EZ and the Intangibles

By Bob Katz

Ethan “EZ” Zanay loves the sport of basketball and it's really unfortunate he's so darn bad at it. After making an embarrassing mistake in front of his teammates, EZ finally decides to call it quits. End of story? Not quite yet. EZ' lack of basketball talent is far from his only problem. He's isolated from classmates and wanders the fringe of the schoolyard alone during recess, gazing at the games he's never invited to join in. When his father, a popular former sports star, is accused in a business scandal, the family must suddenly wrestle with financial problems. Plus, EZ' bothersome kid brother is the town's most promising young athlete, fast becoming a local legend. And making matters worse, EZ still clings to the fantasy that someday, somehow, he might yet turn into that unheralded player who surprises everyone by coming through in the clutch. His best shot at a comeback is to specialize in those subtle moves and unseen maneuvers that don't show up in the standard stat sheets. EZ' secret game plan is to focus all his efforts on making the most of the intangibles. But he'll only succeed if somebody is there to notice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regal House Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947548190

Book preview

Daniel

Chapter One

It’s not fair. You do something stupid or lame or embarrassing early in life, say second or third grade, and from that time onward all anybody seems to know about you—or want to know about you—is that one same dumb thing. It follows you everywhere. Like some horror movie stalker with bloody fangs, lurking in the shadows. There’s nowhere to hide. I know. I’ve tried.

For me, Ethan Zanay, it was just a stupid basketball game. And the problem had nothing, or almost nothing, to do with the fact that I stank at basketball.

Longview, where I live, is crazy about sports. By crazy, I don’t just mean the typical ways that people enjoy watching games on TV in their free time instead of doing other things. For us, it’s deeper. On County Road 12, as you enter town from the north, we still have a large billboard-sized sign that reads, in gold lettering on a blue background (gold and blue being our high school colors):

LONGVIEW

1992 Division III Basketball Champs

If you enter town from the west, along Valley Road, there’s another sign, same color scheme, maybe even larger—you can’t miss it unless your eyes are shut tight—that reads:

LONGVIEW

2003 Division III Region 9 Basketball Champs

None of these triumphs are exactly Super Bowl XXX-whatever. My point is we care about sports, a lot. We take pride in being tough competitors. And winning the game—any game, in any sport—is supposed to remind us that if we just work hard enough, and don’t give up, we will achieve other kinds of victories, maybe bigger ones, in other

areas of life. If Longview had other achievements worth bragging about, I’m sure we’d advertise that information on an even bigger sign, big as a stadium scoreboard. But so far, we don’t.

My situation, which I will soon explain, was not helped by the fact that my dad was a local basketball legend. He’d been Longview High’s leading scorer his junior and senior years, and was Most Valuable Player of the 1992 champion-

ship team. And it certainly didn’t help that he was now a local legend for a far less brilliant reason—something about money people had given him for a business project that didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. He was soon going to stand trial. I once asked Mom why Dad didn’t simply give the money back. Wouldn’t that be easier? Like No harm, no foul?

It was, my mother sadly explained, a large amount of money.

Because Dad had been a high school basketball star, and was nearly six foot five, everyone assumed I would follow in his footsteps. If that weren’t bad enough, my little brother Zach, two years younger, was already nearly bigger than me and so supremely talented at sports that it had been suggested that he skip a grade. Of course, that was nonsense. Skipping a grade is something that only happens if you’re a lot smarter than kids your own age. Which Zach definitely is not.

I have other complaints about my brother beyond the fact that he’s off-the-charts tall and athletic for his age. Zach’s nickname is ZZ. Mine is EZ. See the problem?

Printed on the page, it’s just a simple coupling of initials. But spoken out loud—the way kids shout your name on the playground? The letter E followed immediately by the letter Z sounds, when spoken aloud, like a real word. A word that can be used as a diss. Especially in sports.

Easy out at bat. Easy man to score on. Easy pitcher to hit. Easy to fool. Easy to ignore. You get the idea. Easy to forget.

Unfortunately, some things they don’t let you forget.

Chapter Two

If I had to do over again, of course I would do it differently. The third-grade basketball travel team was called the Otters, and I was on the team because of my dad. He was high-spirited and popular with just about everyone—except the people who’d invested money with him. Initially, Dad had been our head coach, which was why I’d automatically made the team. Everyone knows that’s how it works.

A few days before our first game, my dad’s legal troubles took a turn for the worse. It’s not like I was eager to learn details, but they were front page in the weekly Longview Gazette. I couldn’t avoid it—that photo of him, squinting with the sun flush on his face, smiling that enormous smile like he didn’t have a worry in the world. He did.

What had been initially planned as an affordable housing complex out past the mall never got beyond the maze of interlocking concrete foundations that were now filled with muddy puddles, home to little black tadpoles. Dad was the developer. He’d built porches and garages and bathrooms for people, and they were always pleased with his work. But he’d never attempted anything nearly this large before. The project ran out of funds. The funds had come from friends of his who wanted to help Dad out and also wanted to make some money. The term fraud was used a lot in the Gazette article. A trial date had been set for the middle of February.

Mr. Rutledge, Troy’s dad, had taken over coaching the Otters. He could have cut me from the team, but I think he felt sorry for my dad. They’d known each other since boyhood and had played together on the Longview High team. They still played together on a men’s softball team every summer—that is, until recently. The Gazette article reported that several of the angry investors were from that softball team. A few of them had kids in my school.

Even though Dad was no longer coaching the Otters, he sat at the end of the team bench during our first game. He was still innocent until found guilty, and nobody had a problem with him being with the team on the sideline—nobody except me, that is.

Being third string, I didn’t expect to actually play. At halftime, we were ahead 27–19; Troy Rutledge already had fifteen points, but that wasn’t enough for his dad. Coach Rutledge certainly wanted the Otters to win, but he particularly wanted Troy to score a lot of points. Coach was a numbers guy—in business as well as sports. His job had something to do with math and money, and everyone said he was very sharp at managing both.

The game got tight in the second half. I was fine sitting on the bench—Dad was in a sour mood, and I didn’t need to make it worse by screwing up on the court. Mr. Rutledge had been pacing the sideline, scowling and growling just like a real coach in a big game on TV. He stomped over and stood directly in front of me, blocking my view.

Ready, EZ?

I was not ready.

Good. You go in for Leo next time out.

This didn’t seem wise. Leo Espada was our best ball handler. My one hope was that the game would speed along to a quick conclusion before there was a time-out. I kept an eye on the scoreboard clock and silently prayed.

The referee was a high school kid I recognized as a lifeguard from the town pool. He had a cool tattoo on his upper bicep—some kind of monster skull. Girls at the pool were always asking him about it.

My dad had told Zach and me stories about how he had been a lifeguard back in high school. There was a twinkle in his eyes when he talked about those days. It was, he’d said, possibly the best time of his life. Better than now, that’s for sure. Dad looked miserable in the folding chair at the far end of our bench, saying nothing, even when we kept missing open shots and making dumb passes.

Mr. Rutledge sprang to his feet, crossed his arms, and raised them high above his head. This, I knew, was the signal that coaches used for a time-out. I knew all the hand signals used by the referees and the coaches. Most kids didn’t. I think I knew this stuff because I spent just about all my time on the bench, watching.

Panic pounded my chest. My fingers were suddenly freezing. The ref blew his whistle. Time out.

When the game resumed, there I was on the court, shivering like a wet puppy. The gym was freezing, and I was wishing I’d worn a sweatshirt under my jersey. We had an electronic scoreboard that had been donated by the Lions Club. Home team—the Otters—was down 41–43 and forty-six seconds remained on the clock.

Instinctively, I immediately scampered toward the corner—I wanted to get as far from my dad as I could, and to a sufficiently remote region where no teammate would dare to pass to me. Why, at that moment, Troy decided to throw the ball to me, I had no idea. Maybe his dad told him to—

although that seemed unlikely. Maybe it was a deliberate prank intended to make a fool of me—that did seem possible.

Paralyzed, I watched Troy’s pass speeding my way. This was all a bad mistake. I prayed that the ball would halt, mid-air, and go somewhere else. This was happening way too fast. I was definitely not ready.

But there it was, like a meteor hurtling through space at breakneck speed, and I had no choice. I caught the ball, deep in the corner. All I knew was that I needed to get rid of it quickly. Hot potato. I could feel my dad staring at me, like there was nothing else in the entire world worth