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Back The Turnover
Chapters (41)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  41. Also by Mike Lupica

He was only in his early thirties. If he couldn’t still play basketball himself, he was working for the team that had been his team growing up. Then he had gotten sick. Lucas had read up on the kind of pancreatic cancer that had taken his dad from him before he even knew him. The only blessing, according to Gramps and his mom, was that it had happened fast. According to them, he had been diagnosed at Thanksgiving, and died a couple months after the one and only Christmas he had been able to share with his baby son. Now Lucas was only able to have Christmases with his dad in the pictures, and the videos.

“You can’t live your life fixed on what you never had,” Gramps had said to Lucas more than once. “You start doing that, it will eat away at your heart.”

Then he’d say to Lucas, “The key to real happiness in this world is appreciating what you have, and knowing what you want. Everything else is just noise.”

Lucas wasn’t sure what the noise part meant. But he trusted that his grandfather knew what he was talking about, and not just because he’d lived as long as he had. He trusted him to know what was right, and not just on a basketball court.

Some nights Gramps would come over and watch a game with Lucas on television. Some nights his mom would watch with Lucas, and they’d turn off the sound on the television, and each of them would read a book. Lucas figured he’d probably been born with a love of basketball in him, because of both his dad and Gramps. But he knew he’d gotten his love of reading from his mom.

But she remained a basketball fan herself. A couple times a year, she’d manage to score tickets to a Celtics game, and she and Gramps and Lucas would make the two-hour car ride to Boston, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. It was just one of about a thousand ways Lucas’s mom could find to show him how much she loved him. And she never missed one of his games.

“You’re sure you’re not too tired to watch?” Lucas said after he had cleaned up his room. The game was still in the first quarter.

“Tired of us losing to the Pistons right now,” she said.

“It’s the end of a long road trip,” Lucas said.

“We still can’t be losing to the Pistons,” she said.