I took the ball out again, spun on him on the outside, brought him on inside, and then spun on him again. The first time I had spun to the right, and this time I spun to the left and I laid it in: 5 to 3.

I brought the ball in again, but this time, when I tried the outside spin, he tipped the ball away and recovered. He drove for the basket, and I was on his case about a half step behind him. Then he stopped, and I thought he was going to try for the jumper, but he spun around me and laid it in. There were a couple of oohs and ahs, which ticked me off.

The next time he brought the ball down he went right to the hoop, and I went right with him. I cut him off, or at least I thought I cut him off because I thought he was too deep to make the shot. He was just about behind the backboard. He went up and I went up with him, but then he stretched out and went from the other side and made the lay-up. There were a lot more oohs and ahs.

“Five to five,” the chump said.

I didn’t say nothing. I threw him the ball and decided that this time he wasn’t going to get anywhere near the damn basket. He put the ball on the floor once and threw it up from about twenty-five feet. I turned my back to him and spread my legs to cut him off from the rebound. Only there wasn’t any rebound; it was all net as the ball dropped in with a little swishing noise.

“First practice tomorrow at three o’clock!” he said. He had this grin all over his face like he had did something.

“Hey, Mr. Jones,” Ox called out, “why you so mean to my man Lonnie?”

“Call me Cal,” the wino said.

“Hey, Lonnie, the cat stuffed your game so bad you got to call him Mr. Cal,” Paul said.

That didn’t bother me none. The guy had a little game, but he wasn’t that much. If I had been playing the sucker seriously, I would have wiped him off the court. I didn’t say anything right then because I didn’t want to make no issue of it. But we’d match up again, I knew that. I knew that I would see that we matched up again.

They gave us forms to fill out and bring back the next day. I started filling it out at home and got about halfway through before I stopped. They wanted to know how old you were, what year you were in, your grade average, stuff like that. The more I got to thinking about that form, the less I wanted to do with it. What it was all about, the form and the tournament, was copping a plea for a second chance because you didn’t make it on the first go-around. That was what Paul was rapping about with his “being cool” jive. I’d peeped that whole show-your-teeth, shuck and jive scene before. Like the time when I was getting ready to go into junior high school and they were talking about taking kids into this special program. My moms had me going for this interview in a suit and a tie in the middle of May. There was twenty of us sitting in that hot auditorium and going up one by one to talk to these three people who were selecting kids for the special program. A week later we found out that they took the two lightest kids. I wasn’t going to dance for nobody, and I wasn’t going to hoop for nobody for a chance I probably wasn’t going to get anyway.