Read Online True Legend by Mike Lupica - Free Book Online

in a tone Drew knew by now, one with some teeth to it.
    He had his hands on Drew’s shoulders, and anybody watching the two of them would have thought he was giving him some kind of halftime pep talk.
    â€œTrying,” Drew said, wondering where this was going. He was against a wall, could see the rest of his teammates filing past him toward the locker room.
    â€œTry harder,” Mr. Gilbert said. “Everybody’s supposed to be talking about you tonight, and all they’re talking about is the other kid. The media guys are, the college scouts are. Our own
fans
are. You’re supposed to be carrying your team, not your buddy.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Drew said. “We’ll win.”
    â€œWin what?” Mr. Gilbert said. “A game?”
    Then he turned and walked back into the gym that he’d built.

NINE
    T hey decided to go man-to-man defense to start the second half, that it was the only way to slow down King Gadsen. They needed to get a body on him, or he might end up going for fifty tonight.
    In the past, Lee would take the other team’s big scorer, even if he was a point guard, because Coach D didn’t want Drew to gas himself out playing defense. But tonight was different, and they all knew it, so Drew took the pressure off Coach before he ever had to make a call.
    â€œI’ll take him,” Drew said, everybody in the room knowing who he meant. “He’s still gonna get his, but I’ll shut him down enough for us to win the game.”
    Under his breath he said, “And I’m gonna start getting mine.”
    Coach D gave him a look. “Hey,” he said, “we’re winning the game, right?”
    â€œRight,” Drew said.
    But Mr. Gilbert’s words were still in his head, like winning the game wasn’t going to be enough tonight, that even with Oakley up those three points, he was losing the game within the game he was playing against Gadsen.
    And Drew, despite his tough talk about guarding King in the huddle, wasn’t so sure he could shut him down. He knew that sometimes the hardest thing in sports was stopping somebody great when he was being great. In King’s case, that meant
shooting
great. He didn’t have nearly the all-around game that Drew did, the feel for the game, the vision or the passing or any of the rest of it.
    But he could, in the words of Dick Vitale, shoot the rock.
    He could fill it up.
    â€œYeah,” Drew said again. “I got this.”
    Mr. Gilbert’s words weren’t just inside his head. They were stinging him. Maybe that was why he’d said he’d take King. People had come to see him versus King Gadsen tonight. Might as well give them what they wanted.
    Park got the ball to start the second half. When King saw Drew picking him up in the backcourt, he barked out a laugh. The hot dog just sounding like a dog now.
    â€œI forget,” he said. “Is your real nickname True or False?”
    Drew didn’t shut him down from there. But he slowed him just enough. By the time there were four minutes left, the game was tied at 70, and Drew saw from the stats on the scoreboard that King had thirty-nine points for the game. But the ones he’d gotten in the second half, Drew had made him work for each one.
    Lee, who’d stayed hot, had thirty.
    Drew had scratched his way to twenty-two, but knew his shooting was way under fifty percent, which was never him.
    Neither team had led by more than three points the whole second half. It didn’t seem possible to Drew, but the noise inside the gym seemed to keep building, to the point where Drew imagined the walls and the roof just blowing away.
    And no matter how much noise there was, King Gadsen kept talking, like he was broadcasting the game and playing it at the same time.
    Drew had done his best to ignore him, not let him get inside his head. Or get mad. Or get more frustrated than he already was with his poor shooting.