True Legend Read Online Free PDF Page A

already had a contract, even if nothing was written down on paper.

FIVE
    P ractice was held in the late afternoon, even during Christmas break.
    Their coach, Billy DiGregorio, was big on being a creature of habit, even when he didn’t really need to be. It was just another way for him to be the boss. In front of the other players, anyway.
    He and Drew both knew it was different between them. They were more like partners.
    So of course Coach ran the practice schedule for the holidays past Drew, the way he did pretty much everything else having to do with the Oakley Wolves.
    Billy DiGregorio was a no-nonsense guy. Hundred percent. He had been a tough little point guard at Santa Clara in his day, way before Steve Nash went to Santa Clara. And he knew more about basketball than a lot of guys Drew had played for—most of the guys he’d played for, to be honest—but even with that, he knew the team ran through Drew, not him.
    Nobody would say it, there was no point, but they both knew Drew was as much the coach of the Wolves as Billy DiGregorio was.
    â€œYou care whether or not we stay on our normal schedule over break?” Coach said to Drew the day before classes let out.
    Drew had grinned. “Not nearly as much as you would if we started changing things all around, Coach. I know how you lose your mind when things get moved out of their proper place.”
    â€œThe only days we’ll have off will be Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day.”
    â€œWe can go on those days, too,” Drew had said to him. “There’s no holidays with me, not from basketball.”
    â€œBut you still remember what your mom and I tell you,” Coach DiGregorio said. “There has to be more to your life than putting a ball through a hoop.”
    â€œWhatever you say, Coach.”
    The truth was, Drew did just enough to get by in school, keep his grades respectable. Keep up appearances. His mom would push him to do better when he’d start to slip in something, the way he was with English right now, and then he’d have to step on it.
    He’d done well enough on his PSATs to know he’d be able to handle the real SATs fine when the time came. And Drew knew something else: there wasn’t a college he was interested in that was going to care too much what kind of SAT scores he had, or ACT scores, what grade point average he ended up with before he left Oakley.
    They just wanted Drew Robinson to come to their school for a year and fill out a stat sheet, not the college application form known as the “Common App.”
    Drew remembered a story he’d heard from one of his AAU coaches back in New York, about an old-time hooper named David (Big Daddy D) Lattin. Lattin had finally ended up at Texas Western, played on the NCAA champion team they did the movie
Glory Road
about, the mostly all-black team that beat all-white Kentucky in what some people said was the most important college basketball game ever played.
    But before Big Daddy D ended up in El Paso, at the school called UTEP now, he was recruited by some schools up north. One day he was sitting with the athletic director at Boston College.
    And the AD guy finally said to him, “What about the boards?”
    Meaning college boards.
    Big Daddy D, according to the story, smiled wide and said, “I sweep ’em clean at both ends!”
    Big Daddy D, even fifty years ago, wasn’t looking for a college education, he was just stopping at college on his way to the pros. Same as Drew, even though he would never say that to his mother, knowing she would give him a gentle whack to the back of his head.
    Drew’s body was still in high school, classrooms and gyms. His mind? Truth be told, it was already in the NBA, no matter how much Darlene Robinson pushed back on him about hitting the books, the value of an education. Same as his adviser at school, Mr. Shockey, did.
    Drew would joke sometimes