Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

As we scrimmaged, he sat behind the bench in dark glasses and sipped from a Thermos. Inside was his homemade hangover remedy, a slurry of green tea, banana, raw eggs, and crushed vitamin B tablets.

Three seats away, a slim woman in tan shorts and a yellow tank top-draped well-muscled legs over a seat back and sipped coffee from a paper cup. Beside her, a little boy, maybe three years old, played a video game on a tablet. His mom reminded me a little of Yolanda. During a break in the action, I couldn’t help but stare.

Jefferson, the former Hope High standout, gave me a nudge.

“Don’t get your hopes up, grandpa. She’s taken.”

“You sacrificed a lot for them, Keenan.”

“They’re worth it, man,” he said. “You got no idea how lucky I am.”

Which made me like him a little more.

This morning, the coaches had put Jefferson and Benton, the flashy point guard, on the same team. Separately, each had more talent than the rest of us. Together, they were better than all the rest of us combined. Jefferson was in constant motion without the ball. Benton drove and dished. My team, which included Sears and Krueger, never had a chance.

Halfway through the game, we were down by eighteen. Sears, who’d drawn the assignment to cover Benton, started clutching and grabbing, giving the point guard the opportunity to show off his free-throw shooting. Krueger, assigned to guard Jefferson, seemed to have given up, doing little more than watching as the kid drilled long jumpers and blew by him to sky toward the rim. Each time Jefferson threw down a thunderous dunk, his wife let out a lonely cheer.

When the clutching and grabbing didn’t work, Sears got rougher with Benton, shooting elbows into the point guard’s ribs. I expected a fistfight as soon as Benton retaliated.

Instead it was Krueger who suddenly lost it, grabbing Jefferson by both shoulders and hurling him to the floor. The kid bounced up and they squared off, Krueger throwing a wild left that whizzed past Jefferson’s ear. I jumped in, planted the flat of my hand against Krueger’s chest, and shoved him backward. He knocked my hand away, tossed me aside as if I were an annoying child, and charged Jefferson.

Suddenly Joseph materialized between them. Krueger slammed into him and bounced off.

“You’re gonna have to go through me,” Joseph said.

“Let him come,” Jefferson shouted. “I ain’t scared of that bitch.”

Joseph ignored him and kept his eyes on Krueger.

My friend was a big guy by normal standards, but Krueger had him by five inches. The power forward smirked and threw a roundhouse left. The former bouncer blocked it with his right, pounded Krueger’s midsection with a left hook, and finished him with a right cross to the jaw. Krueger folded like a bad poker hand and crumpled to the hardwood.

It took the coaches twenty seconds to revive him. When he came to, they grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him to his feet.

“You’re done for today,” Coach Martin said. “Go take a shower and head on home.”

When the excitement was over, Martin asked me to work on jump shooting with Benton and Jefferson while he ran the remaining seven players through some drills at the other end of the court. I didn’t ask, but I figured Martin saw things the way I did-that Benton and Jefferson were the real deal and that the rest of us were along for the ride.

I fetched a spare hoop I’d found in the locker room, laid it upside down on the sideline, and handed each player a basketball.

“Set them down inside the rim,” I said.

So they did. Both balls both fit snugly inside the iron.

“What does this tell you?” I asked.

“That a shot doesn’t have to be perfect to go in,” Benton said.

“That’s right,” I said. “A regulation basketball is a hair over nine inches in diameter, and the hoop is twice that size. That means you’ve got plenty of room for error. I like to keep that in mind. It gives me confidence. Helps me stay relaxed.”

Then I had them pick up the balls and get on their knees. I stood four feet in front of them and raised the rim over my head.

“If you toss the ball straight up at the hoop, what’s going to happen?” I asked.

“Come on, man,” Jefferson said. “You think we’re eight years old or somethin’. We know what’s gonna happen.”

“So tell me.”

“It’s going to hit the front rim and bounce the fuck off,” Jefferson said.

“Right,” I said, “so why do you do that?”

“I do?”

“Not exactly,” I said, “but your arc is inconsistent. Sometimes you don’t get enough air under the ball. When your arc is shallow, the rim looks like a narrow oval from the ball’s point of view. This makes the target smaller, increasing the likelihood that your shot will clang off the rim and bounce out. But when the arc is right, the ball rises above the rim and comes almost straight down, doubling or tripling the odds that the shot will go in.”

“We know this shit, grandpa,” Benton said.

“Sure,” I said. “Both of you do. But knowing and doing aren’t the same thing.”

“Is my arc inconsistent, too?” Benton asked.

“No,” I said. “You’ve got that part down. Your problem is your release.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s wrong with it?”

“Sometimes your right elbow flies out,” I said. “You need to practice keeping it tucked close to your head. And remember not to rush your shot. Always take a fraction of a second to get both feet squared to the basket.”

“When the defense is all over me, I don’t have time for that.”

“That’s what passes are for,” I said.

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“Now just sit there for a few minutes and watch my form,” I said.

I dragged two carts full of basketballs over and started firing them up from twenty-five feet. Fourteen swished through the strings. Three others hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the hoop.

“Why did the shots that hit the rim go in?” I asked them.

“Because you put a lot of rotation on the ball,” Jefferson said.

“Do we need to work on that, too?” Benton asked.

“It’s not a big issue for either of you,” I said, “but you could both be a bit more consistent.”

Together, we collected the loose balls and returned them to the carts.

“Okay,” I said. “Start shooting. And Benton?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t rush, okay?”

Forty minutes later, we were still at it.

“How long are we going to do this?” Jefferson asked.

“Until Coach tells us to stop,” I said. “You should both take a hundred jumpers every day. Pay attention to your form on every shot, and eventually muscle memory will take over. Then you won’t have to think about arc or spin or whether you’re square to the basket anymore.”

“A hundred shots every day?”

“Ray Allen’s the best jump shooter in NBA history, guys, and he still does that.”

“If we do, think we’ll get as good as Allen?” Benton asked.

“Don’t talk crazy,” I said.

“As good as you, then?” Jefferson said.

“Of course not,” I said, and they both laughed. “As far as I can tell, the jump shot is the only flaw in your games. Work on that, and maybe, just maybe, you won’t have to sling burgers anymore.”

After I showered and dressed, I called Yolanda from the locker room.

“How about dinner tonight?” I asked. “I’ve got something to celebrate.”

“Don’t tell me you made the team!”

“Not that.”

“What, then?”

“The story you said I should write? It’s leading the Sunday paper tomorrow.”

“Great. Hope I’m right about it getting the Providence cops to ease up on you.”