A few minutes later the game was over. The guys came in with their heads down. They got dressed and didn’t say nothing. Paul asked me if I was going across town, and I said no. I wanted to be alone. They weren’t mad at me, but they didn’t want to talk either.

By the time I had finished getting dressed and picking my hair out the gym was just about empty. I went out and saw Johnson standing and talking to a reporter and the guy who had introduced the players. He came over to me.

“Been waiting for you, man.”

“Yeah.”

“See you ain’t got that win stuff in you yet,” he said.

“I can win if the ref calls a game like he got at least one good eye,” I said.

“Let me tell you something, Lonnie,” Johnson said. “There’s cats that come into all steps of basketball every year and can’t make it. You see little dudes playing ball, and they all pretty good. Then they get to high school, and they find out that some cats can outmuscle them, and the weak cats fall off to the side. They ain’t hungry enough to get strong.

“Then they get into college, and they find out some cats are willing to hurt you in order to get over. A lot of guys fall by the wayside because they ain’t hungry enough to get hurt.

“Guys come into the pros and find out that everybody in the pros is strong and everybody will put a hurting on you every day of your life. Some of the guys in the pros ain’t got nothing near an education. The only thing they can do in life is play ball. You think they’re going to let you take that away from them when they know you can’t stand no hurting? They’re going to hurt you until you know how to protect yourself. And if you blow your cool and throw away your game, they don’t care. They getting theirs to beat you, not to look good.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said.

“You know I’m right,” Johnson said. “Because you been playing a lot of ball and you see what goes down. That ain’t your problem. The problem is that you saw an excuse to lose and you couldn’t let it go. It was a hedge, you know. You got to let it go sometime.”

“What you talking about?” I looked at him. “Ain’t no way I want to lose!”

“No way you want to lose, but you want to hang on to an excuse, just in case,” Johnson said. “You were still winning when that guy was on you. Even with him beating on you, you could have won. You found an excuse to blow, and you couldn’t let it go. You got to fight through that feeling. You got to make the other team beat you.”

I looked at him, and he looked at me. Then he started to get his stuff together and leave.