9 New York

During the week, I practiced with the team and then practiced with John for defense, and when I got home late in the night, I thought about how I ended up here and how to loosen my third ability. I check my cash box since I'm not old enough to have an account yet. I keep all the money in a box under my bed; I have $800 after I finished counting. There's $300 from the pizza place, $300 from the school, and $200 from all the bets I played since I spent most of the other cash just bull shitting around.

I go and give my mother $400 and opal $100 now I'm left with $300, which I know will go back up because December is almost over, so the pizza place will be sending me some cash soon. I call up Shawn to see if he still wants to play for some money, and he gets excited and tells me to meet up with him on Saturday, bright and early.I go throughout the week, and on Saturday, Shawn and I take a trip to New York, which surprised me. I asked him where we were going, and he told me Rucker Park and my eyes immediately shone because Rucker Park is like the basketball heaven for streetball, and I've always wanted to go there. We take a train out there and get there in a few hours.I get dressed in the jersey given to me by the pizza place, and Shawn handles the admission and bets, he signed us up on the 2v2 $200 per game, winner takes all, and the boot gets $20 from that cut for setting it up. I'm amazed at how many games are being played there. There's one player I spot right away Carmelo Antony playing 1vs1 games, and I'm amazed that I get to see him playing because he was in high school while I was in middle school, but I still felt the urge to play against him.The first game we played was against a pg and sf. The SF was taller than both Shawn and me, so I told them that we are shooting for the ball, and you guys know we got the ball because well, I can't miss. The games are normally played to 11 points since the lines are so long, and they play twos and three points. We began our game with Shawn checking it up to them and then he did a quick pass to me, and I shot the ball real quick because the pg wasn't playing me all that serious at the beginning like most of my opponents at the start, so we quickly take 3 points.The point guard now gets in my face not giving me any breathing room so when Shawn passes me the ball I quickly leaned into him to make him look like he was fouling me while I was shooting and the ref blew his whistle for the foul and free throw, but I also made the shot, so it became a four-point play because I made it at the line. The other team is pissed we have a seven-point lead already, but we continued to ball Shawn gives me the ball behind him, and I take the shot since they don't think I can make it from there and behind someone either but it still goes in.They switch at this point, so now the SF is guarding me, but I smirk because I know he's not quicker than me. Shawn checks the ball, and I run back to the half-court and get the ball and take a shot from there, surprising the duo. I make it win and scream next. Our next opponents were both pretty tall sitting at 6'9 and 6'8, respectively. I know this is going to be a hard game since they could easily block my shots if not shot right.We start the game with the ball being passed to me, and I quickly take the shot to give us a three-point lead. They step up to play better defense. Shawn passes the ball to me, and I pass it right back to him, and I quickly pass the guy guarding me since I'm quicker than him I give Shawn sign to pass it to me, but it's a fake and I act like I'm about to get the pass, so the guy jumps up to try and get the ball but then loses sight of me because of that, but I'm already running back to the three-point line to receive the pass to make another three points.The guys are boiling mad that they got tricked so easily. Shawn rechecks the ball and gives me the ball while the guy that's supposed to guard me is running back, but as soon as Shawn checks the ball, he quickly passes to me, and I take another shot to get us to game point 9-0. They tried to say it was a foul ball since they were not ready, but the ref tells them if they were not ready, they shouldn't have checked the ball.So Shawn once again checks the ball and passes to me, and I do my famous half-court shot since the opponent didn't think I can make it from there. They didn't bother running after me, and just as that game ended. We then take a break to get some lunch. We ended up in a pizza place and crushed two boxes of pizza to fill ourselves. When we got back, we had to get in a long line because of the afternoon shift of players.We had $360 profit from today's games, and I think two more games before we head back to Maryland would have done us some good. In the third match, we matched up against these two Asian boys. They were as tall as us, so we knew we wouldn't be able to use speed against them. I was just hoping they didn't see any of our matches so I can use my usual tricks on them.We start the match with Shawn passing me the ball, and I just shoot it right away since the guy gave me some space, and we take a three-point lead. Shawn checks the ball and tries to pass it to me, but the guy is all over me so I had to come behind Shawn so he could hand the ball to me, but since Shawn blocked both of them when I came behind him, I took the shot and got a six-point lead.The sg that was supposed to be checking me got yelled at by the pg that was checking Shawn, and we laugh at them, but immediately there faces darken, and they get serious. Shawn passed the ball to me. I pump fake him, making him jump, so I go around him, step back and drain the three from outside to give us 9 points. We just need one more bucket, so I ran to the half-court as Shawn passes the ball, but the guy is tailing me scared I'll lose him from there.I charged towards him dribbling like a mad man and pretended like I was going to the left but went right making him fall on his butt and me about to shoot but then his partner came to help defend so I just pretended to shoot the ball and brought it back, and when he was in the air I passed it to Shawn because he was wide open and he took the shot to win the game for us.We played the last game which we won easily and headed home with $720 from the wins, and we shared it half between us, so we got $360 each, which wasn't bad, and I got to go to Rucker Park, so it fun for me. When I got home, I passed out because I was mentally tired. Monday morning comes up just like that I go through my daily routine throughout the week until Friday when it's the game day this time we are playing against the Groundhog, s and their key players are Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin.I know they are good because in my previous life they were both NBA stars, so I know this is going to be a good game. When the ball went up, Momba won the ball and passed it to Darrel to start the attack. Hack quickly ran up the court to receive the ball and make a wide-open mid-range shot to give us the lead. The game went on back and forth, and I was just on the bench waiting until the last quarter to play since I knew Momba would be able to handle them.When the last quarter came, I checked in, and the groundhogs got nervous because they heard about my 45 point game from two weeks ago and knew I could shoot the lights off once I get going. They started to double team me whenever I got the ball, which threw me off a little bit because I had to keep passing to the open person. Luckily we were only down by 6 points until Eric came down with the ball and crossed Darrel up until he fell, and then he took the shot from the three-point line to give them the lead.I quickly ask for the ball to return the favor, and it still wasn't enough because every time I scored, they would score too, and we ended up losing that game by 4 points because Eric Gordon was too good with the handles and had a good shot to go with it. I finally felt a weakness in this ability of mine and didn't realize that if I don't get the opportunity to shoot, I would have to pass the ball.If that person doesn't make the shot, I lose out on points. Taking the half-court shots takes a toll on my body and is hard on my muscles, so I try to do it once or twice a game. After the game, I tell Coach K we need a team meeting on Monday to discuss strategies, and he agrees. Every loss is a lesson, so I learned mine in that game. Even if Griffen wasn't a problem, Eric was, and I would like to move up to the next level if I ever meet up with a player like him.Rasta still took us out to eat after the game where he was telling me to shoot my shot even when they double team me the worst that could happen is that they foul me, he said sarcastically.Akua tries to cheer me up by feeding me, and the others start laughing at us as she blushed. That night I had a dream I was dunking on Shaq and riding a Suzuki motorcycle.