“It’s got a chance to be a special group,” Lucas’s grandfather said.

Julia Winston smiled. “I hear that it might have a little something to do with a pretty special coach.”

“Wouldn’t matter who the coach was if they didn’t want to listen, and these boys listen,” he said. “Not a chowderhead in the bunch. Certainly not the kind of chowderhead I was when I was young.”

“Not possible,” Lucas said.

Gramps was quiet for a moment, with a faraway look that he would get sometimes, like a cloud passing across his face.

“Least I learned from my mistakes,” he said. “When the boy finally did become a man.”

“Or when a girl becomes a woman,” Lucas’s mom said, smiling again. “Glad I learned from all the mistakes I made when I was young.”

After dessert, and after they’d all cleaned up the kitchen, the three of them went into the living room to watch the game. Lucas’s mom said that even she was excited to see Steph Curry and Chris Paul get after each other.

“Though,” she said to Gramps, “after watching our boy this morning, I bet those guys could pick up a few pointers from him.”

“Now you’re talking crazy talk,” Lucas said.

“Someday,” she said to him, “people will be watching you on TV on a Saturday night.”

“In your dreams,” Lucas said to her. “Or maybe mine.”

“I’m good either way,” she said.

The Warriors and Thunder were tied at the half. Lucas’s mom said she was going into the kitchen to make popcorn. When she’d left the room Lucas said to his grandfather, “Ask you something?”

“Ask me anything except to explain how the Thunder could possibly have left the best shooter in the game wide-open for that three right before the buzzer,” he said.

Lucas took a deep breath, let it out. Slowly.

“I want to ask you again to help me out with the paper about you I want to do for school,” he said.

“Back to that, are we?” Gramps said.

He grinned.

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “We are.”

“I’d still rather you wouldn’t,” Gramps said.

“I don’t understand,” Lucas said.

“And for a good coach,” Gramps said, “I’m not doing much of a job at making you understand.”

“I want to know what kind of player you were,” Lucas said.

“Just one who didn’t get the most out of his potential, the way you do,” Gramps said.

“Well, that’s pretty hard for me to believe,” Lucas said.

“Believe it,” Gramps said. “And thinking about it makes me sad, even though I don’t think about it very much.”

“I’d never want to make you sad,” Lucas said.