Playing Days (10 page)

His first shot, from the top of the key, hit the back of the rim hard and bounced over the board. He twitched his head strangely against his neck, as if someone had slapped him. Jurkovich figured him out soon enough. Milo had at least ten years on him, five inches, and a good half step; he was too quick, in fact, and tried to chase his man around every pick. Nürnberg liked to run high screens for Jurkovich with their four and five spots. The first time down, he curled very hard off the shoulder and pulled up suddenly to shoot. Milo ploughed into him from behind, the ball dropped in, and Jurkovich hit the foul-shot, too.

But Milo wouldn't learn: it was a point of pride with him, to fight through screens. The next time down, Jurkovich followed the curl into the lane and put up a little lefty floater that dropped through the net like a tired sigh. Milo pulled Plotzke aside and began to berate him in front of the visiting bench – the season was hardly a minute old.

‘Step out, step out,' he said, ‘you fucking lump.' And then, a curious phrase: ‘I won't take that on myself.' He meant, that second basket.

Plotzke said what he always said, ‘OK, OK,' and turned his high shoulders, lowered his head, and ran
down court. Like a man in a three-legged race, trying to pull his son along.

‘Calm down,' Henkel shouted from the sidelines, and Milo swung suddenly around to find his voice. ‘Look at me. Look at me,' Henkel said. But it was no good; Milo stared, but could take nothing in. I thought it strangely sad that his great desire to win was not helpful to him, that it was getting in his way.

Karl also seemed to feel the strain of an opening night. Nürnberg had decided to play him big, with a thirty-something beer-bellied forward named Hans Muller – an American, as it happens, a Berkeley grad, who had let himself go but knew what to do with his weight. Whenever Karl cut inside, he ran into Hans's belly, which seemed to have a life of its own. Once, trying to establish position on the block, Karl ended up at the three-point line with his hands in the air and an expression of righteous bewilderment on his face.

After a while he gave up pushing and stuck to his jumpshot. Hans had a tangle of blond hair, probably dyed, that fell to his shoulders. He shook it out sometimes like a dog coming out of water, especially when Karl was shooting. I don't know if it put him off or not. His motion, so classic and simple, never strayed from the true, but he couldn't find the range. He missed long, he missed short, and picked up two fouls trying to climb over Hans's back for the rebounds. There was a new drug in his system he had to calculate for. The buzz of the real thing.

Hadnot, meanwhile, kept up in a steady undertone, ‘Now's the time, coach, put me in. Put me in.' But the minutes passed.

Henkel had the air, both worried and detached, of a man conducting an experiment. Or he was just too proud to admit his mistake. Olaf, at least, managed to clean up a few of the rebounds, and Charlie switched on to Jurkovich. The first time Torsten tried to set a high screen, Charlie pretended not to see him and caught him in the balls with a knee. After that, the spaces opened up a little. At the other end, Hans had pushed Karl so far out of the key that the lane was clear, and Charlie squeezed through for a couple layups and short feeds. If it weren't for him, Nürnberg might have buried us by halftime.

As it was, we struggled to stay within ten, and every time Milo missed a shot my palms began to sweat, and I thought, this is it. Me next. The crowd had begun to stomp their feet in a slow swelling rhythm. Hadnot puffed on his hands to keep them warm and clapped flat-fingered in between, as if to say, let's go. And then Henkel gave me a tap on the head, gentle as a benediction, and sent the two of us in.

Milo and Karl came off. I called over to Milo, ‘Who you got? Who you got?' But he didn't answer, and by the time I made it down court, Torsten had snuck along the baseline and knocked down an eighteen-footer. I turned to sprint the other way. Charlie pushed the ball hard and pulled up in the lane for a roller that touched the front
of the rim, the back of the rim, the backboard glass, and the little isthmus of iron between, before dropping. I turned and ran again. At the other end, Torsten set a pick for Jurkovich and I switched out and chased him baseline past three more screens, before he cut back and took a pass at the top of the key. I was screaming at him with my arms raised as he released. Jurkovich missed long for once, and the ball came out to Hadnot at the elbow who whipped a pass to me going the other way – I was almost at half court.

Torsten was the only one back, but I could hardly see by this point. A dark edge, like a frame or a curtain, had begun to encroach on my vision, and I could feel the blood in my ear beating the drum in waves. Three long dribbles took me to the foul line, while Torsten gave ground before me. When he stopped, I shot. It was the only thing I could think of, and I felt a surge of relief as the ball touched rim before caroming strangely and out of bounds. Close enough. Henkel sent Karl in to replace me, and I sat down again and tried to breathe.

‘Calm down,' coach said to me, and I remember thinking he had told Milo the same thing.

It seemed strange that the fluid haphazard passage of events had frozen so quickly into something unchangeable; that the ball would always bounce against the inside of the rim, away and out of bounds, at that peculiar angle. That it would never go in.

My head slowly cleared, and from the vantage of the bench the rest of the game emerged into focus. Ten
men, moving in spurts, in groups of two and three, and dividing a ball amongst themselves.

I decided to follow Hadnot with my eye. He was puffing already. Once, after Charlie lost the ball on the break, I saw him lower his shoulders briefly and dig in before turning the other way and sprinting back. A boyish hesitation: the moment of regret a boy feels, at the effort necessary, before he wills himself to make it. He moved in general both suddenly and sparingly. Setting up on the block, he waited for Olaf to come all the way down to him, before sprinting hard to the wing. Then he stood there a few seconds doing nothing, while Charlie swung the ball around the arc; his hands were down, he might have been waiting for a bus. Olaf drifted up to the elbow and Hadnot cut in to meet him with his forearms crossed. The big man curled off him, and Jurkovich stepped out to slow him down. Bo turned, too, but on the outside pivot, and Jurkovich got stuck on his shoulder. Karl bounced the pass in and Hadnot used the lift of the bounce to send him into his motion. The Russian stood helplessly by as he rose in the air and dropped a soft shot in from fifteen feet.

I said to Milo, to spill off a little of my admiration, ‘He just needs two inches – of space.' I wanted to prove to him that I had noticed, to boast that I had noticed. But Milo had his head bent under a folded towel and didn't answer.

At halftime, we were down by nine. Henkel led us quietly into the locker room; we could smell the showers,
rich with cold steam, in the air. ‘I think you are ashamed of yourselves,' he said.

Nobody answered him. Russell stood in the corner, resting his hand on a box of Gatorades, but he didn't offer them to anyone, and we didn't dare ask him. Even he seemed to have acquired a kind of authority over us: he had a right to his disappointment. After a minute, Henkel brought out a piece of paper from the front pocket of his shirt and unfolded it. ‘Three hundred a month, no apartment. A car. Five hundred a month, no apartment or car. Eight hundred, with accommodation.' He looked at us. ‘I think you know how much you get paid,' he said. ‘Should I read that out, too?'

Our silence, as he no doubt intended, seemed an acknowledgment of guilt. So he went on. ‘Nürnberg have two full-timers. Ok, they make a little money. Shall I tell you what Jurkovich gets paid?' He brought out another piece of paper and unfolded it. ‘How many points he make? Twenty-two. How many threes he make?' etc. There was more of this sort of talk. Henkel, in his indignation, tended to rely on his bluntest ironies, his simplest idioms. ‘I think they think they get good money's worth.' He wasn't a foolish man, and at other times managed a few gentle pokes at the expense of his profession, but bad play and the prospect of losing always brought out in him the soapbox moralist.

In response, I hung my head and let the appearance of shame cover up what I felt. A little embarrassment. A little anger. Public solemnity, like terrible weather, also
provokes in me a quiet good humor. I hang my head to avoid catching someone's eye – Olaf's, Hadnot's. There's an ugly small smile my face sometimes breaks out in, which I don't like myself and which is partly shaped by the attempt to suppress it. Tight in the cheeks; thin in the lips. Henkel's locker-room speeches often brought it out.

Then I heard him again because he mentioned my name. ‘I don't know where Ben thinks he is – what he do out there. Maybe I ask him. Back at home, I think, in his daddy's big driveway, playing games.'

Hadnot said, ‘If you want to stop dicking around, why don't you put me in.'

Henkel stared at him.

‘If you want to stop playing games, sit Milo on the fucking bench and put me in?'

Hadnot spent the first five minutes of the second half beside me on the bench, and then Henkel did what he was told. He pulled Milo and put Hadnot in.

The truth is, Milo had been playing better. He broke up a long pass, even if he knocked it out of bounds; drove and fed Karl for a baseline jumper; hauled in a rebound over Hans Muller's shoulder. But his eye was still off. He tried a straight-up three and sent it long. When Charlie set him up with a little fifteen-footer on the break, he thought about it long enough for Jurkovich to make
his way back to him. Then he head-faked and started to drive, got nowhere and pulled it back out again, pounding the ball hard flat-handed and shouting ‘Ruhe, Ruhe,' to no one in particular. Calm, calm. When he picked up his dribble, Charlie had to fight his way round the arc for a dump off. Milo just stood there; he couldn't find his place in the offense, until Olaf called down to him from the block, ‘Motion, motion!'

Even so, he was angry when coach took him out and kicked at something underneath the bench, which turned out to be a water bottle. It leaked and spread slowly under our sneakers until Milo told Darmstadt to clean it up. A sign that he was feeling better.

I couldn't understand why Henkel had started him. There was no question: Hadnot belonged altogether to a different class. Sometimes coaches like to keep a sharpshooter back, they like to bring him on in the middle of the game, to change the flow. Mostly young guys, still trying to prove themselves, or veterans, without the legs for forty minutes. Maybe that's it: Henkel was trying to let Hadnot play his way back into shape. But a good coach has that conversation with his player. Henkel was a good coach, but Bo didn't act like a man who'd been talked to. To see Jurkovich running the show at the other end must have been painful. Hadnot had a good five years on him and would have considered himself a more complete player. A better shooter, too; Jurkovich ran hot and cold. There was a kink in his motion that wanted
a certain amount of management: he pushed his elbow outside-in on the release. Hadnot was pure. Coach must have had some other reason for benching him, and as I sat there watching I wondered what it could be.

Charlie had complained that Hadnot was selfish. It's also true that the younger players deferred to him. Karl began to drift. Muller had been pushing him off the block all day, and when Hadnot came on, he gave up the baseline, too: it's where Bo liked to work. It turned out that Karl had the makings of a point man in him – he was a wonderful feeder of the post. Muller was too short to block his view of the lane and too slow to pressure him on the ball. Hadnot and Olaf exploited the foul line and that opened up Plotzke on the block, when the help came out. Charlie took over on the wing. He was never a very reliable shooter, but it stopped him from pounding the ball, and with the burden of the offense lifted from him, he could penetrate at will.

Karl ran the offense, but Hadnot put everyone in his place. We ran him through so many screens that the defense began to cluster off the ball. Even Olaf found room for a little drive and dish. Without Charlie running the show, the whole game slowed down, which suited Hadnot, too – he was beginning to tug at his shorts. The only guy who didn't score was Karl.

With six minutes left, coach gave Hadnot a breather, and I didn't have time to break out in sweat when he sent me in. Muller was on the line and we were down by three. He hit one of two, then Charlie pushed the ball on the
break and set up Karl for a running one-hander crossing into the lane. First points he scored all half. Muller and Olaf traded baskets inside, then Torsten stepped back for a ten-footer from the baseline and I just got a finger to it. It went in anyway. Charlie brought the ball up slowly and raised a right fist as he crossed half-court. The play called for the wings to come hard off the block for the pass, but Torsten was cheating on my outside hand and I couldn't get free. Twice we had to reset.

‘Be there! Be there!' I heard someone shout.

The third time, I cut backdoor and Charlie found me with the bounce pass. Muller came slow on the rotation and in a sudden fever of blood I rose among the crowding arms and muscled the ball in: my palm slapped glass on the way down. A horn sounded and we made our way back to the bench. I couldn't hear a thing, and after the time-out Milo had to pull at my jersey to keep me from wandering on court again. Hadnot had replaced me. There were three minutes left and we were down by two.

By this stage the hundred-odd people in the stands were all standing up. It wasn't a big place, nothing like a real stadium, and the warmth of their bodies had begun to make itself felt in the atmosphere. Sounds thickened in it; lights glared. Jurkovich felt the heat, too. The last few shots he made came flat off the palm. They scooped out the net on their way down, and you figured, once he missed, he might keep missing. Muller scored on a put-back, then Charlie drove hard with a low shoulder, spun off it and laid the ball left-handed in. Karl blocked
Torsten on a switch, and the ball fell to Charlie who streaked the other way with Hadnot and Olaf behind him. Only Torsten was back and Charlie charged him, then dumped the ball back to Hadnot at twenty feet. It was like watching a man pick his shirt off a washing line: there didn't seem any question he could miss.