Last Shot by John Feinstein Read Free Book Online Page A

thing or a Northern thing to always have to have the last word? He’s letting us by. If he wants to say something to make himself feel better, just let him say it.”
    “Easy for you to say—you’re not the one he stopped.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m the one who got you past him without a big scene.”
    She had him there.
    “Why are you carrying that letter around?”
    “Because I thought something like that might happen. That someone would look at me and think I’m too young to be a real reporter.”
    Stevie laughed. “Apparently that wasn’t a problem, was it?”
    She blushed a little, which pleased him. “Yeah, for once being tall worked for me. Turns out it was a good thing I had the letter, though, right?”
    “Yeah, right.”
    Stevie was glad no one was keeping score on their exchanges, because he had the sense he was in a deep hole.
    The hallway was crowded. The first locker room theycame to was marked SAINT JOE’S . There were several more guards milling around outside the door, which was open. Stevie was convinced they were all eyeing him suspiciously. He leaned around one of them to look into the locker room and saw it was empty. That made sense, since the Hawks were on the court practicing. Stevie felt slightly guilty that he wasn’t out there watching
his
team, but he had work to do. He glanced at his watch: it was 2:12. That meant he had about thirty minutes to scope the place out before the Chip Graber circus began.
    The Duke locker room, which they came to next, was just as empty as Saint Joe’s. The Blue Devils had left the building, their practice and press conferences long over. Most of the action was outside the Connecticut locker room. As a Big East fan, Stevie knew that UConn was covered by more reporters on a regular basis than any team in the country. The UConn media was known as “the Horde.”
    As Stevie and Susan Carol walked up, they could see someone being interviewed outside the locker-room door who wasn’t a player. He looked to Stevie like a coach but he knew Jim Calhoun was still in the interview room.
    “Who is that?” he asked Susan Carol.
    She shook her head, then tapped one of the reporters standing on the outside of the circle and said, “Excuse me, sir, who are you fellas interviewing?”
    The reporter looked over his shoulder and said softly, “George Blaney.”
    “Who’s that?” Stevie said.
    The reporter looked at him as if he was a kid who didn’tknow anything—which, apparently, he was. “He’s the number one assistant,” he hissed, then returned to listening intently to what Blaney was saying.
    “Whoo boy,” Stevie said to Susan Carol. “These guys must be pretty desperate, fighting to get a quote from an assistant.”
    “At Duke, Johnny Dawkins gets interviewed all the time,” she said.
    “Yeah, like I said,” Stevie said. “What do Duke and UConn have in common?”
    “Great basketball teams?”
    “And they’re both in places that don’t have pro teams, so they’re the only game in town for the media.”
    She shook her head the way his mother sometimes did when he was being obtuse. “There are three pro teams in North Carolina,” she said. “Hockey, football, basketball. Plus, the University of North Carolina is bigger than Duke in the media there because most people in the state are Carolina fans. Duke isn’t even
close
to being the only game in town. I’m sure you think that Philadelphia is the world’s greatest sports town, but North Carolina isn’t exactly Nowheresville.”
    Stevie sighed. “I stand corrected—again.”
    She smiled. “You want to go in here and try to talk to some of the players?”
    Stevie wasn’t sure. He was thinking he could write about the Horde and their quest for quotes from George Blaney as part of his story, but he didn’t need a quote for that. He spotted a sign on the wall that said MINNESOTA STATE LOCKERROOM with an arrow pointing farther down the hallway and CBS COMPOUND with an arrow pointing in