[trekfan]

Ch. 2



The Washington Wizards — that was the team that had made the offer and it boggled Ron’s mind that they would be the ones to call him out of retirement. Across his kitchen table (which, in truth, they barely used anyway) were multiple pages — some pages belonging to the contract itself, but the bulk of the pages scattered across the table were scouting reports from the Wizards chief scout, a man Ron hadn’t been aware DC had hired.



“Winfred, you lovely *astard,” Ron said with a shake of his head. The scouting reports of Winfred Hart — or “Winter Fresh” as the players on the old Miami Heat team used to call him — were as detailed and thorough as ever. Actually, that wasn’t even true, they were more detailed and thorough than ever. The changes in technology and scouting practices over the dozen years since Ron had been a head coach had made information far easier to come by.



Arranging that information into something useful — hell, even picking the right information to include in the reports — was where the real skill was. Any scout could dig through the history of a player, but figuring out what to discard, what to keep, what to highlight, and what to outright dismiss took experience. Winfred had that in spades now.



Ron was honestly surprised the man was still just a scout, but when he had last talked to him — two years ago? Three? — Winfred had no interest in the day to day drudgery of being a GM. He had stated unequivocally that the life of a scout “was mine and I love it too much to take a break from it to get chewed out by agents.”



Winfred had included scouting reports on prospects and the current players on the Wizards roster. DC was coming off a losing year after a season where it looked like — maybe — the Wizards might have figured out how to win in the wretched East. They only managed 19 wins in 08-09 and had nearly doubled that this year.



With the 6th best odds in the lottery, they had miraculously jumped up to first overall, only the second time in their history as the Wizards that they had that spot in the draft. The last time they had the pick they had chosen Kwame Brown — and that pick had been heavily influenced by the recently hired (and recently retired) Michael Jordan.



It was a depressing history for the Wizards as it came to the draft — DC had a lot of misses and this pick was so important, so crucial to the franchise, that their owner had virtually wiped the slate clean of the front office (minus Winfred) and coaching staff. DC’s roster was a mishmash of parts.



It started with their star, Gilbert Arenas. Now 30, entering the last year of his current deal, Arenas was a veteran with a big cap hit and someone whom the fans were divided on. He put up big numbers (16-3-7 last year) but the team didn’t win with him anymore — former running mates Antwan Jamison and Caron Butler had been shipped off, so it was just Arenas left; he was still very capable, very proficient, but would he fit with the new culture Ron was going to try and create?



The SG spot was a mess — Randy Foye was pick that hadn’t panned out, Mike Miller was a veteran that was for sure gone, and Nick Young was just 25, but had barely seen the court due to being in Flip Saunders’ dog house for most of the season. There was a lot of work to be done there.



At SF was a mixture of Josh Howard (overpaid former Maverick), Al Thornton (defensively accomplished but offensively inconsistent), and Cartier Martin (buried on the bench). That spot was also a mess, no true starter there really and in need of a big change.



At PF was Andray Blatche, whom had started last season and served better as a bench player than a starting four in Ron’s opinion; Blatche just didn’t have quick enough feet for Ron’s taste on defense at PF but as a center, he was more than competent. The center spot at the moment was manned by young JaVale McGee, but the young player was raw; Ron wasn’t sure if McGee would ever be as good as scouts believed he could be.



With the 1st overall pick in the 2010 draft, DC could take any number of players to solve issues across the roster, or trade back for a bounty and bet on the veteran leadership but Ron wasn’t sure about that bet.



“Having fun?” Cynthia asked from kitchen, her face alight in amusement. She cocked her head to the side and pulled a stray blond lock behind her ear. “I haven’t seen you this engrossed in something since we did that all night Monopoly game between Leo and the Henry twins.”



“Jarvis and Desmond Henry are two of the most competitive kids I know,” Ron responded with a laugh. “They wouldn’t let me win, they wanted to be beaten to the point they had no money left.”



“You were merciless.” Cynthia smirked. “But they literally did ask for it and they seemed to have fun.”



Ron leaned back in his chair and kicked out another one. Cynthia wordlessly moved over and took a seat. He tapped the nearest paper to him. “This stuff is thorough. Winfred went to town, I feel like my brain has been injected with adrenaline.”



“Well, don’t explode your brain in this room; I will not be repainting this ever again.”



Ron smiled. “It was a pain in the *ss, wasn’t it?” He looked around the room, the walls a shade of blue-gray they both found pleasing — better than the bland eggshell white it had been for years. “We did good work, though.”



“We did,” she conceded. “Though it would have been way more helpful if you hadn’t spilled most of the first can.”



He flashed a wide grin. “True.” He looked around the room once more and then back to his wife. “Weekend projects like that will be few and far between if I take this job.”



She laughed at that. “’If’, like there’s a doubt. Ronald Bazemore, I know you and I know how much basketball means to you. Your son does, too — I couldn’t stop him from asking question after question as I tried to get him to go to bed.” She tapped at the papers. “You’re a sports junkie, you always have been.”



Ron remembered very clearly the first time she used that phrase to describe him. It had made him feel like *hit. Here, a dozen years after the first time he heard it, it was merely a fun tease, tinged with a familiar pang of guilt. “I still haven’t decided to take the job.”



She nodded. “I vote you do.”



He couldn’t hide his surprise. “You do?”



“Ron, your son isn’t a baby anymore. He’s 13 years-old, and he loves basketball like you.”



He felt another familiar pang of guilt. “I know you didn’t really want him to follow that path.”



She gave a slight shrug. “In the beginning, no. But he’s not a clone of you; he loves basketball, he’s a fabulous musician — I never dreamed in a million years he could play three different instruments. Neither of us can play one.”



“Yeah, that was … different. Where do you think he got that from?”



“Maybe your parents, maybe mine, maybe neither,” she said with a grin. “It’s unique to him — he thinks of music and basketball in such a similar way.”



“He gets lost in it.”



“Yes,” she said with a roll of the eyes. “I should count my lucky stars that only the basketball seems to find its way into my house to break things.”



“Well, if he was a rocker, he’d be breaking electric guitars every other day,” Ron joked.



Cynthia smirked. “The point is, he’s not a clone of you or me. And all he’s heard, all his life, is how good a coach you were. The stories, the championships … he never witnessed any of it. All he has is grainy video from the 90s that we have here or what he can find on the Internet.” She tapped the papers again. “I think you should take this job to show him that all of that wasn’t just a story, Ron. He wants you to have the job, he’s excited for the job, and it’s the Wizards — our local team.” She paused and then narrowed her eyes. “And I don’t think that’s a coincidence that they’re the only ones to meet those ‘conditions’ of yours.”



Ron’s face grew flush. Might as well come clean now.“It’s not a coincidence. I told Quinn they were the only team I’d accept an offer from and only if they gave me full control, top to bottom, of the team. You can imagine he was pretty unhappy at those restrictions.”



She shook her head. “You told me it was a very narrow set of conditions and I didn’t push — it was your career, we had just moved here, we had just been married a year … I guess I didn’t want to get into that.”



“I didn’t want to risk any other offer. When we decided to get married and move here, it was with the full understanding — from both of us — that we wanted our life here. We’re near your sisters, it’s a great community, Leo’s had everything we wanted for him here and that was the most important thing. If I was going to take a job, it was going to be with a team that didn’t require us to move anymore, that would let us still have our lives here without wrecking things. I remember what you said before, that you didn’t want Leo to have a father missing because of a damned game.”



She nodded. “I was angry then.”



“But you were right,” he made sure to point out. “I would have spent too much time away. With this job, I’ll still be missing for a portion of the year. It’s not a perfect offer, I still have to travel for road games.”



“But you can be back home on a lot of nights, can’t you? Half the games are in DC, you have multiple others all around the east coast, you guys would probably fly back after you’re done.”



He nodded. “You’re not wrong.” He stared at the papers, and took a deep sigh. “You’ll call me out if I get too deep?”



“Always.” She reached over and grabbed his hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “Leo wants this for you. I want this for you. We believe you can do this, Ron. You can achieve that balance, you won’t be consumed.”



He rubbed her hand with his thumb. “You have more confidence in me than I do.”



“I have the advantage of objectivity; plus, I’ve watched you grow as a person. You’re not that uber-obsessed basketball coach I met back in 1996. You know there’s a world outside the sport and, more than anything, you know those two worlds can coexist well in your life.”



He took a deep breath. “All right. If you’re sure, I’ll let Quinn know tomorrow I’m taking the job.”



She smiled. “I’m sure.” She leaned over, gave him a kiss, and whispered into his ear, “Welcome back, Coach Bazemore.”