Pull Read Free Page B

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.
    â€œIt’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 andcreeps. “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.”
    â€œWhat 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 offa 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.

3.
    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 realize how relentless coaches can be. The big names are putting their assistants after me, so I haven’t talked to guys like Calipari or Pitino or Krzyzewski yet. Maybe they think they’re above it all. But at places like Clemson and VCU and Iowa State, the head man himself has been on with me. And Indiana—Coach Crean called me personally, but I bet that’s just because I’m in-state.
    For now, I’m just hearing them all out, telling them I’m a long way off from making a decision. And that’s the