy two points!

“Somebody come back and help!” Dean yelled as he picked up the ball.

Nobody moved.

“Give him some support!” Mr. Roberts yelled. “They're putting on a press!”

Two of their guys came back to give Dean a target. Kia came back with them and Kingsley moved up to take the spot she'd occupied. Marcus and I slipped away from Bojan, getting ready to get on whoever received the pass.

Dean looked one way, and then the other as his players yelled and waved and dodged around trying to get open.

He threw it to Scott. Kia and Marcus were closest to him and they collapsed on him, forcing him to go to the sidelines, where they trapped him. He turned and thought about throwing it back to Dean, but he was being pushed to the side by Roy. In desperation he just tossed the ball over top of Marcus. Kingsley grabbed the lame throw and he fed it into me. I put up a short jumper and it went into the net!

This wasn't going as we planned… it was even better!

Mr. Roberts blew his whistle and we stopped. “Okay, everybody, bring it in!” he yelled.

I fought hard not to let out a little yell — a victory yell. Marcus, Kingsley, Kia and even Roy were all smiling. But why shouldn't they? We were amazing!

“Let's talk about what happened,” Mr. Roberts called out.

It seemed like it was pretty obvious what had happened. We hadn't just beaten the other guys, we'd buried them. Every single time they'd tried to bring it up we'd stopped them and put it back in their net.