Racing the Rain (20 page)

The guard who had thrown the careless inbound pass, seeking to quickly redress his error, rushed over just in time to foul Cassidy. His foul shot hit nothing but net.

But it was the next play that changed Cassidy's life forever.

Riviera tried to force the ball in to Stansfield and Stiggs got a hand on it and deflected it over to Osgood, who shovel-passed it out to Cassidy, already at full stride down the court. Houldsworth was defending, running backward, but when Cassidy got to the foul line, Houldsworth dropped back, expecting Cassidy to pass it to one wing or the other, since they had a three-on-one advantage. Instead, Cassidy went straight up into his pull-up jump shot. As he began to lift off the hardwood, he realized how easy it would be to miss this completely uncontested shot. And the reason for that was simply that he wanted so badly to make it. He had made the same shot hundreds—thousands—of times practicing on his own, but now that it really mattered, he felt the implacable forces of nature—of the universe—that wanted that shot
not
to go it. There were an infinite number of ways to miss such a shot but only a handful of ways to make it. He realized that the more he absolutely, positively, more-than-life-itself craved to see that ball drop through the net, the more likely it was he would miss it. Not by much, but miss it nevertheless. The sheer intensity of his desire would cause a tiny bit of extra lift, an imperceptibly more vigorous flick of the wrist, but
something
, some tiny flaw. And that would be that.

So as he rose for the shot he concentrated on trying to do something he had learned skin diving: not to care. Underwater he had learned to be detached, because to be in a constant state of concern was to be using oxygen. You have to make yourself not care, he would say when people asked how he did it. Not caring was why it was so easy to make these shots in practice when it didn't matter and so easy to
miss
them in games when it did.

So now, at this very moment, it mattered. It mattered a lot. He would have this one chance to make this shot and it would never come again. So as he lifted off the floor, he began willing himself not to care. This shot would go in or it would not, and the earth would still turn on its axis. Children would still starve in Africa and armies would clash by night. No matter what one skinny teenager's existential investment in it might be, nothing in the larger scheme of things was riding on this shot.

That freed his mind to deal with the important details: squaring his body to the rim, feeling the pebble-grain surface of the ball on his fingertips, getting the exact rhythm of the motion of whipping the ball up from his waist to a point just above his forehead, holding it there until the exact moment he reached the apex of his jump, launching it ever so softly into its perfect arc, with the ball spinning slightly backward, his hand and forearm continuing on and collapsing into the perfect “dying swan” follow-through of all good shooters. And, as with all good shooters, he knew the second the ball left his fingertips that it was a dead-center perfect shot. He knew it so completely that he could not help disobeying a cardinal rule of basketball: follow your shot. Instead, he simply bounced happily there in place, content to watch the arc of the ball as if it were a separate entity, a thing of beauty totally unrelated to himself.

The ball cut the net so cleanly that it popped through the cords and hung momentarily in space, still spinning backward, before dropping to the hardwood floor.

And, just like that, Cassidy understood the real secret of shooting a basketball.

Stiggs, who had been expecting the pass, had to change his tune in mid-invective. It went like this:

“Cassidy! What the hell . . .”

Swish.

“Nice shot.”

* * *

The bus would have been pretty rowdy but for the varsity players, whose loss easily trumped the elation of the jayvees. They seemed particularly vexed at Cassidy, who had always been an object of special derision for them, either because he was too cocky, too skinny, or too uncool generally. That is, they acted that way when they acknowledged the existence of a JV player at all, which was rare.

Cassidy sat, alone as usual, in the seat behind Stiggs and Randleman. He would like to have felt bad for the varsity, but it was all he could do to suppress his joy. He had scored twenty-two points, leading both teams, but more than that, he had clearly engineered a five-point victory out of an impending drubbing.

Still, the varsity had lost, and Cassidy was obligated to project a glumness that he did not feel.

Coach Cinnamon came aboard last, trying to act chipper but not succeeding very well. He went down the aisle, saying a few words of encouragement here and there to the varsity players. When he got to the middle of the bus where Cassidy sat, he stopped for a moment. He stood and smiled at Cassidy, who finally looked away in embarrassment.

Coach Cinnamon put his hand on Cassidy's shoulder and, without saying anything, continued down the aisle.

T
he most ardent cares of his former life fell away.

Worrying about being noticed in practice, or whether he would get any playing time, or whether he would, by some miracle, start a game—all of that went away. He left his reversible jersey red side out at scrimmage time instead of automatically turning it to the white side, the second-team color.

Dewey Stoddard still hardly spoke to him, but Cassidy detected a grudging respect instead of the usual studied indifference. Coach Cinnamon must have talked to Dewey, Cassidy thought, because Dewey was just dense enough to think that what he saw during the Riviera Beach game was some kind of fluke.

In the next game, Pahokee came to play the Edgewater jayvees in a solo afternoon game while the varsity was away at a holiday tournament in Fort Lauderdale. Forty-some people, mostly parents and siblings, showed up to watch in the stuffy Edgewater gym. The big overhead fans were going full blast as the late-afternoon sun streamed through the upper windows. Even December had some miserably hot days on the Gold Coast.

Drake Osgood started at one guard, Cassidy the other. Stiggs was jumping center against a smaller player, so when Cassidy got his attention he pointed to Stewart, the tallest guy on the team. Stiggs nodded. When Cassidy got Stewart's attention, he pointed to his left, letting him know which way he was going to break for the basket. Stewart nodded. It was the play Riviera had pulled on them.

It worked perfectly. Stiggs was a whole forearm above their poor opposing center, easily tapping the ball to Stewart, who flipped it nonchalantly over his shoulder to Cassidy, who was already halfway to the rim. Two dribbles took him too far under the left side of the rim, so he crossed under and did a reverse layup on the right side, laying the ball gently in with his right hand and turning in midair so his back would bounce off the safety pad when he landed.

It happened so quickly the Pahokee players had barely figured out which basket they were going for. Now they were down two points.

In their first game of the season, despite their smaller size, Pahokee had played them tough. They challenged the ball all the way up the floor and they were in constant motion on offense, trying to wear down their bigger opponents. Now they brought the ball down and started the same tactic again, working it around to the corner, then back out and around to the other corner, where their wing hit a nice shot from the baseline. Their guards immediately set up to contest the inbound pass.

Cassidy pulled the ball out of the net, but he and Osgood both stepped out-of-bounds simultaneously fifteen feet apart. Cassidy acted like he was going to throw a baseball pass downcourt, which got his man up in the air, then tossed the ball over to Osgood, who was still out of bounds, waiting. Not many players were aware that a pass between two out-of-bounds players was completely legal. Cassidy immediately stepped around his airborne defender and headed downcourt as Osgood hit him with a quick pass. By the time his man got back on terra firma, Cassidy had a five-yard lead on him, which he maintained all the way down the floor.

Pahokee's center and forwards were not set up when Cassidy got to the top of the key, but one of them turned just in time to see Cassidy getting ready to shoot. He immediately went to defend just as Randleman stepped over and turned sideways, setting a left screen on the guy at the foul line. Cassidy did a crossover dribble and went left around the screen, which now left him completely open down the key. Everyone else on the Pahokee team was busy trying to figure out whom they were supposed to be guarding, what the score was, whether their uniform jerseys were properly tucked in, everything but stopping the guy with the ball. It was the simplest offensive concept in basketball: get open and put the ball in the hole. Cassidy pulled up into his jumper and buried it.

Now the Pahokee guys looked at each other with real concern. In their first game Quenton Cassidy hadn't played at all, and little Pahokee had come within five points of beating Edgewater. That fact didn't engender a great deal of respect for anything about Edgewater except its size. Now this guy they'd never seen before had just breezily scored twice in less than a minute. Worse, it all seemed too casual. The guy wasn't in the least surprised, and neither was anyone on his team.

Cassidy was trotting back on defense when he heard a familiar jungle call among the noise from the little crowd. He looked over to the home side and was surprised to see Trapper Nelson sitting courtside. And by him, in civvies, was Ron Lefaro, giving him a pumping fist and a whoop. Cassidy gave them a happy little wave as he scurried down the court.

Edgewater ran the score up so high the reserves played most of the last quarter. For once Cassidy was happy to sit on the bench, cheering on the second team.

Pahokee was just the first in a long succession of one-sided victories. Dewey Stoddard still hardly had a word to say to him, but Cassidy started every game. After the games, Coach Cinnamon would sometimes offer a word of praise or encouragement, but Dewey said nothing.

In fact, Dewey was as clueless as everyone else about his own sudden startling success as a basketball coach. In reality, Cassidy and Stiggs had taken over the team, working out a system of hand gestures to indicate changing from man-to-man to zone, which out-of-bounds play to use, which offense to set up, and so on. Dewey was only vaguely aware that something was going on, but as long as it seemed to be working he didn't trouble himself about it. His coaching advice, when he had any to offer, was opaque and confusing: Don't take anything the defense doesn't give you! Cut off the passing lanes! Give and go!

When the JV team went 18–2 for the season, the conference coaches voted Dewey the junior varsity Coach of the Year. Cassidy told Stiggs and Randleman that everyone on the JV team should become professional magicians, because they had somehow turned Dewey Stoddard—who still thought a zone press was something you used to make Cuban sandwiches—into a basketball genius.

“Yeah, we were winning by fifteen a game until Dewey got the flu. Then we won by thirty-two and twenty-eight with Mr. Kamrad coaching. And Mr. Kamrad never played basketball in his life. If Dewey had just stayed at home every game, he'd have made Coach of the Century.”

The irony of Dewey's award was not lost on the local sportswriters, who loved to report examples of “Dewenglish” in their columns:

“Sure, we've got some height. But what we don't have in height, we make up for in size,” he told the
Orlando Sentine
l
's Bill Buchalter.

In a pep talk about sticking to training rules, he told his minions: “You can't just keep burning your bridges at both ends.”

When explaining why he was resting a semi-injured player for two games, Dewey explained: “You've got to be careful not to kill the goose that laid the deviled egg.”

Then there were the cryptic practice directives: “All right, men, line up alphabetically by height.”

And: “Now I want everyone to pair up in threes and line up in a circle.”

They could have given the credit to the ladies in the lunchroom for all Cassidy cared. He was on top of the world. Stiggs and Randleman told him he was becoming pretty obnoxious, but they were mostly kidding. Mostly.

* * *

Jim Cinnamon came by fifth-period study hall, which was held in the cafeteria. He talked to Mrs. Midyette, the monitor, then signaled Cassidy.

“Hope you don't mind me pulling you out of study hall like this,” he said, his ripple-soled coaching shoes making little squeaks on the terrazzo hallway floor.

“No, sir. I've worked out enough quadratic equations to last the rest of the year. Is there anything wrong?”

“Not at all. I just wanted to talk to you about next season. That suit you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I didn't think you'd mind. Say, are you growing again?”

“Yes, sir. I hope to be over six feet by next year,” said Cassidy.

“Me too!” said Coach Cinnamon.

When they sat down in his office, Coach Cinnamon picked up a sheath of stapled mimeographed pages from a stack on the corner of his desk.

“This is the offense I'm thinking about running next year. It's basically a one-three-one, with a low post, a high post, and two wings. That essentially gives us two centers and two forwards. But the key is the last guy, the point guard. He has to be able to bring the ball up—under pressure sometimes—and he has to start the offense. He has to be able to hit from the outside so they can't sag on him and jam up the middle. He has to be able to penetrate so they can't just lay back in a zone. If he can manage all that, that lets us put a really big team on the floor: two inside big boys, two outside big boys—four tough rebounders on the boards on every shot.”

Cassidy whistled.

“But it doesn't work without the point guard. He can't be a weak link. In fact, he has to be a strong link. If they can stifle him, they stifle the whole offense. He has to be aggressive and just . . . well, just active. He has to be in constant motion, a nonstop scoring threat, but always looking to penetrate the key or pass it inside to the big boys.”