end of Thursday I had decided I'd come back for Friday only because quitting after one day was worse than quitting after two.
Friday was scrimmage. That was the day it happened.
Dombrowski put five of the tryout kids against five of the varsity, which wasn't fair and wasn't meant to be, and he rotated us in and out every four minutes by his stopwatch. He wanted to see who would quit. I went in with a big slow senior named Frank Ianello and three juniors I knew only by sight, against Kevin Shea, Brent, a tall quiet center named Leon Pratt, and two forwards whose names I'll leave out because they don't come into this. On the first trip down Kevin Shea lost Frank on a crossover and scored. On the second trip Brent posted up a junior named Mike Durso and scored over him like Mike was a lawn ornament. On the third trip, Frank took a terrible shot from the corner, and I heard it before it hit.
It's hard to describe what a rim sounds like after four years of milk crate. A real rim is so honest. The ball hit the front of it with a flat clunk, high on the iron, slightly to the right of center, and I knew in my bones it was coming long and left, off the glass and down. I was already moving. Leon Pratt, who was six-foot-six and had position, went straight up for where the ball had been. Brent went up where Leon went. And I went to the low block on the weak side and turned and put my back into the space where nobody was and held up my hands.
The ball came off the glass and fell into them like a letter through a slot.
The gym went quiet for a second, the way a room goes quiet when a dish breaks. Then I outletted it to Mike Durso, who blew the layup, but that wasn't the point. On the way back down the court Leon Pratt looked at me sideways, curious, the way you'd look at a dog that just opened a door.
It happened again two trips later. Kevin Shea shot a pull-up jumper that clipped the back rim and took a tall bounce, and everybody looked up, and I didn't look up. I listened, and then I went to the free throw line and