Summer Ball by Mike Lupica Page A

to a defensive clinic, even to one for full-court presses, both zone and man-to-man, with a different college coach handling each station. Some of the names Danny knew just from following college hoops; some he didn’t, because not all of them were from big schools.
    The first clinic was at eight in the morning, and each one lasted an hour. At noon they all dragged themselves to the mess hall for lunch.
    Will said to his buds, “If the afternoon is like the morning, I’m busting out of here like it’s Prison Break .”
    â€œC’mon,” Danny said, “it’s not so bad. It’s still basketball.”
    Ty, who could go all day the way Danny could, said to Danny, “Tell me you’re not whipped already, and that was only the morning session.”
    Danny grinned. “You’re right. I want my mommy.”
    Jeff LeBow came into the mess hall then with his trusty bull-horn and said they were getting two hours at lunch today instead of the usual one, so they could all be assigned to teams. Mr. LeBow said they’d been evaluated off the morning workouts, and now the coaches and counselors were going to basically choose up sides, trying to make them as fair as possible in terms of size, position, talent.
    â€œThe elevens and twelves are in one league, the Final Four league,” Mr. LeBow said. “Thirteens through fifteens are the NBA, two divisions, Eastern and Western. In that one, we want at least three boys from each age group on each team. Once the games start at the end of this week, if we see we’ve made one team too strong or too weak, we’ll do a little horse trading. But the group you get with today, you can pretty much expect it to be the group you’re going to be with for the month.”
    It was a different place today, Danny had to admit. Everybody in charge moved a lot faster than they had on Saturday and Sunday.
    All ball, all the time.
    In that way, Right Way was his kind of place.
    He felt that way until their long lunch break was over, anyway. Then they all went to the big message board where the teams were posted and found out that he and Will and Tarik were on the same team with Rasheed Hill.
    Ty had been assigned to a different team, one that had two Boston kids, Jack Arnold and Chris Lambert, on it, but Ty didn’t care. As long as there was a game being played and he was in it, he was cool.
    He went off to Court 4. Danny and Will and Tarik headed off in the opposite direction, toward Court 2, the one behind Gampel, closest to the lake.
    When they got down there and met their coach, the day only got worse.
    Â 
    Coach Ed Powers, a tall, thin man whose gray hair matched the color of his face, said that if anybody didn’t know who he was, he’d been the head basketball coach at Providence College for thirty-five years before the good fathers there—the way he said it didn’t make it sound as if he thought the fathers were all that good—had decided it was time for him to retire and turn his job over to a younger man.
    Even in the heat, Danny saw, Coach Powers wore long pants and had his blue Right Way shirt buttoned to the top button.
    He spoke in a quiet voice, but somehow his words came out loud anyway, at least to Danny.
    â€œBoys,” Coach Powers said, “prepare yourselves over the next few weeks to unlearn everything you think you’ve learned watching what I like to think of as TV basketball. Because if you don’t unlearn that junk, you’re going to spend most of your time with me running laps.”
    He stopped now, smiled the kind of smile you got from teachers sometimes right before they piled on the homework and said, “With me so far?”
    Will whispered, “No, Coach, you’re going way too fast for us.”
    Danny couldn’t help himself and laughed out loud.
    â€œYou think something is funny, son?” Coach Powers said.
    To Danny.
    The players were sitting to the side