Chapter 6
Squeaks and bounces reverberate throughout the gymnasium as it clashes with the cheers roaring from the bleachers. The time on the scorer’s table shows that there are less than thirty seconds left in the fourth quarter.
“Phew, we made it,” Danny exclaims as he hastily sits down on the bleachers.
Louise furrows her brow and crosses her arms. “Look who finally decided to show up. If it ain’t Mr. 9-of-29.”
“Come on, that’s uncalled for. I was late because Cain wanted to tag along.”
“Hey there,” Cain waves. “I can’t miss the little man’s first ever game! This is one of the things you have to watch live like the birth of Jesus or something. Ya feel me?”
“Uh-huh, right…” Danny turns over to Louise and whispers into her ear, “Hey, has Cassius even ever touched a basketball before?”
“I don’t think so, but that’s fine. It’s a YMCA basketball league for 9- and 10-year-olds, not the NBA. Let Cassius have some fun. He was really insisting on wanting to play after watching some of your games.”
“Well, I guess you’re right.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Cain squeezed his head in between their shoulders, but Louise quickly repelled him back.
“I was just congratulating Danny on his new dad.” Louise pats Danny’s back.
Cain shakes his head in shame. “That game was so pitiful. C.J. Elleby strained his hip and was still swatting Danny’s shots into the fifth row. Then on the other side of the court, poor guy gets a bag of nuts in his face because he can’t play any defense. He’s truly the white James Harden. Baiting free throws and choking in the playoffs.”
Danny annoyingly gazes over at Cain. “Maybe if someone HELPED me then none of that would have ever happen.”
“Hey, don’t look at me. I did my share of the load. It’s not my fault that Coach doesn’t put me in at the end of games.”
As the buzzer rings, the two teams fall in line and thank each other for the game while the next two teams stepped onto the court to start warming up.
“Didn’t the youth leagues start a couple weeks ago? How did you manage to get him in?” Danny asks Louise while he watches the white team starting their layup lines.
“My mom knew one of the coaches and asked him if he could add Danny to their team. Luckily, the team lost one of their players because he was failing school.”
“Oh my god!” Cain jumps out of his seat and starts clapping brashly. “Let’s go, Cassius! That’s a good ass layup! I know your layups wouldn’t have gotten by 100 times by Cleveland unlike the loser next to me!”
“Shut the fuck up! At least I was trying to score!”
“9-of-29.”
Unable to refute, Danny remained silent until the end of the warm-ups. Cassius is sitting on the purple team’s bench while the teams get into position at center court for tip-off.
“Huh? Why isn’t he starting?” Cain scratches his head in confusion.
“It’s his first ever basketball game, and he joined a team mid-season,” Danny replies while taking out his phone to play Madden Mobile. “Why would he be starting?”
The referee tossed the ball into the air for the jump ball and the game started. It was a sloppy start for both teams who went back and forth bricking shots and coughing off the ball for the first five minutes. On one of the possessions, the big chubby kid on the white team went coast-to-coast without dribbling a single time before missing the wide-open layup. How the referees missed that blatant travel was beyond anyone’s understanding. One may be able to see YouTube videos on how kids are much better at basketball at such an early age now. This game, however, is a counterpoint for that.
At the start of the second quarter, Cassius was finally subbed into the game. The score was 6-4 in favor of the white team.
“Danny, wake up,” Louise shakes Danny who was dozing off.
“What?” Danny sits back up, yawning loudly. “Is the game finally over?”
“No, you moron. He’s playing now.”
“Only the second quarter? Really? I thought he was going to get treated like a Make-A-Wish kid and not play until the end of the game.”
“To be fair, both teams play like a Make-A-Wish kid.”
#4 on the purple team brought the ball up the court and passes the ball over to Cassius on the right wing.
Cain raises his camera and focuses on Cassius. “Boy, here’s your Kodak moment.”
Cassius initiates a waving off motion, but his teammates were confusedly standing in place. He waved them off again and shouted at them which made them get out of the way this time. Cassius and his defenders were the only ones left on the right side of the court.
“He called an iso?”
“Shhh,” Cain shushes at Danny. “Let him go to work.”
Cassius starts dribbling between his legs as he slowly creeps closer to his defender. Once they were less than feet apart from each other, Cassius hunched over and exploded to his right. The defender tried to impede his path by bumping into him, but Cassius snatched back with a behind-the-back dribble, causing the defender to tumble back. When Cassius commenced his next move of driving left, the defender managed to regain his balance and extended his hand out in hopes of tipping the ball out of Cassius’ possession. Just when the defender thought he was able to get the steal, Cassius pulls back the ball with his right hand and then drives baseline. While Cassius went up for an easy layup, his defender was grimacing in pain on the floor, clutching his knee. The opposing team’s coach immediately called a timeout and sprinted toward his injured player.
Cain’s eyes widened, unaware that he dropped his camera. The look on his face was not of amazement or surprise but of fear. “What…what was that?”
“Careful, man. I thought this camera is expensive-” Danny stretched down to pick up the camera and notices Cain's entire body was trembling.
“No way…that’s impossible.”
After the timeout, Cassius was benched for the rest of the game. If that play was not a fluke, this game would have turned into a massacre quickly. Concerned about a possible repeat situation, Cassius’s coach immediately took him out to prevent any backlash from the players, coach, and parents of the opposing team. Cassius did not look like an elementary school student playing basketball when he was on the court. Not even past young “phenoms” like Julian Newman played like that. He looked like a bloodthirsty predator pouncing on its feeble prey.
Following the game, the four of them went to McDonald’s for lunch.
“This is some bullshit!” Louise sips her soda and slams it on the table. “He played less than a minute, and he’s banned from the league.”
Danny swiftly swallows the food in the mood to respond. “Chill out. We can always find another youth league. Let’s look at it this way. He’s so good that they had to ban him. Can you believe how big of an impact he left on everyone there when he only touched the ball once the entire game? What I’m more concerned about is how he was able to play like that. Are you sure this is his first time playing? What he did out there was not normal for someone his age, let alone someone playing for the first time.”
“I’m positive. We don’t even have a ball at home.”
“Weird…Say, Cass. Where did you learn to play like that?”
“Hm?” Cassius lifts his head while holding a handful of fries.
“How did you learn how to play basketball?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Where did you learn to do a snatchback and a Shammgod then?”
“A snack bag? Why do I need snacks when I play basketball?”
“No, not snacks. How did you do those moves when you played?”
“Oh, those? I remember seeing them in a dream.”
“From a dream? You’ve never seen them anywhere else?”
Cassius shakes his head. “When I was passed the ball, it was like I already knew how to play."
“Man, this is getting too creepy. Let’s forget about this and move on.”
“Ok, so now that we got a future NBA star in our hands.” Louise folds her hands neatly and leans forward. “How will we train him?”
“Train? Us?”
“Who else?”
“We can just sign him up for AAU. That’s where all the high-level players are nowadays.”
“We’re a bunch of high schoolers. We can’t afford that right now. Until you make it to the NBA, we should look for cheaper options.”
“NBA? Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. I’m not a surefire thing.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re right. You’re just some scrub who shoots 9-for-29. I heard the pay in China is still good though.”
“Y’all won’t let that go, huh?”
“Nope. Getting back on track, let’s have him watch some NBA highlights for a start. Who’s your favorite player?”
“I don’t know how this’ll help but whatever. It’s Allen Iverson.”
“I-ver-son.” Louise types out a note on her phone. “What about you, Cain?”
“My favorite player? Uh, Derek Baldwin,” Cain answers while looking at random stories on Snapchat.
“Hm, hm,” Danny nods. “That does sound like you- Wait, who?”
“Derek Baldwin.”
“Who is that?”
“What do you mean? How do you not know who’s Derek Baldwin?”
“Bro, there’s no guy in the NBA with that name.”
“You’re tripping, man. It’s Derek fucking Baldwin! He’s the GOAT! You know, he’s running the league right now.”
“Um…no. The Warriors are the ones running the NBA. In fact, they’re destroying it because KD is a spineless bitch who joined a 73-9 team.”
“Baldwin won two of the three last Finals. One with the Bulls and the other with the Clippers.”
Danny lets out a chuckle. “Clippers winning a ring? That’s hilarious. There’s no way we’ll ever see those chokers make the Finals.”
“It’s true, though! He formed a Big 3 with CP3 and Blake!”
“Okay, okay, okay. I’ll humor you. Let me look up everything you’re saying to see if it’s true.” Danny takes out his phone. “Clippers roster…I don’t see a Baldwin anywhere on here. Look.”
Cain stares at Danny’s phone screen that shows the current Clippers roster. “Nah, this is fake. You can change anything on Wikipedia.”
“But this is Basketball-Reference.com.”
“Same thing!”
“You’re 0-for-1 now. Next, I’ll look up the champs from the last three years…’14 Spurs, ’15 Warriors, ’16 Cavs.”
“Cavs winning a ring?! Now, I know that’s fake.”
“You’re playing with me, right? You do know LeBron returned to Cleveland and brought home a ring after coming back 3-1 against the 73-9 Warriors.”
“Wrong.”
“What do you mean wrong? I’m stating the fa-”
“Wrong.”
“Alright, how about you prove me wrong then? Show me this Baldwin guy and I’ll believe you.”
“Bet,” Cain furiously taps his phone screen. “This is gonna be too easy…huh?”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This must be a bug.”
Cain tried to refresh the page, but it still had the same message.
“Maybe I have to be more specific when I’m googling. That should work.”
“Derek Baldwin Clippers” results not found.
A streak of sweat slides off Cain’s temple as he reads his phone screen. “There’s something wrong.”
Cain continued to try different word combinations in hopes of proving his point correct.
“Derek Baldwin NBA” results not found.
“Derek Baldwin basketball” results not found.
“Derek Baldwin Bulls” results not found.
“Derek Baldwin Barcelona” results not found.
“Derek Baldwin doesn’t exist?” Cain felt uneasy, intensely clenching his chest as he was gasping for air. In just a couple of Google searches, his reality has crumbled.
“You okay, man?” Danny worriedly asks his friend. “You’re looking a little pale.”
“I..I think I’m going home. I’m not feeling too well.”
Cain held his hand on his forehead as he slowly exited the building with an unsteady gait.
and now my universe is all discombobulated! 
