Cover

Dedication

This book is for the great Esther Newberg.

ONE

Lucas Winston loved basketball the most when it was just him and Gramps in the park.

He also loved being on the seventh-grade town team in Claremont. He loved playing in the Twin Lakes League season, against all the other town teams in their area. He loved the fact that his sixth-grade team had won the Twin Lakes championship last year. And he sure didn’t hate that his best friend, Ryan Moretti, was the most gifted big man in the league, and a player who knew what to do with the ball when Lucas passed it to him.

“No two boys your age ever ran the pick-and-roll better,” Gramps said to Lucas one time.

Gramps had a way of making almost anything into the best he’d ever seen or known, starting with the French toast he’d had for breakfast that morning at the Claremont Diner.

“Trust me,” Gramps said. “You know how they say, ‘Ball don’t lie’? When it comes to analyzing basketball, I don’t either.”

“I know,” Lucas said. “Nobody knows more about basketball than you do.”

Last year Sam Winston had been the only grandfather coaching in the Twin Lakes League, and the Claremont Wolves had won their first title since before Lucas was even born. The parents on the board of directors were so happy with the job he’d done, they asked him to come back and coach the seventh graders this season, even though he’d announced he was retiring.

Lucas never believed Gramps’s heart was really in retiring. He knew he’d never stop loving basketball the way he did, and would always want to teach it. So Lucas had been the one to talk him out of it.

At the time he said to his grandfather, “You and I are the best team in town. And I’m not letting you break up that team.”

Lucas believed it too. He knew Gramps had taught him as much about being a good teammate as he had about being a good point guard. Persuading Gramps to come back was just one more way of being the best teammate he could be.

Lucas’s grandfather was really the only father Lucas had ever known. His real father had died of cancer right after Lucas was born. So they had always been a team, and not just in basketball. Sam Winston had never been too busy for Lucas, even before he’d retired from driving a USPS truck and delivering the mail.

It wasn’t too cold tonight under the lights at Westley Park. Tryouts were over for this year’s Wolves. The roster had been set. Their first game, against Homestead, was scheduled for next Saturday morning, in the new gym at Claremont Middle School.

Lucas and Gramps were working on what his grandfather called “old-school stuff.”