Chapters (41)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Also by Mike Lupica
Lucas went through his routine. Took a deep breath. Even visualized the ball going through the basket the way Gramps had taught him. Made the free throw.
They were down three.
Same two teams on the court. But it was a different game.
The Wolves and Owls were tied going into the fourth quarter. Gramps kept moving guys in and out. He gave Lucas a one-minute breather at the start of the fourth. He did the same with Ryan a minute after that, not wanting to have both of them out of the game at the same time, even for a few seconds.
With four minutes to go, it was the Wolves who were ahead by five points. They were the ones who couldn’t miss now. Lucas and Ryan were the ones handling the Owls’ press with ease.
Lucas remembered one time when Mike Breen, his favorite announcer in the NBA, said that when momentum changed in a game, it was like trying to turn an ocean liner around. That’s what happened at the Oakdale YMCA in the second half.
Different backcourt for the Wolves, different game.
Only one thing hadn’t changed for the Wolves by the time the horn sounded:
They were still undefeated.
TWENTY-SIX
It was the last full week of school before Christmas break began the following Wednesday. The Wolves had won two more games by then, and suddenly there were just three more games left before the top two teams in their league would play for the championship. And if the Wolves could win the championship, they’d qualify for the state tournament for seventh-grade All-Star and travel teams.
If Lucas had been asked to describe his relationship with Gramps lately, he thought this was the word he would use:
Polite.
It was the best he could do.
Neither of them had mentioned the Ocean State Bisons again. They’d had no disagreements, on or off the court. Maybe it had something to do with the Wolves playing as well as they were, and neither one of them wanted to do anything that might get in the way of that, or hurt the team.
One night at practice, Gramps had been talking to the team about decisions a coach has to make, during a game and during a season, and had said, “You don’t always have to like what you do. Sometimes your players hate what you’re doing. But if it’s for the good of the team, you have to do it.”
So they were polite with each other, as if they sensed that was what was best for the Wolves. There was still all this distance between them. Lucas realized he’d stopped feeling angry about who Gramps was and what he’d done all the time. But he also realized that the anger wasn’t ever very far away. And probably wasn’t ever going away.