“I don’t want any of you guys talking to nobody without clearing it with me first!” Cal said.

“I don’t know what you talking about, man,” Ox said. “You said this tournament was about having coaches see us, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s all about,” Cal said. There was sweat around his mouth, but the rest of his face was dry. “They all come on like Big Daddy, too. But just like every daddy, they got their own family to feed. He’s going to tell you anything you want to hear as long as he can get you to play for his team. That’s how he gets paid, by delivering the right flesh to the right team. Then, if they can’t get what flesh they want, they get a whole lot of backups, just so they can justify their expense accounts.

“I’ve seen guys like you thinking that some big school is interested in them because they’ve talked to a scout. You know for every guy that makes a team some scout has talked to twenty or thirty guys around the country and said the school was interested? You turn down five real chances for some fabulous school and go there to find you going up against a hundred guys just to make the junior varsity. Now can we talk about the game?”

“Yeah, go ahead, man.” Paul was already getting into his street clothes.

“Let me ask you guys something.” Cal was stuffing all the towels into a bag. “You guys win or lose out there today?”

“You know we lost, coach,” Paul said.

“Did you have to lose?”

No one said anything.

“Who here thinks you lost because the other team was better than you were?”

No one said anything.

“Then let’s all have two minutes of silence.” Cal stood up and bowed his head. “We got young black men here who choose to lose instead of winning. That’s something we should all have a moment of silence for. That’s an opportunity we let die. Just give me two minutes of silence.”

It was a long two minutes. At first it was uncomfortable, then it was embarrassing, and then I started to feel just a little ashamed of myself. After the two minutes were up, Cal told us how proud he was of how we had played the second half. It was too bad, he said, that we didn’t think enough of ourselves to win when we had the choice.

By the time Joni and Leora got to the locker room, we were all dressed and ready to go. We went down to the center and drank some sodas and a little wine that we had stashed there.

“What you guys celebrating?” Cal said.

I thought he was going to get into the thing about us losing again. Ox said he wasn’t celebrating nothing, just having a few drinks.

“I’m just trying to relax after the game,” Paul said.

“You go tell that to somebody who never played this game,” Cal said. “You celebrating what you found out on that court this afternoon. You got yourselves a good team. You know it, the team that beat you know it, and everybody that saw the game knows it. You guys can play some ball, and that’s what you’re celebrating! Now somebody pass me a cool drink!”