The Fab 5

By Franklyn C. Thomas

Not that I would ever tell him to his face-especially after the time and effort I spent getting on him in high school-but I was very proud of James. I followed his career since he was drafted; he worked hard at his game. He never had that kind of can't-miss talent, and was a little trigger-happy with the ball, but the fact that he made it and the rest of us didn't is simply amazing; he wasn't the likeliest candidate. Likely or not, he made it out of Flatbush, and I know quite a few people who couldn't say the same.

Rob Bishop and his four best friends wanted to get out of the 'hood and make better lives for themselves. Basketball was the answer.

But when the team's best player has his college hoop dreams derailed by circumstance, he takes matters into his own hands and jumps to the NBA, almost severing all ties with "the boys".

Tragedy reunites them ten years later. Although their childhood friendships have evolved with age and time apart, the fab five learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 31, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595802050

Franklyn C. Thomas

Franklyn C. Thomas is the author of one other novel, The Fab 5. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, he lives in Bellingham, Washington.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my family and friends, too numerous to name individually, for their support and encouragement. This would have been quite impossible without it. I would also like to thank the many makers of energy drinks that give you wings, horns, tails, jet propellant, or whatever, because there were points where I know I wouldn’t have made it without them.THIS IS FOR MY NEPHEW, GAIRY ANTHONY CARDOZA II, FEBRUARY 16, 1996-AUGUST 19, 2001, FOREVER MY INSPIRATION. RIP.

CHAPTER 1

I don’t think I gave much thought to how fortunate I was until I went to Two-Jay’s wake and saw his emaciated corpse, resting in a cherrywood casket as a wreath containing his picture and basketball uniform was suspended less than a foot above him and thought to myself the embalmers did a crappy job—he looks dead; his skin, which we called khaki colored in our youth, was pale and his face, gaunt and dried with sunken eyes, bore only a passing resemblance to the youthful picture that was displayed to the small crowd in attendance. Two-Jay—that’s Jamal Prince to the rest of the world—and I had known each other so long, we had forgotten exactly how we met, and when you know someone that long, that well, they could die at seventy and it would still be a shock. We all called him Two-Jay because he thought he was the second coming of Michael Jordan—MJ. The really tragic part about it is that he was right, and there once were a large number of people who agreed.

Two-Jay had that kind of talent—the uncanny showstopper quality that every time down the floor required a double-team, and sometimes demanded a triple-team. He handled a basketball like his name last name was Spaulding and was quicker than a scared jackrabbit. He had an incredible vertical leap, ran like a cheetah, and never—ever—broke a sweat. He was the best athlete I had ever seen.

That’s why I was floored when I found out Jamal Prince ended up a heroin addict and died of an overdose. Guys like that, you swear are immortal, invincible. They live long, charmed, successful lives with money, fame, and women at their disposal. They retire from the public eye, get fat and live on an island somewhere. They don’t get sick. They don’t die. They definitely don’t become heroin addicts.

My eyes panned around the ornate chapel of the church where the fifty or so mourners gathered. I always thought that the church’s opulence was a bit out of place, considering the pest-infested buildings surrounding it. The polished wood pews had new, plush red seats and the church had done away with the confining arm rests that had been there in my youth. The four gold-trimmed marble columns at each corner of the room also sported the unnatural sheen of being recently installed. The large brass cross behind the pulpit bearing Jesus in agony, however, had been there as long as I could remember. When Jay and I were kids, the joke used to be that we would look like that too, if we had to listen to the pastor every Sunday. It didn’t seem as funny, being back there.

I really didn’t want to be there.

It was hard to see the rest of the team, too. Funny, isn’t it, how after all this time I still call them the team. I caught sight of them, spread through the crowd of family, friends, and teammates past and present, as we sang Amazing Grace. They seemed as fidgety and uncomfortable being there as I did. We had really drifted apart since that last day of summer in our senior year of high school, when we all thought we were on to bigger and better things. These three guys—D-Train, James, and Shiver—were all great guys, and even though we had maintained variably minimal degrees of contact over the last ten years, I still considered them my best friends. I just found it odd that no one spoke to Two-Jay in the last three years.

Pete Dorsey had become a postal worker. We called him D-Train because he was six-foot-nine, 240 pounds of solid, dreadlocked muscle in high school. He was our enforcer—bigger than life, and twice as mean. He had a hell of a quietly intimidating way about him, and back when he patrolled the paint for the Hamilton High Hornets, he was as feared as he was respected. We fell out of touch after our freshman year of college—he went to Miami, I went to Albany—but I had heard he married his longtime girlfriend last summer, which was, to say the least, surprising to me. Even more surprising was that he gave up the game. He still lived in the old neighborhood, blocks away from where we grew up. Kali, the woman in question wasn’t there that day.

Shawn Porter became a teacher and a coach at our old high school in Brooklyn. We called him Shiver partly because he had ice water in his veins. He was an incredible player in the clutch, and was more comfortable with the ball in his hands and the game on the line than anyone. He was the best point guard in a city famous in basketball lore for having the best point guards. His court vision was unparalleled, and as long as he had a moment’s eye contact with you, he could find you with a pass. He was also a great ball-handler. Not quite as good as

Two-Jay, but better than the average guy, and certainly better than me. But what earned him the name Shiver, really, was his unnerving confidence, especially when there wasn’t reason for it. That was his singular talent, and it served him well on the court as our point guard, and off the court as one of the best recognized weed dealers in the neighborhood

James Massey lived our dream, though—and if you knew James when we all hung out, you would think of that as nothing short of a miracle. He was drafted in the second round a few years ago by the Heat, and made a name for himself as a solid scorer. He had the best jumper in the group back in the day, money from twenty feet out, the other facets of his game were so terrible, he never received a nickname. He couldn’t dribble worth a damn, couldn’t pass at all, and that’s why he was on the bench in high school for four straight years. I tell you, though, James was the guy who offered moral support freely; he had your back through thick and thin, no matter how stupid he thought you were being.

As for me, I ended up writing a column for SportsMonth Magazine called Checkmate (a play on my name, Robert Bishop. Get it?). I happily left the ghetto after that summer and never came back. I moved into Park Slope in Brooklyn with my fiancée and college girlfriend, Lauren. The only reason I came back is because James tracked me down and told me my best friend died.

I remember fondly the bonds I forged with the guys from the ‘hood, especially during the transition to manhood, when we went to war regularly on basketball courts around the city. I remember how we used to look out for each other (or at least, tried to) because the group was all we really had.

AND TO THIS DAY, THAT LAST SUMMER BEFORE WE PARTED WAYS REMAINS THE BEST SIX-MONTH STRETCH OF MY LIFE, HANDS DOWN.

CHAPTER 2

March, 1997.

I remember it as the first press conference I’d ever seen live. The gym on the top floor of the building, where the three-time defending PSAL champion Hornets played home games, was as crowded as the fire code allowed, as it had ever been, full of reporters and photographers, friends and family, students and teachers. The Bee-Squad, Hamilton High’s cheerleading group comprised of some of the finest Black and Spanish girls the school had to offer, with the odd white chick in there for color contrast (weren’t too many white kids in our school, what with it being in a Caribbean neighborhood), entertained the mass of people by doing some of their formations—mostly T&A shaking moves that almost cemented their future as strippers. Looking around, I saw, scattered in the crowd, Shiver and James. Two-Jay wasn’t with them. I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled them over. At the front of the gym, directly underneath our Junior Varsity championship banners for 1994 and 1995, and our Varsity banners for 1995 and 1996, there was a small table with a little card on it: Reserved for Peter Dorsey.

D-Train was one of the best players in the country. He averaged a triple-double, and led the nation in rebounds and blocks by an embarrassing margin—an amazing feat for someone who was supposed to be just a power forward. He was the second leading scorer for the Hamilton High Hornets. He helped get our school national attention in his four years there, even more than some prep schools in the area. Colleges—and pro scouts—were doing everything in their power (short of tossing hookers through his bedroom window) to get him to sign with them. Quite frankly, he had it made.

Now, with D-Train and I being as tight as we were, I knew exactly why everyone was there that Tuesday morning. We talked about it every day since we started high school, whenever we discussed the future and life after Hamilton.

The whole crew did. You sort of have to dream big when you grow up as broke as we did. We had our futures mapped out since we were twelve, and starting that day, everything was going according to plan.

As for the plan, well, that’s what the room was buzzing about. Fans and boosters all suddenly became basketball experts, each with their own theory as to what he was doing, and an opinion what he should be doing, and a reason why. Reporters scoured the gym for anyone who had a connection to D-Train, from teachers to cheerleaders to his teammates, namely Shiver, James and me. Our answers to those questions were simple.

I don’t know. Ask him.

We waited for a few minutes before D-Train—the dark-skinned and muscular, six-foot-nine boy in a man’s body with shoulder length dreadlocks and a big white grin—made his grand entrance, wearing a black three-piece suit and a blue shirt and grey tie so nice, they had to be rented. He was flanked on his left by the principal, a short, slim balding man in a gray suit, and on the right by Coach Burton, a black man a little shorter than the star of the show, with a beard, bald head, and a potbelly. He wore a whistle around his neck, over a gray Hamilton High T-shirt.

D-Train sat at the table and tapped at the microphone clipped to his jacket. Testing. Testing one, two.

Some of the blue and black clad cheerleaders in the back of the gym started screaming, and soon after, the whole crowd started cheering and clapping. D-Train ran a hand through his dreadlocks and over the peach fuzz on his chin, grinning like a boy reading his first Playboy.

Thank you, he said as the applause had finally started to subside. He looked more nervous than he did on the court, more nervous, in fact, than I had ever seen him. He gasped for air like a drowning asthmatic. He looked over at me, then over at Shiver and James. Look, he started, I was never much good at talking, especially in front of other people, so I’m just gonna say what I gotta say and bounce. He was nervous; the trace of Jamaican accent ingrained in him by his mother came to the surface. Scattered members of the audience clapped and shouted as he looked over at James, Shiver and me before starting again. And that is, I’m here to announce that I’m signing a letter of intent to attend the University of Miami next fall on a full basketball scholarship.

The thousand or so students huddled into the Hamilton High gym that day erupted in cheers as Coach Burton placed the letter in front of him and handed him a simple black ballpoint pen. With a scribble and a flourish, Pete Dorsey was to be the new power forward for the Miami Hurricanes. He shook the coach’s hands as well as the principal’s before pointing to the crowd. The student body chanted his name—D-Train! D-Train! D-Train!—and he drank it all in. He pounded his chest like Tarzan and raised his arms to the sky.

After the conference was over and the reporters left, the four of us—D-Train, Shiver, James and I—went back to being normal high school seniors, and all the things that went with it. For us, that meant spending our downtime at the pizza shop down the block from school.

It starts, D-Train said, not even trying to contain his broad grin.

I raised an eyebrow. What starts?

The dream, Rob. The dream starts. We’re this close. Can’t you taste it?

Is that right? I said, playing dumb. How you figure?

It’s simple. We go to Miami. Play four years on scholarship, win us some national championships and shit…

Yeah, James said. And then we gets all the bitches!

Shiver started laughing. He’s got a point, D. You can’t forget that part.

D-Train couldn’t help himself and started laughing, too. Of course, man, he said, still grinning like an idiot. That goes without saying. We gets all the honeys. Then we get drafted, and—BANG!—we’re all NBA superstars making NBA paper.

Yeah, baby, James said. And we’ll be fucking NBA bitches.

Shiver looked over at him scornfulllly. "Yo, man, don’t you ever stop? And why everybody gotta be a bitch?"

’Cuz they all remind me of your mama. James smiled, and Shiver flipped him the finger.

I shook my head. Sorry, D, there’s a small problem with the plan.

And that is?

We, I said, pointing at James and myself, are both bench players. And this guy’s scrub ass gets no P.T.

D-Train put his head on the table and laughed. Oh, shit, he said. "He went there. I cannot believe he went there."

James looked up at me cockeyed, pizza cheese still hanging from the corner of his mouth. Scrub? he said, voice a bit garbled from pizza he wasn’t even finished chewing. He hastily swallowed the bite, pointed at me, and looked pleadingly at Shiver and D-Train. Yo, come on now, he yelled. I know this four-point, one board a game motherfucker did not just call me a scrub!

Well, Shiver said, completely straight-faced, "you are sort of shitty."

D-Train couldn’t maintain that sort of cool, and immediately broke out laughing. Yeah, man, he started, gasping for air. Your handle is lacking, and your jumper is kind of suspect.

Fuck that, James protested over the laughter. I could shoot.

Yeah, I said, you could shoot. That don’t mean you’ll hit. Or that it’s a good idea.

It’s all good, James, Shiver jumped in. You still our boy, even if you suck.

Man, fuck you, he said, yelling over our laughter. Rob, you can kiss my ass, ‘cuz you on the bench behind me! Shiver, you ‘bout the blindest, raggedy-ass point guard I ever seen. You can’t even pass a blunt! And you, D, you should be the last one to talk, you big-for-nothing freak! How you gon’ start for Miami and can’t hit free throws?

Hey, hey! D-Train said, putting his hand up. I know all this truth is making you emotional and shit, but don’t make me flush it on you, little man. Get the nuts all up in the grill.

James was taken aback. "You’re calling me little? he said, pointing at Shiver. What about this five-one Muggsy Bogues motherfucker over here?"

Shiver rolled his eyes and took off his glasses. Six-one, he said indignantly. And I will haul off and bust all your punk asses whenever you want to go. Be nothing but broken ankles out this bitch. He looked over at James and smiled. That’s right, I said ‘bitch.’

Whoa, whoa, I said. Anyone can say it, but can you back it up?

Anytime you want a demo, Shiver replied.

Prove it. Twenty-one. After school.

A’ight, D-Train said, flashing that shit-eating grin. I’m down.

Shiver breathed on his glasses and wiped them clean. I’m in, he said, putting them back on.

Works for me, James said, wiping pizza sauce off his chin. Which one of you is gonna let that punk Two-Jay know?

Yeah, what happened to that cat? Shiver asked. How come he wasn’t at the press conference?

James grinned. Ball-hoggin’ motherfucker was probably jealous. You know how he likes to be the spotlight. He probably couldn’t find anything to do to top the conference. We laughed; Two-Jay was an attention whore.

D-Train shook his head. Nah, nah, fellas, he said, nothing like that. His guidance counselor had him pulled out of our morning class. Probably still with her.

It’s all good, I said. I have my next class with him. I checked my watch. Matter of fact, gentlemen, I have to be there in ten. I dropped five bucks on the table, pounded fists with the guys, and headed on to class.

Two-Jay wasn’t there and didn’t show—not that I could really blame him. It was the English Literature class that decided The Canterbury Tales was interesting reading, and Ms. Cooper was as boring as could legally be allowed.

When Two-Jay wasn’t in class, he was in one of two places; he was either in the gym playing ball or on the courts across the street playing ball. As I went down the stairs after class, I took a look through one of the windows facing the park, and there was a tall, lanky, light-skinned brother, shooting free throws while dodging puddles from where the last snowstorm we had froze and melted. I went outside, and even though I thought it might have been a little chilly for it, Two-Jay was still there, now practicing his longer range jump shot.

Hey, yo, Jay! I yelled as I stepped onto the court.

He took a look over his shoulder as I walked on. Hey, he replied, resuming his jump shooting.

I walked underneath the basket. He sunk a shot—must have been his ninth in a row or so—and I passed it back to him on the left wing. We did this all the time when it was just he and I practicing. I would stand underneath until he missed, and then we would switch. We didn’t see you at the press conference today.

He took another jumper. Ten. Couldn’t make it, he said as I passed the ball back to him a few feet to his right. Guidance counselor shit,

Really? I asked as he hoisted up another shot. Eleven. What about? Was it important?

He caught my pass and wordlessly took another shot. Twelve.

You should have been there, man, I said as Two-Jay set up for another shot. The school went nuts when he said he was going to Miami.

Two-Jay’s shot bounced off the front of the rim. Fuck! he shouted. You’re fucking up my concentration, Rob!

What the fuck is your problem? I said, taking the ball back to the free throw line. One of your boys just signed a letter of intent to the school we all dreamed about going to since junior high!

Well, whoop-de-damn-do, he said.

I squared myself up at the foul line and took a shot. It bounced off the middle of the backboard and through the hoop. Look, man, I don’t know what the attitude is all about, I said, turning to leave. I’m just letting you know that we’re playing some ball after school today.

If I’m there, I’m there.

I stopped; it wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting. For Two-Jay, playing ball with us combined his two favorite things in the world—basketball and his boys. Such an ambivalent answer—especially about basketball—was just not in his nature.

"What’s with you?" I finally asked, a little worried and a lot annoyed. "One of your best friends