Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

They barely even mentioned the fact that we’d lost. I guess the New York press considered that pretty much a foregone conclusion.

I flipped to MTV just in time to catch Vanilla Dunk’s new video: “(Dunkin’) In Yo Face.”

Elwood showed up just in time for the second game. I never did find out where he spent that night. For a minute I was afraid he was stoned on something — I’d seen him stoned, and gotten stoned with him, but never before a game — because he looked too happy, too loose. I even wondered for a second if he somehow thought we’d won last night.

There wasn’t time to confer. He flipped a thumbs-up signal to Coach Wilder, and called Early over to him. The coach just shook his head. A minute later the refs started the game.

I put my head down and vowed to get physical with Flynnan. I wanted rebounds, I wanted blocked shots, I wanted steals. I wanted Elwood not to hate me, primarily. He still wasn’t meeting my eye.

Otis missed a shot and Elwood came down with the rebound, and passed it to Early with nearly the same motion. Early ducked underneath Flynnan and jumped up to the height of the basket. Slam.

The Knicks came upcourt and put the ball in Dunk’s hands. Elwood and I swarmed him. He faked a move, pivoted, then faked a pass, which shook Elwood for half a second. Half a second was all Dunk needed: he went up.

But I got my hand around the ball, and stuffed his shot backwards, out of his hands. It bounced upcourt, to Early, who was alone.

Slam.

The Knicks came back up, and McFront hit from outside. We took it back up and this time Elwood faked to Early and twisted inside himself for a pretty backwards layup. 6–2, Visitors.

Otis brought it up for the Knicks, and flipped it to Flynnan, inside. I went up and matched his jump, forced him to dump it off or be stuffed. He looked for help, didn’t find any, and Elwood took the ball away from him. Early was waiting upcourt, like a puppy dog. 8–2.

So it went for the first half. We kept Dunk frustrated with our hectoring defense, and I took my game straight to Flynnan, however bruising. McFront’s hand wasn’t as hot as the night before. Elwood was hyperkinetic on defense.

And on offense, we were making Early look like the star the fans back in Florida had always hoped he would be. All he had was a handful of one-on-one moves, but if you kept him from having to think about anything but the basket, he was sensational.

We ended the half with a 22-point lead. The Knicks nibbled away in the second half, Otis shining like the Otis of old for a few minutes, but it was our night. We dug in on defense and finished fourteen points up. The crowd drained out of the Garden in silence. We were taking the series back to Florida tied at a game apiece. There were two games on our homecourt, then back to New York.

Unless somebody won two in a row.

For the third game the Knicks just looked tired. They weren’t adjusting to our defensive pressure. Vanilla Dunk was wearing his cynical sneer, but you could see it drove him crazy not to be able to cut loose. The Miami crowd gave Flynnan, their ex-hero, a hard time, and he responded by getting sheepish — for the first time I felt I could actually push him around a little.

This one was Early’s game. He played to the crowd, and the slams just kept getting showier. Elwood poured in a few himself, but Early was the star that night. We led all the way, and the game was over by the third quarter. Both teams pulled their regulars and started thinking about the next game.

Elwood was glowing on the bench. We all were. We had a chance to take it from them. They had to beat us tomorrow to even stay alive. This was supposed to be their year of destiny, the Vanilla Dunk Victory Tour, and we had them down 2–1. The wild card team.

Flynnan woke up. Dunk was still moribund, but Flynnan woke up; I knew because he started punishing me. I was taking down some rebounds, but I was paying in flesh. I looked for help, but who was going to help me? That’s the horror of the center: there’s just two of you seven-foot monsters out there, and you’re enemies. If the other guy’s a little bigger and meaner, who’s going to tell him to leave you alone? Some shrimpy 6'5" guard? The Tokyo army? The ref? Your mother?

This one wasn’t a game. It was a trench battle. Elwood and I were working together, stripping balls away, bottling up the middle, but there was no communication between us. Just sweat and grunts. We had to keep our eyes peeled or we’d be flattened. McFront and Dunk were both fighting to open the lanes, throwing elbows, double-faking to make sure we got our faces in the way. Where were the whistles? I’m sure the Knicks were asking the same question at their end. The refs were letting us duke it out.

It was Knicks 34, Heat 30 late in the second quarter: a defensive struggle. We’d forced the Knicks into our game, and they were playing it. Every time Early touched the ball he was mobbed. He’d dump it back out and our guards would chuck it up from the outside and hope for the best. Most of our points belonged to Elwood, who was scoring by grabbing rebounds and muscling back up for the layup.

We were holding on until two minutes before the half, when Dunk broke loose for a couple in a row, and we went to the lockers down eight points.

Elwood stood to one side, a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t playing coach anymore; he was too far inside himself. He and Dunk had been in each other’s faces every minute of the first half, and I could feel the hate burning off Elwood’s skin, like gasoline vapor. I could almost imagine that Elwood would rather lose this one and take it back to New York, just to maximize his crazed masochistic war with Dunk, just to push it to the very edge.

I personally had a strong preference for ending it here.

Coach Wilder, seeing that Elwood wasn’t receiving, looked over at me. I shrugged. The rest of the team milled nervously, waiting for someone to break the silence.

“Okay boys,” said Coach Wilder courageously. “Let this get away and it’s just another tied series going back to New York. That’s handing it to them.”

No one spoke. Elwood’s foot was tapping out accompaniment to some internal rhythm.

“You’re only eight points back,” said the coach. “Just keep tying them up on defense. They’ll turn it over when they get tired.”

With his voice trailing away, he sounded like he didn’t believe himself. I felt like patting him on the head and sending him to the showers. The fact was it was Elwood’s team now, and Elwood didn’t give halftime pep talks. We would all have to feed off his energy on the floor; it would happen there or it wouldn’t happen at all.

We drifted apart, and what seemed like seconds later we were back on the court. The ball was ours; Elwood hit from midway out and we fell back on defense. We stuck to our one plan, of course: I caged Vanilla Dunk with my long arms, and Elwood harassed the ball from underneath. This time the gamble worked, and we forced a bad pass, which one of our guards picked up. He found Early and Early found the net. We’d closed the gap to four points.

And that’s where it stayed. Everyone gritted their teeth and went back to the trenches; even Vanilla Dunk and Early were playing defense. Both sides would have fouled out if the refs hadn’t been squelching the whistle. We forced turnovers, then turned it over ourselves, rolled our eyes, and fell back for defense again. Elwood was a maniac on rebounds, but he’d pass it up to Early and Early would disappear in a cloud of Knick uniforms. Otis stripped the ball from him with two seconds left in the third quarter and chucked up an improbable three-point shot from midcourt which only hit net, putting them up seven points as the buzzer for the fourth sounded.