No Slam Dunk

ONE 

Everybody always says there’s only one ball in basketball.

Now one had just hit Wes in the side of the face, making him feel like somebody had slapped him.
Hard.

It was a basic three-on-two drill: Wes on the right wing; Emmanuel Pike over on the left; Dinero Rey, the one leading the break, in the middle. There were two defenders waiting for them as they crossed half-court, waiting for Dinero to make the first move, to decide whether to keep the ball or pass it.

It was less than an hour into the Annapolis Hawks’ first practice together. Wes was now Dinero’s teammate, a year after they’d been the stars of opposing teams in the sixth grade. As Dinero made his way down the court, Wes knew the defenders were expecting him to give it up.

They knew what Wes did: Dinero was even better passing a basketball than he was dribbling it with either hand or shooting it from the outside or driving it to the basket. There was a reason why he was called Dinero even though his real name was Danilo.

He was money.

He was the smallest kid on the court. But that didn’t matter. He was fast and smart and flashy, with a game as big as his smile. A lot of kids his age could shoot and handle and blow past you if you gave them an opening. But it was what he could do with the ball that set him apart, Wes knew, from other kids their age, not just in their town, Annapolis, but maybe northern Virginia, too, and from all the slick ballers in Washington, D.C. Even though Dinero was only twelve, you could look him up on YouTube and see for yourself.

Now the first pass Dinero threw his way, very first one, had hit Wes flush in the side of the face.
Wes knew it was nobody’s fault but his own.

“When you don’t pay attention,” his dad had always told him, “what you generally do is pay.”
Dinero Rey had basically told him the same thing before they started the drill. Be ready if you’re open, he’d said.

“I might not be looking at you,” Dinero said. “But you better be looking at me.”

Then he’d given him a quick high five and that smile.

“We’re gonna do big things, you and me,” Dinero said. “Just you watch.”

Then Wes hadn’t been watching, and the ball caught him right next to his ear, bouncing off his hard head and out of bounds. The drill came to a stop in that moment, even though the ball kept rolling.

Wes could feel the heat of where the ball caught him, could almost feel the impression of the ball, on a night when he was no different from everybody else on the court at the new Annapolis Rec Center, and wanted to make the best possible impression, on his teammates, on his coach, everybody.

With his pale skin, Wes knew his face had to be getting red, and not just because of the ball hitting him, but the humiliation he was feeling.

Dinero got to him first.

“Sorry, dude,” he said. “I thought for sure you were looking.” He grinned, which only made Wes feel worse.

“My fault,” Wes said.

“You okay?” The grin was still there.

“Yes.”

No! Wes thought.

Anybody who’d ever seen Wes play, who’d seen the magic in his own game, always talked about what a great head for basketball he had.

Only he wasn’t supposed to use it like this.

Not on the first day of practice with the rest of the Annapolis Hawks, an elite team of seventh-graders in a year that would be playing in a new elite league. The other seventh-graders, the ones who hadn’t made the Hawks, would play in the same travel league in which they’d played last season. But the Hawks, they were moving on. And moving up.

There were other stars from last year’s teams. But the two biggest were Dinero and Wes: the point guard and small forward who played big. The two guys who were going to do big things together.

What had he been thinking about while the ball was busy finding his face?

His dad.

But mostly how he needed this team as much as he’d ever needed anything in his life.