you keep screwing up—you’re the one with weed on you next time or you start a fight on the court or you have a string of bad games—a few of them are gonna stop coming after you. They’ll start thinking you’re just one more guy who never lived up to his potential.”
With that, he points to his door. Conversation over. As I leave, though, he gives me one parting shot. “You’re a big boy now, Derrick. That means you have to be on it all the time.”
Damn. Welcome to junior year.
Of course Uncle Kid’s waiting for me outside school. He’s styling, sporting a button-down with a flashy pattern. It’s a little oversized, its short sleeves rippling in the breeze. It hangs down over his freshly purchased khakis. He’s leaning against his new ride—a bright red Chrysler 300—and the sun reflects off his shades. He looks like a million bucks. He can’t be raking in all that much at his bartending gig.
“D-Bow!” he shouts, loud enough for everyone filing out of Marion East to hear. “Let’s take a ride, man.” He gazes up into the cloudless sky. “I know you’re in school, but the weather says it’s still summer.” Like a chauffeur, he opens the passenger door and motions for me to get in.
Any fool would know Kid’s not just here to take his nephew on a quick cruise. Everyone’s got a point to make to me today. But his smile’s infectious, so I hop in. Kid trots around to the other side, climbs in and fires up that engine. He gives it a good rev, then pulls out with some velocity. All along the street, heads turn. He’s not rocking some Benz, but it’s a sweet ride and people notice.
Kid takes a left on 36th and then another on Meridian, taking us south into the city. He smoothes his hand across the dash as delicately as if he were petting a cat. “What do you think?” he asks.
“Not bad,” I say.
“Not bad?” he sneers.
“All right, Kid,” I tell him. “You’re killin’ it in this ride.”
Kid nods, pleased with himself. He lowers his window and loops his arm out along the side. Ever since he started working, he’s been all puffed up—both in terms of ego and body. In less than a year’s time, he’s packed some thickness on his frame. He’s not fat, but to see a belly starting to poke out on a guy once as rail-thin as Kid is a surprise. We give him never-ending grief about it, but he just laughs it off. He’ll just pat his stomach and tell us some extra poundage is proof he’s living right.
We zip downtown. The buildings seem to rise up around us, all those windows reflecting the sun. It makes me wonder sometimes what’s going on inside them—people making high finance deals or having late afternoon drinks or scheming white-collar crimes? I don’t know—the life inside of them is a total mystery to me.
Kid takes us straight down to the city center, circling around the monument, before kicking us a couple blocks east—right smack at the entrance to Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. He points as we roll past. “There’s the dream, D-Bow,” he says. “Suiting up in that Pacer uni someday. Ballin’ out on the biggest stage.”
I nod, pretend like I’m into it. Sure, I have my NBA dreams. And, yeah, I fantasize about getting drafted by the Pacers. But I’ve been on enough of these drives around town with Kid to know that he’s up to something else.
“You think about where you’ll go in between now and then?” he asks.
“College?”
“What else?” he says. While we’re idling at a light, he leans over like he’s letting me in on a secret. “And, man, you know your mom is gonna get all up in that decision. You know she’s not gonna let you go somewhere you can just skip classes for a year before bolting.”
I have to laugh a little at that. It’s as true as anything Kid’s ever said. Then I tell him what I’m thinking—namely, I have no idea about where I want to play in college. Indiana’s pushing hard, and I’m most definitely interested. They’ve got the history, they’ve got Big Ten competition, they’ve got an energetic coach who knows his stuff. It’s where about 80 percent of Indiana high school players dream of going—but I can’t shake the feeling that maybe I should do something different. Like maybe I should see some other part of the country and play where I won’t get compared to every other point guard in Indiana history. I don’t get into all the details with Kid, but he feels me.
“It’s a tough call,” he says. “I remember when I was your age—had everyone begging me to come to their campus. But, man, they all say the same things. Gets to the point where you can’t tell West Lafayette from West Virginia after a while.”
It’s strange to hear Kid talk about this. Now, he’ll talk your ear off about what a baller he was way back when. But he usually doesn’t get into what happened at the end of his high school career. In fact, I only know the basics—run-ins with Coach Bolden, suspensions, more trouble, until all that heavy recruiting he’s talking about dried up.
We turn left on Delaware, but Kid gets into the far right lane and creeps. “Problem is I spent more time there—” he jabs his index finger violently toward my window—“than I did at any college.” I look and see the county courthouse. Damn. He got me talking about hoops and I almost forgot what was going on—it’s another lecture. Maybe Kid senses my disappointment, because he steps on the gas and raises his voice. “Listen, D. Nobody’s ever scored a bucket while they’re sitting in lock-up.”
With Kid, I know I can fight back a little. “Man, everyone’s acting like I killed somebody. It was weed. The stuff’s legal most places. And it wasn’t even my weed. All I got in the end was a traffic citation. People need to chill the hell out.”
Kid nods. He changes lanes and picks up more speed, racing to beat a light. “I know it, D,” he says. “But that’s how it starts, how it was with me.”
“What you mean?” I ask. Everyone still talks around what happened with Kid, always stopping short of coming out with the details.
He holds up his hand to cut me off. “Ah, I’m not getting into all that again. Not twenty years later. All I’m saying is that I might not know as much as I let on about basketball—but I know a thing or two about derailing a career. So listen. You might think Wes is your boy, but you try dragging him along with you, it’s gonna be like trying to dunk with sandbags tied to your ankles. If that kid’s dead weight, you got to cut him loose.”
This—more than the fear the cops tried to put in me, more than my mom’s righteous anger, more than Coach’s warnings—sinks in. I still don’t think I did anything that wrong, but I realize Kid’s got a point. At the same time, I don’t see how I can drop Wes without tearing off a part of myself. We ride for a while in silence, all that static filling the air. Finally, we cross over Michigan and Kid’s had enough serious time. He puts down the windows and starts some beats on his crack sound system. No more old CDs like he used to roll with—now he’s got an iPod in the jack, like he’s finally joined life in the twenty-first century.
The only event that shook things up was when the calendar hit September 9. Open season for recruiting a junior. And, man, the phone flat blew up. I didn’t even think that many people in the world had our number. But it rang off the hook. And then it shifted to my cell phone.
Everyone warned me, but I didn’t
