Lupica explores rivalry in his new kids’ book

It was the second Saturday after school had let out. The breakfast plates and bowls had been cleared by the men in the family, a Saturday rule. Danny and his dad were outside now, on the small court at the end of the driveway at 422 Earl Avenue, Richie feeding him the ball as Danny moved around on the outside and shot what passed for his jump shot.

Every time Danny put the ball on his shoulder and launched it the way he had when he was even littler than now, when it was the only way for him to get the ball to the hoop, Richie would yell “stop!” and make him shoot with the proper motion from the same spot, hands in front of him.

“This is the perfect time for you to go to a big-time camp,” Richie said. “We’ve gone over this.”
Danny, quoting his dad, said, “You gotta keep taking it to the next level, or you never leave the one you’re at.”

“I’m not sure that’s the way your mom would put it in a sentence,” Richie said. “But you know it’s true, guy.”

“I didn’t do so hot at the level I was just at,” Danny said. “And we weren’t even playing all the best schools around here.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Richie said, then threw him a perfect bounce pass. Danny caught it, did the little step-back move he’d been using since he first started playing, the one that created the space he needed between him and taller defenders, the one that kept him from getting a mouthful of rubber every time he tried to get a shot airborne.

This one he swished, then he kept his right hand in the air, holding the pose.

“In the driveway you can show off,” his dad said. “Never on the court.”

“Gee, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”

“Let’s take a break for a second,” Richie said.

All he’d been doing was standing there feeding the ball, yet he looked more tired than Danny. His dad never mentioned it, but he couldn’t stand for long periods of time anymore. He’d had two real bad car accidents in his life – the first one ending his NBA career, the second one on an icy road during the travel season last year – and joked that his body now had more spare parts in it than some old pickup truck built from scratch at the junkyard.

His knees were completely shot, he said, swelling up with new sprains all the time. Ali had made him go get an X-ray the day before, wanting to see if there was something more serious going on.

Now his dad groaned and rubbed the side of his right knee and said, “X-ray perfect, knee horrible.”

The two of them sat down on the folding chairs they kept on the side of the court, like it was the Walkers’ team bench, for one coach and one player.

“Dave DeBusschere told me something once that explains why you need to go to this camp better than I ever could,” Richie said. “You know who he was, right?”

“Old Knick,” Danny said. “He played on that Knicks team you said played ball as right as any team ever.”

“Smartest team ever, even though they’re like ancient history now,” he said. “Clyde Frazier, Earl (the Pearl) Monroe, Willis Reed, Senator Bill Bradley. They were smarter even than Bird’s Celtics or Magic’s Lakers. Best passing team ever. All the stuff we think is cool about basketball.”

“Soooooo cool,” Danny said.

“Anyway, he told me something before a game at Madison Square Garden one night I never forgot. He was running the Knicks then. He said that we all start out just wanting to be the best kid on our block, and some of us get to be that. But as soon as we do, almost like the minute we do, you know what happens, right?”

Somehow Danny just knew. “You find out about a kid on the next block.”

He and his dad bumped fists.

“So you find out how you can handle yourself against him. Prove to yourself you can play with him. Only, as soon as you do that, you hear about this kid on the other side of town. Then in the next town, somebody hears about you and thinks he can absolutely kick your butt. Now you gotta go play him. Because you just gotta know.”

“It sounds like it never ends.”

Richie Walker smiled, put his arm around his son.

“Not if you’re good enough, it doesn’t,” he said.

“The first day up there,” Danny said, “they’re gonna think I’m ten.”

“Only until you start dribbling that ball.”

His dad left, needing a rest now. Danny stayed out there. It didn’t matter where he was or who he was playing with, he was always the last one on the court.

Out there alone, as he had been about a thousand other times in his life. Not shooting now, just keeping the ball on a low dribble, right hand, left hand, through his legs, behind his back, never looking at it, doing his double-crossover, imagining himself as some kind of basketball wizard.

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