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
They were down four.
Two minutes left.
Corey beat the trap, started backing Lucas down again, on the left side. But this time Lucas didn’t just hold his ground. He read the rhythm of Corey’s dribbling perfectly, reached in at the perfect moment, knocked the ball away from him. Sharif grabbed it at the free-throw line. Almost without looking, he threw the ball down the court like a football quarterback, hitting Billy right in stride. Billy was the one making a layup now.
They were down a basket.
Twenty seconds left, the game tied, the Wolves ended up with the ball after Corey missed a wide-open jumper. Ryan got the rebound. Lucas brought the ball up. Gramps didn’t call a time-out. He just signaled for them to play.
Lucas and Ryan tried to run one more pick-and-roll. But Corey and Max were ready for it. Max blew up the screen. Corey stayed on Lucas. Ryan had no clear path to the basket.
Six seconds.
Five.
Lucas knew he was outside his range. Corey was right up on him. But there was no choice but to put the ball up.
He stepped back, the way Steph Curry did.
He got the ball up and over Corey’s outstretched arms. Lucas used all the strength he had in him to do that, actually ending up on the floor after he released the ball.
He was sitting on the floor, leaning around Corey to see, when he saw the ball go through the net.
Wolves 56, Jazz 55.
One last time, Lucas got up.
The next day, Gramps got knocked down again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nearly sixty years later, there was another story about the Ocean State Bisons in the Los Angeles Times.
Lucas’s mom was the one who told him, because the story had popped up on her phone. Without telling him, she had been doing some research of her own about Gramps and his teammates and the scandal, trying to find out if there really was more to the story. So she had set a Google alert. If there was a mention anywhere about the Bisons, she found out about it right away.
She got the alert on Gramps on Sunday morning.
The story wasn’t really about him. It was really about Tommy Angelo, who was eighty years old by now and close to dying.
“He’s living in an assisted living facility outside Los Angeles,” Julia told Lucas after she’d read the story. “It’s where elderly people who can’t take care of themselves on their own end up.”