The Final Game

“You know what? I quit,” I said.

It was Game 6 of the NBA Finals, and the ball was mine. I took off like a rocket on the inbound pass and had the jump before the defense could react. The announcer said, “Knicks answer! Oh me, oh my! And we’re all tied up. Thunder MVP, J.R. Hart with the ball… and he’s making a move.” As I crossed half court, every eye in the stadium locked on me.

“Can the Thunder take back the lead, folks? If Coach Nysted wants anyone on the fast break, it’s J.R. Hart.”

2:42 on the clock. The crowd was on its feet. This was what everyone came for. I looked at the basket. One defender between me and the goal I’d been chasing since I was six.

I should have been cooking up some trademark celebratory sizzle for the ESPN highlight reel. Instead, I felt like a ghost. I could feel my body losing solid form, moment by moment. Any second the ball would slip through my hand, bounce behind me, and roll out of bounds. The feeling of dread—of being led into a trap I could never escape from—suddenly hit me full force.

Time slowed. The ball hit the floor: bud-bum, bud-dummmm, bud-dummmmmm. The texture of the rubber dragging across my fingertips lagged behind the sound. And in that space between dribbles, the question came that had been out ahead of me my whole life, without my knowing it: Was I a sellout?

We were down 3-2 in the series. I could have charged down the hardwood and faked to the right before pulling up for my trademark two-handed dunk. Smiled for the cameras. Shimmy. Airplane arms. Courtside high fives.

The announcer’s voice came muffled, like it was echoing from underwater, “Two old teammates, now rivals, facing each other in the pivotal seconds of this series.”

We both knew Jackson wasn’t there to stop me. Just to keep the optics clean. The tides would turn. We’d get the foul. Get the ball. Run the clock. Game 7.

No one else would know.

No one but me.

I dropped the ball and walked off the court.

The ref was blowing his whistle so hard the bulging veins in his neck were ready to rupture. “Let’s see if you can pull that shit while chewing on three free throws for a technical,” I thought. The crowd was screaming like a pack of crazed hyenas. The coaches were out on the court waving their arms. Chaos.

I said nothing.

And in all the noise, somehow, I became invisible—a literal ghost.

I just walked through the tunnel into the locker room, untied my Size 13 Nike Protos and placed them on the shelf. Then I walked out of the stadium for the final time. No one stopped me. No one even looked up.

Was I even still there?

I’d always thought I’d be walking out to a ceremony with my number being retired, my jersey hung up high in the rafters, with the spotlights illuminating it in glory, and the announcer blaring, “And J.R. Hart has left the building!!!” All to a stadium full of adoring fans applauding and giving me a standing ovation.

But that wasn’t going to be my story.

***

In the days that followed, I was fired, blackballed, and roasted by every sports commentator alive. My agent, Bob Mackler, managed to secure an $11 million buyout for my guaranteed $54 million contract—but only if I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

I told Bob no. I meant it.

My ex and I still facetimed while I killed time skipping rocks across the lake. She was in tears when I told her that I wasn’t willing to compromise. “You’re not going to get a dollar if you keep this up.”

She was right.

Some things are more important than money. Maybe this was one of them.

As the madness spiraled into hysteria, I was off-grid living in an A-frame log cabin by a lake at the Mohican Adventure Campground in Loudonville, Ohio. At $250 a night, these were the cheapest accommodations I’d had in years.

They had a basketball court, fishing, hiking—everything I needed to forget.

It wasn’t the Four Seasons, but it sure had a better view.

Every night I hiked up a ridge, pitched a tent, made a fire, roasted s’mores, and stared at the stars until just before dawn.

***

I could remember it like it was yesterday.

Coach Kessler had us running three-man weave drills full court. He loved those three-man weave drills. Loved to run us on zig zags and make us pass. All day long.

Then, with his classic deadpan bulldog face, he blew his whistle, signaling a break, and waved me over. Despite being 5’6”, Coach was a hell of a baller, and more than that, he was imposing. There wasn’t one of us that wasn’t terrified of him and what would happen if he wasn’t pleased. But the words he said that day stuck with me ever since.

“J.R., listen, I know you had your heart set on being a Wildcat.”

“And coach?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking you’d look good in blue and orange. What do you think about being a Florida Gator?”

“Is this a joke, coach?”

“I just got a call from Jim McElwaine. He’s looking at you as his starting shooting guard next season.”

A mile wide grin shot across my face.

I’d done it.

It was just one step from here to the pros.

Coach Kessler grabbed me by the shoulder after he saw how hard I kept smiling.

“Don’t blow it kid.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it means is, a lot of people get a shot. And all that is, really, is a reward for the hard work you already did. What’s hard is to stay pure. Stay true to the craft.”

“Coach. I mean, I’m not going to go off and start shooting off guns and closing out night clubs, if that’s what you mean.”

“Remember in grade school, they said, what do you want to be when you grow up—and you said—I want to be a basketball player—and you thought—man—if I could just do that—just be a part of it—that would be the coolest thing ever. Well, now you are one.”

“Are you saying I’m going to lose my way now that I’m a big D1 college baller? You know me better than that, coach.”

“No. The game comes first. Above the job. Fame. Money. Because everyone and everything can be bought and paid for. Except, for the love of the game. No one has anything to trade for that.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Coach,” I said.

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Hey, Coach, let me sleep on it, will you?” I said over my shoulder as I jumped into the scrimmage.

“Sleep on it, my ass!”

***

Game 6 started off weird.

I was eating my second meat lover’s omelet in the lounge at MSG when Chip Wheeler walked in — the Thunder’s assistant trainer and one of my oldest friends. A Private Label team imprinted Duffel Bag was slung over his shoulder. It was unzipped and I could see stacks of cash and three cell phones tossed inside.

As Chip hurried by, some papers bundled in a rubber band fell out and I grabbed them off the floor and handed them back to him. I’d immediately regretted it. There were betting slips and a cashier’s check.

Chip just shook his head and kept walking.

About an hour later, Doug Encana, one of the league’s most dependable refs, always assigned to big Knicks games, was sitting courtside while we were running shooting drills. He was a balding forty-year-old who had to be on copious doses of TRT. Doug had a notepad and was marking off crib marks in the margins of a chart as we practiced.

Weird.

Then when I was in the locker-room, walking the corridors for a snack, I bumped into Jackson. Jackson had his full grown-in beard and those long mantis-like arms hanging by his sides. As soon as he saw me, a grin formed from ear to ear, and he started slapping me with those old Florida Gator handshakes we’d do before games back in college. We’d made it.

But as I was walking away, I saw him talking to someone outside his locker room. I heard him clear as day. “Yup, 4th period. Under five minutes. Look out for the reversal.”

I told myself that it couldn’t be what I thought. Not Jackson. Not him. He was my friend.

A few minutes later, as I headed back into my locker room and went by the Coach’s offices, I heard the Thunder Head Coach talking to Charlie Cannon, a United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. This guy made a name for himself prosecuting a D1 gambling league. And he’d been swarming the playoffs like a fly on shit the last several weeks. I didn’t like it one bit.

I remember a few weeks back when Charlie came to see me. And I still remember the end of our conversation. He’d looked me right in the eye and said, “Privilege. That’s what it is kid. Privilege.”

“What do you mean?” I’d asked.

“What I mean is, you have the privilege to be naïve. For now. Until, one day you see how the sausage is made.”

“And what then?” I’d asked.

“At that point,” Charlie said, “It’s just a question of whether you are going to become a sausage maker too… if not, the only other thing to do with all those foul rotten innards, is to throw them in the garbage.”

“I’m sure it’d be great for your career Charlie if there was another big conspiracy for you to bust. There isn’t.”

“One day,” Charlie had said, and he winked and clicked his lips before walking away.

The closer we got to the game, the more I realized, this wasn’t just the finals for us. This was the finals for the odds makers. We were the ones in the running for the title of champion, but that wasn’t the big money. As far as the big money was concerned, we were just the action.

***

After a massive omelet at Denny’s, I pulled my Ram pick-up back into camp and grabbed the ball out of the back seat.

Before I even sent the ball sailing for the basket, I heard a familiar voice.

“J.R., what are you doing in Ohio? You in witness protection or something?” It was Coach Kessler.

“More like excommunicated,” I said, and Coach laughed.

“I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Sure you did, Coach.”

“We gonna play HORSE here or what?”

“I’ll give you a letter and you’ll still lose, Mugsy.”

“You’re on,” Kessler said.

While we played, Sarah started sending me crying face emojis. 😭 The texts were cryptic, until they weren’t.

My love, don’t leave the League, it’s your dream, I hate this for you, baby 😭, what can I say, my love—I can’t be with a man that gives up on his dreams… I just can’t… I hate that for me.

It was just one of those things that you know you aren’t going to like, but you know it’s coming. Sarah was the college cheerleader with a social media influencer cache. To her, appearances were everything. And I was invisible.

Sure enough, Coach whooped my ass at HORSE like usual.

We played out on that court all afternoon. When we were good and cooked, we laid down with our feet up on the benches with the sun low in the sky and talked like men.

Coach told me about his grandkids and how he was part of a golf league.

I told him about Sarah, the condo, everything I was losing. My life had been a merry-go-round—cities spinning past while I stayed in place. I told him how nice it would be to settle in somewhere—to stay, to know people, to put down roots.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Coach asked.

“Hadn’t given it any thought.”

“I have this young shooting guard—Johnny. Real spitfire. Missed a free throw. Seriously. One free throw. This kid shoots 500 every night before bed. Got so mad he literally threw the ball into the rolling bleachers so hard he knocked the seating platform off one of ‘em the other day.”

“I’d like to school this kid one-on-one.”

“Thing is, this kid, Johnny Templeton. When he drives down the lane, head down... he’s fearless. No one can touch him. They started calling him ‘game time.’”

I laughed. “Remind you of anyone.”

“Well, I was thinking. If you aren’t – you know – doing anything, why don’t you come back and help me put the fear of Jesus into this kid.”

“You want me to come play hooky back at Shawnee High School?”

“I was thinking more like, Assistant Coach. If you aren’t doing anything.”

For the first time since I walked off the court, I started feeling solid again.

I grabbed the ball and drove for the basket. “And J.R. Hart scores,” a voice in my head said.

“Hey, Coach, let me sleep on it, will you?”

“Sleep on it, my ass!”