Lucas had a pretty good idea about how many assists he had by halftime. But in the end, he never cared about his own stats. Gramps had always drummed into his head that the only stat that mattered for a point guard wasn’t a number. It was a letter:

W.

For wins.

He still knew he had a boatload of assists today. And also knew that at the half, everybody who’d been in the game for the Wolves had at least one basket.

All Gramps said to them at halftime was this:

“Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re making me look like a genius.”

The Wolves slowed things down in the second half once it became clear that the Sonics were never going to cut into their lead. They stopped fast-breaking. They ran more set plays on offense, and worked more clock. Nobody wanted to embarrass the Sonics. Gramps always told them to imagine what it would feel like to be on the other side of a beatdown like this. By the start of the fourth quarter they had proved, in just about every way, that they were the better team today. There was no need to rub it in.

Gramps always talked about playing the game right. This was what that felt like. He always said if you did enough things right, the results would take care of themselves. And so they had against the Sonics.

The best result? They walked off the court 2–0.

If last Saturday had been a great day because of the way they had come back, this one felt ever sweeter. They hadn’t just shown the Sonics the kind of basketball of which they were capable.

They’d shown themselves.

You couldn’t ask for more than that, especially this early in the season. Couldn’t ask for a better day.

Until dinner that night.

TWELVE

Lucas couldn’t have drawn things up better if he were drawing up a perfect play: win over Sheridan, mom’s meatloaf for dinner with banana splits all around for dessert, then the Warriors vs. the Thunder on television, which meant Steph Curry against Chris Paul at point guard. Gramps said it would be like taking a master class in playing the position, at least when James Harden wasn’t dribbling the darn ball.

At dinner they went over all the highlights of the Wolves and Sonics game. The conversation nearly taking them all the way to banana splits because there had been so many highlights. Gramps said the thing he’d liked the best was how disciplined Lucas and his teammates had stayed even after the game became a blowout, none of them slacking off, all of them still looking to make the extra pass, and sometimes one more pass after that.

“When it’s like that,” Gramps says, “teamwork never feels like work.”

“Maybe it’s because of all the work we put in at practice,” Lucas said.