Break for the Basket (4 page)

“Thanks, Mr. Long!”

Emmett rushed into the dressing room, his heart thumping with excitement. He dressed in a jiffy. He felt awfully strange as
he walked out onto the court. He had never worn a uniform before.

“Tell the scorekeeper you’re going in for Mickey Dunbar,” said Coach Long.

Emmett reported to the scorekeeper. When the whistle blew for a ball that had gone off the court, Emmett went in. He tapped
Mickey on the shoulder. Mickey stared at him. “Hi, Emmett!” he said, and trotted off the floor.

Robin Hood passed the ball from out of bounds to Rusty Kane. Rusty dribbled across the middle line and passed to Glenn Long,
a slender, dark-haired boy who was the coach’s son. A guard crowded him as he tried to take a set shot. He passed to Emmett.

The pass surprised Emmett. He stood there, holding the ball nervously in his hands. He felt as if a thousand eyes were watching
him.

“Shoot, Emmett!” a voice shouted across the din. “Shoot!”

He looked up. There was the rim, a bright orange ring with the white nylon net clinging underneath.

A guard sprang in front of him. Emmett dribbled to the right, stopped, then dribbled again.

Shreeek!

Double dribble!

Eskimos’ out. They passed the ball in. A man dribbled across the center line and shot an overhand pass. Emmett raced hard
downcourt, wondering why he had double dribbled, for he knew better.

A try for a layup. Missed! Rusty Kane took the rebound and passed to Robin Hood. The Penguins moved the ball down the court.
Glenn passed to Emmett. Emmett pivoted, gripped with that scared feeling again. He looked up at the basket, lifted his arms
to shoot. A hand whacked his wrist.
Shreeek
! The whistle!

The referee lifted two fingers. Two shots!

E
MMETT STOOD
at the foul line, the ball held in both his hands. The referee was standing in front of him, waiting for the players to line
up on both sides of the free-throw lane.

Emmett grew more nervous by the second. Beads of sweat shone on his brow. Everybody was watching him. He had never been the
focus of attention before.

At last the referee moved out of the way, signaling for Emmett to shoot. Emmett looked at the basket, took a deep breath,
and shot.

The ball struck high on the backboard, and bounced off. It barely hit the rim.

One more shot. The ball was now in play. Emmett heard soft words of encouragement from Rusty and Robin Hood, but he was so
nervous he wanted to get rid of the ball as quickly as he could. He aimed, and threw. The ball hardly arched. It struck the
rim and glanced off. Both teams leaped for the rebound. An Eskimo player’s long arms pulled the ball down. There was a wild
scramble.

The whistle shrilled. Jump ball.

The tall Eskimo player outjumped Robin. Another Eskimo took the tap, dribbled away, then heaved a pass to a teammate running
across the center line. Emmett saw that it was his man. He raced downcourt, knowing that he should have kept his eyes open.
He should have looked for his man immediately after he had missed his second foul shot.

The Eskimo player caught the pass, dribbled up to his basket, and laid the ball up against the boards. It banked into the
net as clean as could be.

The fans screamed. Emmett looked at the scoreboard. No wonder. The Eskimos had tied it up, 29 to 29! If he had made only one
of those foul shots, the Penguins would still have remained ahead.

The Penguins took out the ball and moved it downcourt. Rusty faked a shot to the basket, then passed to Robin. Robin pivoted
and tried a two-handed overhand shot. The ball rolled around the rim and fell off. A quick roar rose and fell almost instantly.
That was so close!

An Eskimo player took the rebound. Emmett started to reach for the ball, to try to pull it out of the other player’s hand,
but drew back. He was afraid he might foul.

He leaped away, then quickly followed his man toward the Eskimos’ basket. A quick pass, a dribble, and then a pivot shot.
In!

The whistle shrieked. Mickey came back in. “Okay, Emmett,” he said. “Good game.”

Emmett trotted off the court, not daring to look up. He hadn’t done a thing right all those minutes he had been in the game.

“Cheer up,” said Coach Long. “You’ll make out all right.”

The game ended with the Eskimos winning, 31 to 29.

There was a lot of chatter among the players in the shower room, but Emmett hardly said a word. He was anxious to get dressed
and leave.

Mickey Dunbar walked home with him. Mickey looked so much like Robin Hood, yet he acted so differently. Of the two, Emmett
liked Mickey better.

“I guess I stunk,” said Emmett.

“You weren’t so bad,”
^’
said Mickey. “You’ll get used to it. It takes time. There’s a non-league game at the Community Hall Tuesday night. Can you
be there?”

“I’ll try,” said Emmett. “What time?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Okay. Will you stop by? We’ll walk over together.”

“Okay.”

Emmett arrived home in time to sit at the table and have dinner with his Mom, Dad, and his sisters. His Dad asked him how
the basketball game had gone, and Emmett told him.

“How did you do?” asked his father.

“Rotten,” replied Emmett.

Emmett felt better Tuesday night against the Arrows. The Arrows were in a different league. Rules
did not permit teams in the same league to play exhibition games. There were only a handful of people there. Most of them
were kids of Emmett’s age.

When the game started, Emmett and Wayne Reese were on the bench. Johnny Clark, Glenn Long, Rusty Kane, Mickey and Robin Hood
Dunbar were in the starting lineup. The Arrows took the tap from center and passed swiftly downcourt. Traveling was called,
and the Penguins took out the ball. Back upcourt it came. Mickey passed to Johnny, Johnny to Robin Hood. Robin dribbled in
fast for a drive-in shot, laid the ball up against the boards, and sank it for the Penguins’ first basket.

Seconds later Mickey sank a long set shot. Then the Arrows scored on a pivot shot. And on a drive-in an Arrow forward got
his wrist whacked by Robin Hood for a two-shot foul. The Arrow player made the first shot and missed the second. At the next
whistle Coach Long took out Johnny and put in Emmett.

Emmett thought he was over that nervousness. But almost at once it was back, like a bad dream. He fumbled a pass, and Rusty
yelled at him.

“Come on, Emmett! Hang on to ’em!”

At a mad scramble for the ball, Emmett stood back, afraid to join in. He found, as the game went along, that the boys were
hardly throwing the ball to him. They were ignoring him, as if he were not there.

Once again the Penguins had the ball on their backcourt. But each man was well guarded. The
Arrows were pressing. Mickey had the ball. He dribbled, stopped, and looked for a man in the clear. There wasn’t any — except
Emmett. The Arrow man guarding him had probably realized, too, that Emmett wasn’t much of a player. Nobody was throwing him
the ball.

Then Mickey shot him a swift pass. The throw caught Emmett by surprise. But he glued his hands on the ball. For a quick second
he looked for someone else to pass to. The Arrows’ pressing play was like a heavy curtain. There wasn’t a Penguin player in
the clear.

Emmett faced the basket. Without aiming, he shot. The ball arched high. The next moment it sank through the hoop with a soft
swish!

T
HE
P
ENGUINS CHEERED
. Robin Hood cheered loudest of all. He slapped Emmett on the back.

“A beauty!”

In the second quarter the Penguins piled up eight points, held the Arrows down to three. Emmett tried three times to duplicate
the shot he had made in the first quarter, but failed each time. He played a couple of minutes in the third quarter, and didn’t
hit then, either.

He knew that shot had been a lucky one. He couldn’t repeat it if he tried a hundred times.

Twice in the last quarter he missed a layup. He knew he was going to miss even before he tried. Coach Long took him out and
said that he was trying too hard.

Emmett didn’t know what to think. How could he not try hard and still expect to play? What was he supposed to do to score
points? Was this basket different from the one in his yard?

Somehow, playing basketball didn’t seem like so much fun any more.

On Saturday the Penguins played the Seals, and edged them out by a one-point margin, 34 to 33. The following Saturday the
Icebergs lagged in the game against the Penguins throughout the first half, then came back like wildfire and won, 39 to 24.

In both games Emmett played very little. There were two others besides himself who sat through most of the games more than
they played, Johnny Clark and Wayne Reese. But warming the bench was better than nothing. And sometimes he did get in to play.

What hurt him most was knowing that he could do better. He was sure he could play as well as Rusty Kane, or even the Dunbars.
Didn’t he hit the basket at home most of the times that he tried layups? Didn’t he hit those set shots more often, too?

Why couldn’t he do it here?

In his heart, Emmett knew. He was scared, that was why. Scared and shy. He was scared he might miss, or foul, or not do something
right. He was shy of the crowd. Yes, he knew, all right. He knew, too, that he would never get over that terrible, terrible
feeling.

Snow covered the ground and the trees like a heavy white blanket as Christmas drew near. Mr. Torrance bought a Christmas tree,
and Emmett helped decorate it with bulbs and tinsel. Gift packages in beautiful red, green, and white wrappings were piled
underneath the tree. On Christmas morning they were unwrapped. Other gifts which Santa had brought had no wrappings. All that
Christmas Day Charlene, Georgianne,
and Emmett played with their brand-new toys and sang Christmas carols while their mother played the piano. And at supper they
prayed to God and thanked Him for giving them a happy Christmas.

Mr. G. came over in the afternoon. He brought small gifts for each of the children, and then recited poems from memory. Most
of them were funny, and the children laughed. Mrs. Torrance asked him to stay for supper. He did, but left immediately afterwards.

“He must be a lonely man,” said Mrs. Torrance. “I wonder why he doesn’t find himself a girl and get married.”

Mr. Torrance chuckled. “Guess he’s just a bachelor at heart.”

“He likes to paint,” said Emmett. “Maybe he thinks that if he gets married he’ll have to work a lot harder and won’t have
time to paint.”

His Mom laughed. “That could be exactly the reason,” she said.

In early January the weather turned warm, and the snow melted. It filled the curbs with gushing water and made Crandall Lake
swell and the ice break into pieces. Once again the yard was dry and clean. Emmett brought out his basketball and began playing
by himself.

One Saturday afternoon, after the Penguins had taken a game from the Polar Bears, Mr. Torrance came out and watched Emmett
dribble on the “court” and
take shots at the basket. Presently Mr. G. came over, too, and Emmett got an idea.

“Will you two play with me?” he asked hopefully. “Will you pretend you’re the defense?”

“Why, of course,” said Mr. G. “Just try to get by us!”

Mr. G. and Mr. Torrance placed themselves between Emmett and the basket. Emmett began to dribble. He started to cut between
his father and Mr. G. His father swiped at the ball. Emmett broke fast around him and went for the backcourt. Mr. G. followed
closely and flung up his arms to stop Emmett from shooting. Emmett leaped, lifted the ball high, and banked it against the
boards. Swish! A basket!

“Beautiful play!” exclaimed Mr. G. “Let’s try that again.”

Emmett caught the ball as it floated down through the net. He dribbled it back to about where the foul line should be. He
repeated the play. Again the layup was perfect.

“Good play!” cried Mr. G. “You hit like a pro.”