South Boston High Feature
(from 1996)

When I plugged "The Assist" by Neil Swidey (an excellent book about Charlestown High's basketball team) on ESPN.com last month, I mentioned following South Boston High's team for the entire 1995-96 season for a 15,000-word piece that never ended up getting published anywhere. At the time, it was an enormous disappointment for me, although in retrospect, my writing probably wasn't good enough. (I didn't totally know what I was doing yet, although my heart was in the right place.) A few readers e-mailed me wondering if I could post that piece, so I decided to dust it off, tighten the piece one last time and post it here in its entirety. I'll have an update about what happened to the main characters from the piece in a later post.
--Bill Simmons, May 15, 2008

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A CHAMPION REPEATS
Spending the '96 season with South Boston's High's basketball team

by Bill Simmons

Six floors high in a South End apartment building, Monty Mack gulps Kool-Aid at his kitchen table and contemplates the basketball season ahead. It's the first day of December and games begin in less than two weeks. Mack is considered the finest high school player in Massachusetts, a shooting guard with the perfect blend of assets: height (6-foot-3 and growing), athletic ability, on-court savvy, unselfishness, competitiveness and a silky-smooth jumper that projects easily to the next level. Nobody stops on a dime quite like Monty. Time and time again when it seems like he might be headed to the basket, Monty pulls up and releases a shot before the defense can react - his upper body stiff and straight, his arms outstretched, his wrists briskly snapping the ball from his chest - and the ball usually ripples through the net without scraping the rim. He makes it look easy, and for him, it is. That jumpshot is more than a gift; it’s his meal ticket, his passageway out of Southie, to college, and maybe to the NBA.

Monty plays for South Boston High, a local basketball juggernaut that cruised to the Division One state championship in March of 1995. Led by coach Bill Loughnane, a former star for Northeastern University, Southie's program is envied by every coach in the city. The Knights averaged 85 points per game over the past four years, a remarkable number considering high school contests only last for 32 minutes. The '95 team was special, Loughnane's dream come true, an intelligent and athletic group that meshed in a beautiful, breakneck harmony. During the state playoffs, where most teams advance because of one or two good players (usually tall), Southie steamrolled the field with an undersized roster that featured Monty as its second-tallest player. They rolled through the playoffs with ease, rebounding by committee, sharing the ball with an unusual level of selflessness, fighting to force turnovers on every inch of the court. For a high school team, it was an astonishing display.

The team also generated headlines for something that happened off the court, after the first day of tryouts in November of 1994, when junior forward Emir Quintana was senselessly gunned down at a local playground. The players dedicated the season to Emir and prayed for him before and after every game. When they captured the championship at the Worcester Centrum, Southie's tiny rooting section chanted "Emir! Emir! Emir!" as the final seconds wound down. His memory permeated the entire season and obscured how good the team really was. Every postgame story seemed to mention Emir within the first two paragraphs. After the clinching game, one reporter asked forward Clifton Lewis if the tragedy overshadowed the team's brilliance to some degree. Instead of being remembered as a great team, they would be remembered as “The Team That Won It All For Their Dead Teammate.” That’s just the way it was.

"That's okay," Clif smiled wistfully. "I don't mind that. We wouldn't have won if that hadn't happened, you know? Every time I got tired on the court, I thought of Emir, and I took a deep breath and kept playing. So did everyone else."

Nine months have passed. Four of Southie’s core players - Mack, Lewis, forward Roger Roberts and sixth man Benny LeBron – have returned for their senior seasons. A gifted point guard named Jonathan DePina returns as a junior. Three newcomers have been added to the mix: sophomore forwards Marvin Grayson and Hakeem Johnson, as well as junior Chris Holley, a highly regarded transfer from Lexington High. It's an accomplished, experienced bunch, maybe the most ballyhooed city team in years. Anything less than a second championship season would be considered a failure.

If he feels the pressure, Monty isn’t saying. But he’s definitely feeling something. I just asked for his feelings about the upcoming season, his final chance to play with DePina, Roberts, LeBron and Lewis, his buddies since ninth grade. "I thought about it today," Monty says, nodding. Sitting in math class with Roberts, Monty realized everything was coming to an end soon, that within a few months, the season would finish and everyone would head their separate ways. The thought startled him. He told Roberts he would miss playing with him and everyone else. Roger looked strangely at him. "I'm gonna miss playin' with you all," Monty said again.

Then class started and the moment was over.

He shouldn't have anything to worry about … but he does. Monty recently accepted a full scholarship to the University of Massachusetts, a four-year ride with one of the premier basketball programs in the country. Although he recorded a sterling 3.15 GPA for the recently-concluded fall semester, the Scholastic Aptitude Test has been a different story. According to NCAA rules, all incoming college students must crack 820 on their SAT’s to earn freshman eligibility in Division One basketball. Despite multiple tries, Monty hasn’t made it happen yet. On the final Saturday of November, armed with weeks of studying and tutoring, Monty took the test again and felt cautiously optimistic as he left. His test form was sent to a company in New Jersey; over the next few weeks, a computer system will electronically scan the hundreds of dots Monty painstakingly filled in, stamping it with a composite score within seconds.The odds are stacked against him and Monty knows this better than anyone. It's a culturally-biased test geared towards white kids from suburban prep schools, not minorities from inner-cities, and definitely not someone like Monty. Some college coaches continue to protest the unfairness of the 820-minimum, with Georgetown’s John Thompson having been the most vocal of them. Monty illustrates the limitations and prejudices of the exam. He's bright and articulate, eager to learn, willing to study, mentally strong enough to withstand any slight. Had Monty been raised in a different atmosphere with better schooling, he would have cruised through the verbal and math sections. Undoubtedly.

"I see some of the words in the vocab section and I can't even guess what they mean," Monty says. "I've never heard them in my life."

No matter. Without an 820, Monty could practice with UMass next season, travel with the team and attend school for free. But he couldn't play in games, which would obviously be a monumental setback for a young player: three years of college game experience instead of four. Optimism prevails that Monty will pass the test - he must pass the test - so it’s too early to consider an alternative scenario. If his November scores fall short, Monty will get five more chances to pass. Nobody is getting too worried about it except for him.

"I try not to think about it," he says. "I can't think about what happens if..."

He doesn't finish the sentence.

The good news? Monty has a gift and a chance. The bad news? More than a few kids left South Boston High with Monty's leverage and quickly fell off track. Loughnane has coached Southie for more than a decade, watching talents like Monty travel similar roads and somehow return to Dorchester or Roxbury or Southie within a few months after graduation. Southie's 1992 team captured the state title and was considered a better overall team than the '95 squad. Of the four seniors graduating that season, all of them had the tools to play Division One hoops, but only two remain in school today (both at junior college). The team’s biggest disappointment plays nearby at Roxbury Community College, a gifted scorer named Ricky Lambright, whose basketball ability was surpassed only by his ability to squander it.

If anything, the failures of so many players hardened Loughnane. He realized over time that he could only put these players in position to succeed. He could teach them basketball, drive them to work hard and remain courteous to others, push them in school by dispensing playing time accordingly. And that's all he could do. If they don't want it, Loughnane fervently believes, then you can't force it on them. He thinks many inner-city kids are afraid to succeed, that they dream of playing for programs like Michigan or North Carolina, but when reality hits and a smaller school looks like their only option, some of them passively-agressively give up.

This says more about urban dreams than anything. Noted black sociologist Harry Edwards travels the country explaining to black youths that the odds of playing professional basketball are impossibly remote. Currently there are 314 players in the NBA, yet hundreds of thousands of young African-Americans fantasize about NBA careers. Basketball has a powerful, potent hold over them. It offers them a chance, entices them with dreams of lucrative contracts, unites them in a common purpose ... and invariably lets them down. Our cities are filled with black adults who never made it in basketball because of bad grades or low SAT's, pregnant girlfriends, sudden family tragedies, inexplicable lapses in motivation, maybe even gangs or drugs. The failures infinitely outweigh the successes. Loughnane shakes his head when he thinks of the things that kept his players from moving to the next level.

"Something always happens," he says. "Some sort of baggage, a family thing, bad grades, something. But it always seems to happen."

Every player in the city wants to play for Loughnane, but because of zoning rules and simple geography, few get the chance. His teams run the floor like the Showtime Lakers, taking daring chances, pressing defensively all over the court and never letting up. Unlike many of his rivals, Loughnane doesn't bark out orders on every possession or scream just to make a scene; he remains serene on the sidelines during games, trusting his players will execute everything they learned from his intense practices. His players believe in him completely. They don't call him "Coach," they call him "Lock." When he points out their mistakes, they listen because Loughnane is a winner - he's won in the past and they know that if they listen, they'll win, too. He demands two things from them and only two things: Play hard on the court, and show respect to him and everyone else off it. Loughnane's players shake hands with strangers, say please and thank you, cheer for each other and look out for each other. On the surface it seems like a strange relationship – after all, Loughnane is white and all 15 Southie players are black - but it's a family in the truest sense. For many of the players, almost all of whom live in single-parent homes, Bill Loughnane is the only father figure they have.

Other than Monty, three of Loughnane’s seniors have a chance to play in college: Roger has been considering a full ride to Hofstra; LeBron is a National Honor Society member who could walk on for a number of smaller schools; and Clif’s low grades have him earmarked for Junior College right now, but if he pulls up his marks, the lanky center might sneak into a Division II or III school. Everything looks promising on paper, but Loughnane knows that anything can happen between December and September. He's seen it happen before.

The twists and turns of a high school season are more pronounced then college or professional campaigns. Just when you think a team looks unbeatable, the smallest thing can happen and they don’t look so invincible any more. During a preseason scrimmage against Gloucester on the 7th, we witness Southie's best half of basketball for the next two months. The Fishermen can't move the ball twenty feet against Southie’s vaunted fullcourt press before Mack, DePina or Roberts force a mistake. After four minutes the score is 16-5; after five minutes, 24-9; after ten minutes, 46-18. The Gloucester coach looks as if he wants to throw up. It's hard to imagine a high school team playing better basketball.

Just as quickly, it ends. Midway through the scrimmage, Lewis suffers a hip pointer just minutes before Mack suffers a hard fall and limps off with torn knee cartilage. With Lewis hobbling and Monty forced to rest for two weeks, that unmistakable aura - the swagger, the bored look of domination - goes with him. Although Southie eventually finishes the season with a 20-1 record, something vanishes when Mack goes down, an unwavering collective confidence that the Southie boys can’t be touched. This became clear on December 29th in Milton, a snowy Friday night in which Milton packed its gym with crazed fans cloaked in blood-red and pining for an upset. Before tweaking his knee, Mack had been Southie's go-to guy, the one who always came through with clutch shots and rebounds. Now that he’s playing tentatively and DePina and Roberts have stepped up, the chain of command has been altered. At least for the time being. Battling a senior-laden Milton team that reached the Division Two semifinals last season, Southie doesn’t look nearly as healthy or hungry. And that’s why they fall by five.

They won’t falter again for the rest of the regular season, prevailing in home-and-homes against a tough Charlestown team and pulling out two "character" victories at New Bedford and East Boston, gritty road games that Loughnane annually schedules because he believes they test a potential champion's mettle. Close affair, fourth quarter, crowd going crazy... nothing provides a better test for the tournament, right? And nothing feels better than quieting another team's gym, that satisfying sound of a boisterous crowd suddenly hushed by a dagger-in-the-heart three-pointer, or a twisting lay-up, or a foul shot that rattles around the rim and drops through. The coach thrives on these moments. At halftime in New Bedford, there was Loughnane standing between his players and shouting, "There's a thousand people out there cheering for them and nobody for us! It's our 14 against their one thousand! This is what it's all about!" Southie prevailed by seven. Now they’re working on a 13-game winning streak and need eight more victories for a second title: Two in the city championships (bragging rights in Boston), six in the states (bragging rights in Massachusetts). As an added wrinkle, they aren’t the favorites heading into the playoffs, not with Cambridge Rindge & Latin and Milton undefeated and the Boston Globe ranking Southie behind both of them.

With Mack finally healthy, the defending champs are insulted. Loughnane doesn’t mind; if anything, he’s playing it up. Sometimes in sports, slights are a good thing.

Eight games. Eight games in a row. They need them all.

*****

THE SHOWCASE: West Roxbury

Twenty minutes from tipoff at the Shelburne Center, spectators are already being turned away for the first round of the City Championships. The crowd is composed of three types of people: Fans, reporters, coaches and that’s it. The reporters are mostly white; you can pick them out by their pens and notepads. The coaches are also mostly white, clad in either jogging suits or three-piece suits. Everyone else is black. Everyone.

I learned how to pick out coaches at Southie's home games. Southie's entire gym might be 1/100th bigger than the circumference of the court. There are no stands, no room for cheerleaders (Southie doesn't have them, anyway) and barely enough room between the baselines and walls for two team benches and a scorer's table. Spectators stand against the walls and surround the court like sardines. Students arrive first for home games and find the best spots; coaches cram together by the door, wearing jogging suits or sweaters with their team's emblem. After games they slide up to their target - on Southie, either Roberts, Lewis, or DePina - and pull the "shake-hands/wrap-the-arm-around-the-player/ask-about-life" move. Following a few minutes of stilted conversation, they head into Loughnane's office for a few more minutes of posturing, stuff like "We think this would be a great situation for Clif," or, "If Roger can get the 900, we're all set.”

Of the hundred or so coaches in the Shelburne Center, only a few are scouting Boston English and Charlestown in the first semifinal; everyone else showed up for DePina and West Roxbury's Elton Tyler in Game Two. Both are considered locks for an elite Division One program, although feelings waver on DePina just enough that a monster performance in the playoffs would quell some unfounded doubts. The junior guard was consistently Southie's best player during the season, carrying them in Mack's absence and averaging over 20 points a game. He anchors the press, handles the ball, feeds hot teammates, controls the tempo of games, gets opposing big men in foul trouble and gets to the basket when it matters. He’s a true point guard playing for a coach who broke the career assists record at Northeastern in the late-70's, someone who believes that point guards aren't made, they're born. (Loughnane knows he's fortunate to have Jonathan, a player who sees everything his coach sees.) Although colleges worry about his outside shooting and 5-foot-10 height, DePina's boosters maintain that the shooting will come and his superior athleticism will compensate for any size issues. He’s also a smart kid, the sophomore valedictorian and a cinch to remain eligible for all four years. DePina's detractors concede those points but wonder if he's worthy of such a huge gamble. The top Division One programs usually give out no more than three or four scholarships a year. With maybe 75 upper-echelon programs, that narrows the field to around 225-250 top prospects every season. Monty Mack cracked that elite group. The jury is still deliberating on Jonathan DePina.

The 6-foot-8 Tyler is another story. Coaches love him. They break into "coach talk" when they discuss him: "great hands, active, leaper, good summer competition, bright, should make the 820.” He’s a sure thing. DePina outshines him on this particular day, thanks to Loughnane tweaking his full-court press to force the ball into Tyler's hands. An uncomfortable ballhandler more accustomed to playing near the basket, Tyler turns the ball over time and time again. Even when Westie finally gets into its halfcourt offense, Southie keeps collapsing on Tyler, triple-teaming him and daring his teammates to beat them. They can't. Southie wins by twenty. After the game, two UMass assistants hold court with Loughnane outside Southie's locker room. Other coaches pass by, shake hands, say a few quick words and move on to the next group, like something you’d see at a wedding or a political function. Everyone knows everyone and everyone's up to the same thing. The UMass coaches are waiting for Monty to get dressed so they can ask him about the 820-minimum, which he still hadn’t cracked. What's the deal? Loughnane assures them that Monty has three more chances. No one seems that concerned. Yet.

The conversation switches to Elton Tyler: "You took him out of the game completely," one of the UMass coaches tells Loughnane.

"I felt bad for him," adds the other. "He kept waiting for his teammates to help him and they never did."

"That's okay," says the first coach. "You can't really judge a player until the summer, anyway. That's when he's playing with good players, in summer ball."

Loughnane shrugs. Tyler is yesterday’s news; he's already thinking about the city championship. Boston English worries him. A prototypical city team, they'll run with Southie, they'll trash-talk with Southie, and they definitely won't be intimidated by Southie. Every player on English knows every player on Southie, which means that the game could definitely earn a PG-13 rating and its own hip-hop soundtrack. When two high school teams shift into playground mode, anything can happen. And Bill Loughnane doesn’t like the words “anything can happen.”

*****

THE CROWD-PLEASER: Boston English

Southie 64, English 45.

Um, that’s not the final score – that’s the score at the beginning of the second half. This is city basketball personified, two all-black teams just flyin' as everyone at UMass-Boston's 4,000-seat gym practically does backflips into each other. It's the biggest and blackest turnout for a Southie game all season, with the fans evenly split down the middle, half for East Boston, half for Southie. They're waiting for a rim-rattling dunk, an in-your-face blocked shot or a monster rebound pulled down in traffic and punctuated with a loud grunt ("Uhhhhh!!!!"). Any one of the three will do. This is their show. This is their championship.

You can’t overstate basketball's role in the black community. The NBA is ninety percent African-American, brimming with athletes who rose from nothing to something. Nobody gave them any help; they did it all themselves, which means anyone else could do the same. For everyone who makes it to Division One on scholarship, and for everyone makes it to the NBA or Europe, thousands of rejects are littered along the way, hopefuls who put their eggs in one basket and never planned for anything else. If you're poor and black, there are obviously other ways to become successful than basketball. Or are there? You need the right grades and SAT scores to advance to college; most urban teenagers suffer inadequate schooling (city schools are woefully funded by the states and federal government) and struggle mightily on the biased SAT tests. State universities run upwards of $10,000 for one year; private colleges like Holy Cross or Duke charge over $26,000-per-year for tuition, room, and board. Thus, the number of lower-class minorities who qualify for college and can afford college is agonizingly small.

For the Southie kids, sports (and music, to a lesser extent) is a powerful lure. Monty, Jonathan, Roger, Cliff, Marvin and sophomore Shawn Funches dream of playing basketball at least through college. Benny, Hakeem, and sophomore Thomas Grupee love basketball but realize good marks give them a better chance for a college scholarship. Poor Grupee is even considered somewhat of an iconoclast by teammates because of his intense devotion to classes and extracurricular activities. For someone like Roger, he’s a target – little digs here and there, all of them innocent, all of them with a hidden meaning. Roger might be a better basketball player, but Grupee has a better chance of getting out. Of course, Roger doesn’t realize this. Or maybe he does.

Society doesn’t glorify kids like Grupee, the ones who defy the odds and make something of themselves simply by studying and staying out of trouble. We reward the ones who escape the streets by rapping or dunking. It's the easy way out, the glorified path. Nike and Reebok spend millions on advertising campaigns that venerate athletes. Professional teams frantically change uniforms to attract consumers, usually kids, to the degree that 12 of the 29 NBA teams introduced new uniforms this season. Instead of idolizing writer John Edgar Wideman or movie directors Spike Lee or John Singleton, kids gravitate towards Penny Hardaway and Ice Cube, the ones with posters, commercials, videos and million-dollar homes. Celebrities held in greatest esteem are ones who succeed and repay their debts, like the late Celtic Reggie Lewis (who worked tirelessly in the Boston community) or rapper Tupac Shakur (who weaves stories in his raps and eschews the more commercial hip-hop style). They are few and far between. Most who succeed never look back.

The Southie players talk frequently about "getting out." On the January bus trip to New Bedford game, I noticed two junior varsity players sitting near the back and assumed they had been promoted to the varsity. When I asked assistant coach Bob Healey about them, he shook his head no. They weren't on the varsity; they were just along for the trip. "Billy lets 'em come and sit on the bench if they want," Healey told me. "Some of them just want to get away from home if they can, especially at night, when they don't feel safe. They just feel like getting out for a few hours."

Getting out. Some choose to escape the ghetto through the golden paths: sports, music or school. Some try and fail. Some, like Monty's mother, survive by working long hours in thankless jobs for low pay (she works 60-70 hours per week). Others deal drugs or join gangs. It's a unique culture, a community marred by violence and poverty, bound by dreams and despair. And the city championship is their game. The fans yell throughout - "Show 'em Monty! Show 'em why you goin' to UMass!" or "Shove it in that nigga's face, Clif!" - and the players respond in style. The pace is breathtaking, the banging fierce. English's players hammer anyone leaping for a layup or dunk. At one point Clif stalks off the court after drawing his third foul – he retaliated against a shove with a shove of his own – but not before turning back and yelling to a referee, "They're doin' that shit on FUCKIN' PURPOSE, MAN!" as the fans giggle like schoolkids. Later in the second half, Clif breaks loose on a breakway and readies his feet for a hellacious dunk, with the crowd gasping and rising to its feet... only Clif slips and tumbles out of bounds. It's the biggest disappointment of the night.

Southie ends up squandering a 20-point lead and holding on for a wild 109-101 win. Loughnane can't even find the strength to get upset after the game. The pace had been too frenetic. You can't really coach a game like that; you just hold on for the ride. With the tournament coming up in five days, he's happy they exorcised such a hectic game from their system. Six wins to go.

*****

THE OPENER: Medford

Five days later, Southie thrashes Medford, 93-78, to open its title defense. Jonathan simply goes bonkers: 25 points in the first half, 39 for the game. Medford can't handle him. That doesn’t stop it from being a dissatisfying game for everyone involved. Smelling a potential “DiPina Scores 50” headline in the second half, Jonathan looks for his own shot time and time again. When Roger responds by looking for his own shot, the team quickly degenerates into “I’m getting mine” mode. Monty and Clif are despondent after the game. Poor Clif kept hustling down court on fast breaks, filling the wing and waiting for passes that never came. And Monty was the best player on the court, playing an admirably unselfish game, making big steals, throwing outlet passes... and never seeing the ball again. He finished with just 14 points.

Stewing outside the locker room afterwards, Loughnane looks more irritated than anyone. Medford wasn't a challenge so his players went for their own stats. It's a scenario he desperately seeks to avoid. Unlike practically every coach in the state, Loughnane refuses to keep statistics for his players. Rebounds? Assists? Steals? Points-per-game? No way. Statistics lead to selfishness, Loughnane believes. Two rebounders battling for the team lead might knock a ball out of bounds trying to rip a board away from one another. Two scores battling for the team lead might subconsciously start looking for their own shots. A point guard trying to lead the state in assists might start frowing if someone botches a pass. That’s why Southie's stats aren’t tallied until after the season. The Boston Globe lists the top ten scorers in Division One every week, but you’ll never see a Southie player on that list. If it’s frustrating for them – like DePina, whose estimated 20 points a game would put him fifth in the state right now – they never mention it. But DiPina’s quest to grab that headline and impress a few scouts, in its own little way, validated Loughnane’s stance on numbers.

When the team's school bus drops the players off after the game, Roger walks by and notices my scoresheet.

"How many points I have?" he asks.

"Twenty-two."

"How 'bout Monty?"

"Fourteen."

Roger nods and walks off the bus with Jonathan. Not a good sign.

That night I drive Benny to the Fleet Center for a Celtics-Hornets game, finally asking him about Medford as he’s fiddling with my radio. Everyone looked unhappy, I tell him. Benny nods. He talked to Monty after the game; Monty was really upset. They planned on talking to the team tomorrow. They needed to stop this before it spiraled out of hand. The chemistry of a basketball team is incredibly fragile; one perceived slight takes a life of its own. And Benny knows this better than anyone.

He's the lifeblood of the team, the hub of every bus activity and conversation, the team’s comedian, everybody’s friend. Benny grew up in the Dominican Republic and speaks with a wild, high-pitched accent that’s straight out of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. He knows everyone in the community - the kids from Columbia Point, the homeboys from Orchard Park, the gangsters in Southie, the hoods from Cambridge, everybody. Known as "B-Rat" because of his skinny face and slight overbite, wherever Benny goes, someone always seems to be screaming out "Hey, Rat!" or "Wassup B-Rat!" He knows where every party is happening, knows the origin of every gang disturbance, knows every face on the street that should make you either look down or cross to the other side. Monty remembers how a bunch of them were driving to a party in Roxbury one night; Clif took a wrong turn and ended up getting lost. Benny looked up from the backseat in mid-conversation, leaned forward, and gave pinpoint directions to the place complete with street names. When they arrived at the party, everyone turned and looked at Benny in disbelief.

He's probably the smartest kid on the team, intelligent enough to qualify for potential academic scholarships at Howard, Hampton, and Boston University. No small feat. Of everyone on the team, he probably had the worst family life. Passed around. It's another inner-city phrase. Like so many people in the city, Benny was passed around, living with his mother, his father, and now with his older sister. There was even a time in ninth grade when he slept on Monty's sofa for much of the year. Of anyone on the team, Benny was probably the most likely candidate to get derailed as a youngster, especially when many of his childhood friends started voyaging down nefarious paths. One time we were driving back to Dorchester and I asked what he would have done if he hadn't ended up playing basketball.

"I don't really know,'' he said. "I probably would have joined a gang or something."

When I asked him why, Benny shrugged.

"I dunno. Nothin' else to do, you know?"

Fortunately for Benny, his closest friends loved basketball: Monty, Jonathan, Roger, and Shannon Crooks (now an Everett High star). A 5-foot-10 shooting guard, Benny made Loughnane's team as an 11th-grader and emerged as the team's sixth man, a pleasant surprise and someone who seems to galvanize Southie every time he does something good. He plays 10-15 minutes a game and knows his role. He’s also never been to a Celtics game before; the only time he visited the old Garden was when Southie played there in the State Semifinals last year. During this particular game, Benny cheers wildly for Charlotte's Kenny Anderson, his favorite player in the league. Kenny ends up with 16 points and 11 assists but Boston pulls off a surprising win. Still juiced up as we drive back to Dorchester after the game, Benny’s blood is still boiling because Anderson nearly fought Boston's Todd Day at the tail end of the game. "Kenny woulda kicked his ass!" Benny shrieks. "Woulda whupped his ass."

Traffic on Route 93 backs up from Quincy to Boston, so we slice through Roxbury to hit Benny’s house. Cruising through sparsely lit and eerily quiet roads, Benny explains in detail how the gangs rule Dorchester and Roxbury. He knows them all. Everyone does. Each gang controls a strip of territory in the area, the most coveted being Columbia Point (Roxbury) and Orchard Park (Dorchester), where drug traffic is highest. Kids are lured into the drug scene as early as eleven or twelve years old, knowing they can earn pocket money "running" drugs from gangs to users. It seems innocent for a time, an easy way to make a few bucks. Soon their workload increases. Maybe they join the gang. They feel a sense of camaraderie and family they've never felt before. As they become older and more street-smart, they start getting used to having that extra cash in their pockets. They would do anything to remain in the gang. Anything.

"You just get sucked in," Benny says. "And that's that."

He tells me the story of two rival Boston gangs who've been feuding since 1984. It all started when one gang member's jacket was stolen by a rival gang member. Benny even remembers the kid's name. Since then, the two gangs have fought violently and frequently. Benny calls it "beefing." Some members have died. Some have gone off to jail. More are headed one of those two ways. The feud carries on, with no sign of abating anytime soon.

"Doesn't that sound stupid?" I ask him. "I mean, even as you're explaining it? All over one measly jacket?"

"It's all about respect," Benny shrugs. "All some people have are their reputations. That's the most important thing. If someone fucks with that, it's their ass. If people lose respect for you, than you have nothin.' That's why people beef all the time."

"You ever get scared?" I ask him. "Like walking home at night or anything?"

"No," he says, shaking his head. "I know everybody around here and everybody knows me. They know I'm on the basketball team, so..."

"What do you mean?"

"People usually don't mess with basketball players unless there's a really good reason, you know?"

"I don't understand," I say again.

Benny looks at me and shrugs.

"They just don't," Benny says.

*****

THE TUNE-UP: Peabody

Another snowstorm (the eighth of the year) cancels Southie's second round matchup on Saturday, which gets made up the following Monday at Salem (a neutral site). It's another tune-up game. Southie runs on all cylinders in the first half, jumping to a 44-28 lead against a slower Peabody team with DePina (16 points) dominating the action again. During one stretch he pulls up for a jumper that ripples through the net, steals the ball and careens down the floor for a twisting lay-up, then grabs the ensuing rebound, flies down the floor, and tosses a no-look pass to Roger, who finishes the play with a double-pump, reverse lay-up. Jonathan can be painfully shy and withdrawn off the court, even monosyllabic with strangers and reporters. On the court, he's simply unstoppable. No point guard in the state can approach him.

Worried about Clif (a non-factor in the first half) at halftime, Loughnane starts the second half by calling a deliberate “alley-oop” play where Monty tosses the ball near the rim and Clif hopefully stuffs it home. Peabody bites on the backdoor cut, Monty throws a perfect lob and suddenly there's Clif... rising, rising, rising and violently slamming the ball through the hoop. The crowd explodes, and so does Clif, who spends the next few minutes flying around the court like he just inhaled ten Diet Cokes. Southie coasts to a 70-45 lead before settling for an 18-point win.

"Once Cliff gets that dunk in, he's a different player," Loughnane tells reporters after the game. "He needs to have that one big play to get himself going."

Since Cambridge Rindge & Latin (Patrick Ewing’s old school) is playing Beverly in the following game, many Southie players stick around to “scout” them. The two powerhouses have been circling each other all season, ever since Cambridge vaulted to the number-one ranking in the Globe's Top-20 poll after Southie's loss to Milton, where they have remained all season, unbeaten and increasingly confident. Before the tournament began, Cambridge coach Kevin Moore upped the stakes by telling the Boston Herald, "We know we're gonna be there (in the North Sectional Finals), we just hope Southie makes it." The Southie seniors were bitterly offended at the slight, so much so that Benny read the article before practice the following day. If they ever needed a motivating force, this was it. They were the champs, not Cambridge. They had been ignored by the two local newspapers all season, as if the 1995 championship was some sort of aberration. Now they finally had their rallying cry. If 1995 was about Emir Quintana, then 1996 would be about respect.

As they watch Cambridge and Beverly, the boys start jawing with Cambridge's fans and cheerleaders, some good-natured, old-fashioned trash-talking that never gets out of hand. Beverly happens to be playing out of their minds, jumping to a one-point halftime lead as the Southie kids joyously chant "Over-rated! Over-rated!" Cambridge's cheerleaders prance over to Southie's section and the two sides engage in some high-pitched yelling and screaming, all in good fun. The cheerleaders yap about the Milton loss; the Southie players yap about being defending champs. Police officers nervously watch the group and hope things won't escalate. Roger gets the last word by strutting into the middle of the crowd and performing a little jig, holding his red "1995 State Champs" letterjacket above his head and going "Uhhhh! Uhhhh!" Classic Roger. He’s the only player on the team who could pull that moment off.

To nobody’s surprise, Cambridge blows Beverly out in the second half as the lively trash-talking continues in the stands. One fan confidently declares that Cambridge star Donnie Joseph jumps higher than Clif, whose eyeballs nearly fly out of his head upon hearing the claim. "That nigga can't jump half as high as me!" Clif screams, and the two sides yap back and forth. More animated than I've ever seen him, Clif finally turns back to the game and mutters, "Y'all been eatin' too many Sugar Smacks."

When another Cambridge fan tells Roger he’s overrated, Roger turns around, eyebrows raised. "Who are you?" he sneers. "What college y'all playin' for next year?"

"Where you playin' next year?" the fan answers.

"I'm goin' Div. One, baby. I'm getting looked at by Hofstra, B.U. and Florida International. Monty's goin' to UMass, full ride. Jonathan's getting recruited by Duke and Kansas. Cliff's goin' Div. One, too. Where are your boys goin'?

"Donnie's goin' to Maryland next year," the fan answers.

"Maryland? Maryland?" Roger giggles like a madman. "If Donnie goes to Maryland, I'll retire from basketball! That nigga couldn't play for Maryland Country Day!"

"He's better than you, dog! You're overrated."

"I'm goin' Div. One. How 'bout you?"

"So am I."

"Yeah, maybe Div. One ballet."

Everyone giggles at that one. Even if the fan realizes that nobody wins a trash-talking contest with Roger and shuts up, a testy dialogue between the Southie and Cambridge sides continues for the rest of the game, punctuated with more and more expletives and a growing hostility. When we rise to leave after Cambridge clinches the win, one of their fans tosses a Nestle Crunch bar that nails Benny in the eye. Benny erupts and tries to climb into the stands. Clif holds him back like Bundini Brown holding back Muhammad Ali. The Nestle Crunch thrower walks down and holds his arms out, telling Benny to make his move. Everyone stands up. There's genuine violence in the air.

Fortunately for everyone, the policemen rush over and mediate a five-minute shouting match that never spirals out of hand. Benny can’t calm down; he’s angrier than I've ever seen him before. It wouldn’t make sense if we hadn’t had the "It's all about respect" conversation in my car. Now I get it. He’s defending his reputation. If he backed away, somebody might lose respect for him. Even after everything settles down, Benny continues playing the part of the aggrieved gangster, yapping and scowling and pushing teammates away as they take turns calming him down. "I'm B-Rat!" he screams. "I don't take shit from nobody!" We finally throw him in my car and drive back to Boston - me, Roger, Jonathan, Benny, and a junior named Robert Bernard. Still worked up, Benny swears and rants and raves for a good 15 minutes straight. Roger sulks over the "over-rated" comment. Jonathan seethes that someone said Cambridge's point guard, Jeremy Collins, was faster than him. Everyone's angry. I'm not even on the team and I'm angry.

"We're gonna kick their ass next week!" Benny vows. "We still can't get any goddamned respect!"

*****

THE SCARE: Everett

For the revenge game against Cambridge to happen, Southie needs to defeat Everett on a blustery Friday night. The Red Raiders play tough defense, run the floor and rarely make mistakes. They also have Shannon Crooks, a talented junior rumored to be heading for Boston College in two years. Crooks played summer league ball with the three Southie stats and also happens to be Benny's best friend, a Roxbury kid who landed in Everett through the ridiculous busing system. Everyone on Southie respects Shannon Crooks, especially Loughnane, who believes his team could only lose to someone with a true superstar, a stud who can match Monty and Jonathan point for point and carry his team for two halves. Shannon Crooks is that good.

There are three other concerns: Southie only practiced twice all week (yet another snowstorm canceled school for two days); the game's being played in Reading, which means Everett will have its usual 2,000 fans and Southie will have its usual 100-150; and there's always a danger the players might look ahead to Sunday's potential showdown against Cambridge.

"Billy's pretty tense," Bob Healey confides before the game. "He's really scared about this one."

With reason. Roger comes out banging three-pointers (he has 15 by half-time) but Everett fends off the initial assault and cuts it to six when DePina twists his right ankle on a drive and hobbles out of the game. Southie somehow extends their lead to 12 at halftime, but it's clear DePina isn't the same in the second half. When Chris Holley picks up his fourth foul with 11:00 left and DePina gets whistled for his third 30 seconds later, you can feel the momentum shifting. The lead falls to eight, then six. Crooks seems to be heating up. The Everett fans are rocking and rolling. Like always, the Southie kids need to quiet the crowd and drive a stake into them.

It feels like a road game, and for all intents and purposes, it is. Nobody has worse support than the Southie kids. During the 60’s and 70’s, the team had more diehard fans than any school in the state, passionate Irish-Catholics who traveled to every game and remembered the names of every Southie player (including future Boston mayor Ray Flynn). Because of busing, things quickly changed. This isn't your typical high school anymore, with local kids who grew up dreaming about playing for the town team. Most of Southie's student body is bused from Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan (by law South Boston High is only 17% white). Of the 15 players on the team, only three live in Boston or South Boston. So the townies don't really feel like Southie is their team, and the students can't stick around for home games because they're already being bused back home. If anything, the townspeople resent the high school for busing in so many kids, blaming the policy on a general increase of neighborhood crime. Tensions between the town and school deteriorated so badly that in 1993, a rock/bottle-throwing incident outside the school escalated into a near-riot.

Busing is a strange phenomenon. When Chris Holley decided to leave Lexington High last season to play closer to home, he chose Southie because they were the defending champs and their players got free Reeboks. A Roxbury resident, he didn't know many kids at the school. But he came anyway. Like nearly every other Southie player, Holley never has any family at games. (Only Jonathan's father and three uncles attend Southie games regularly.) So few teachers and administrators attend that by the end of the season, I recognize all of their faces. Hence, you can’t call it a surprise that Southie's tiny cheering section is being drowned out by Everett's passionate fans. You also can’t call it a surprise when Loughnane takes over the game. With the lead dwindling to five with nine minutes to play, he calls for a deadly "three-man weave" where Monty, Roger and Jon dribble the clock away and force Everett out of their 2-3 zone. Still - still! - Everett won't go away. Crooks knocks home a jumper to cut it to one, driving the near-partisan Everett crowd into a frenzy. Loughnane calls time-out. It's something he rarely does, preferring to let the players control the pace of the game. Not this time.

"This is what it's all about!" Lock screams in the huddle. "Right here! Let's shut those fans up!"

Everett misses to take the lead with three minutes to play. Jonathan answers with a free throw to put Southie up by two. Then Southie shows why they're champions, rising against the perceived challenge, refusing to die, refusing to relinquish what's theirs. Roger draws a key charge on the defensive end. Cliff takes a pass from Benny and converts an enormous three-point play. After Everett makes two freebies, Loughnane calls another time-out and encourages Monty to drive to the hoop against Crooks, who has four fouls. Monty does just that. Crooks fouls him, just like Loughnane predicted. So long, Shannon Crooks. Monty makes both free throws and grabs the deciding defensive rebound in traffic with forty seconds to play, one of those rebounds that great players haul down in big moments. It's why he's headed to UMass next season.

Southie escapes, 68-60, quieting the crowd for good. They huddle in the middle of the floor after it's over, pray for Emir and chant "Southie rocks!" at the end, just like always. Loughnane walks slowly to the locker room, pale and exhausted, hoping this was their biggest test.

He's the best coach in the state. In 1992, the year of his first championship, Loughnane guided Southie all the way without any assistants, an unheard-of feat in high school basketball. Recently (and begrudgingly) he added two unpaid assistants - Pat Harrington, a young coach hoping to parlay his Southie experience into a head job somewhere, and Healey, the school's successful soccer coach who deals with "personality management," as he says (a conduit between Loughnane and the players). Sometimes Loughnane's childhood friend Tom Egan accompanies the team as well, mainly to serve as Loughnane’s sounding board for when the coach throws up his hands and says, "What's Rog-ah doin'?"

There have been rumbles that Loughnane might ditch Southie soon, maybe to follow in the footsteps of someone like Mike Jarvis, who parlayed the Cambridge R & L job into gigs at Boston University and George Washington. It seems far-fetched. Not only has he lived in the area for his entire life, but he’s tight with his players and also happens to be highly-regarded math teacher at South Boston. Some feel the recruiting aspects of the job would turn him off; the constant schmoozing and ass-kissing seems out of character for someone as direct as Loughnane. He’s fiercely loyal to his players and disdains any credit or acclaim, giving him something in common with few college coaches. Our in-season conversations were always like chess matches, with the coach steadfastly refusing to say anything substantial that I could use. He doesn't trust anyone who could potentially affect his team, especially people holding pens or recorders. Over the season we gained a mutual respect; he came to respect my knowledge of the game and his team, while I came to respect his space and his inability to be totally candid while the season was happening.

"Billy's the best coach on the earth," says Healey. "People always ask if I'll replace him when he leaves here. Why would I do that? How could you replace a guy like that?"

Adds Rocky DiLorenzo, the athletic director for Boston schools: "He has the best program in the state. He has a knack for coaching city kids, this knack for letting them make their own decisions on the court and just letting them play. Because of Billy, Southie's become the city's signature program of the nineties."

Don't tell Loughnane that. He'll simply shrug his shoulders and say it's not true. But it's the way he deals with players that sets him apart. He's incredibly picky about the composition of the team, excluding talented players who might complain on the bench in favor of less-talented players who relish being part of the team. He only allows good kids, a precedent that began in his first season when Loughnane kicked off his best player because the kid was "a jerk," as he puts it. No jerks. He makes that clear on the first day of tryouts. Once when the players were gabbing on the bus about one student who - they presumed - would be playing on the team next year, Loughnane frowned. "There's no way he'll ever play for me," he said. "He's the kind of kid who's been shot."

Every year he allows one project, a kid who could go one way or the other, someone who might straighten out his life by being on a quality team and hanging out with good kids like Benny and Monty. This year's gamble is Shawn Funches, a lightning-fast sophomore from Columbia Point who hails from a legendary family on the streets, the kind of clan with cousins and second cousins and nephews around every corner. Shawn missed a number of practices during the season, but near the end he started arriving on time and excelling in scrimmages. Just as he played himself into the rotation, he missed the bus for the Peabody game. Loughnane was disappointed but not upset. He's keeping Shawn on a loose leash this year. Next year, when the team will be relying on him to possibly replace Monty, that leash will grow considerably shorter. Only Jonathan has more athletic ability than Shawn Funches.

"It's all up to Shawn," said Loughnane once. "I can't make him be on time. I can't keep him out of trouble. Next year he'll have to make a full commitment to the team or we'll find somebody else."

Infamous for his bluntness and biting sarcasm, Loughnane never stops joking with players or ripping them with his thick Boston accent. The players love it. One time on the bus, Monty was telling the story of how Benny and Roger were banned from "Burger King" for starting a food fight. "It musta been somebody else's food," joked Loughnane, who constantly hounds Roger about his weight. "Rogah wouldn't throw his own hamburgah." He's always keeping their egos in check. He teases junior Abens Maurice relentlessly about his looks because Abens fancies himself as somewhat of a ladies man. ("You're too ugly to have a date tonight, Awbs"). When Roger appeared in a full-page Bank of Boston advertisement, Loughnane taped the ad up in his office and proceeded to make fun of it for the rest of the week ("I can't believe they fit his huge pumpkin head on one page"). He's their coach, friend, mentor and father-figure. When Emir Quintana died in November of '94, the news devastated Loughnane but he couldn’t fold in front of the players. If he folded, so would they. The coach kept his emotions in check though the funeral and the wake, even when Roger was sobbing uncontrollably in church, even when they helped carry Emir's coffin to its final resting place. Benny remembers one thing about that day besides the sweeping sadness - his coach's face. Grim. Pale. Glassy-eyed. In shock. But in control.

"I'll never forget Lock that day," Benny told me once. "You could see it in his face how sad he was, but he never showed it. That's why he's the coach. That's why he's family to us. That's why we wanted to win last year - for him and for Emir."

*****

THE FINAL EXAM: Cambridge Rindge & Latin

If last year was for Lock and Emir, then this year is for respect. And now, it's slipping away.

It's the North Sectional finals - The Game Of The Year - and Cambridge has just taken their first lead (44-43) with 11:45 to play. Four thousand fans at UMass-Boston are alternately going out of their minds and holding their collective breath. The dragon is about to be slain. The bigger Cambridge players have adjusted to a furious pace and slowly assumed control of the paint, grabbing every rebound and pounding the offensive boards for putbacks. Battling four players taller than 6-foot-3, it doesn’t seem like Southie can fend them off much longer, not even when Chris Holley comes out of nowhere and briefly takes over the game. He takes a feed from Jonathan, careens towards the hoop, makes the “And-one!” lay-up and converts the free throw. Then he takes another DePina pass for another lay-in. Then he rebounds an errant freebie, jumps back up, draws another foul, and hits the two free throws. Seven straight points and Southie's lead has risen back to five.

Doesn’t matter. The Cambridge kids just won't go away. With DePina hampered by a gimpy ankle and Roger struggling with a sprained wrist suffered in the first half, the Dragons score 10 of the next 12 points to grab a 60-59 lead with six minutes to play. Monty answers with a huge three-point bomb from the corner. After Cambridge ties it at 62-all, Monty draws a foul and hits two free throws. Then Holley rebounds a Cambridge shot, tosses it to Roger, runs the floor, and receives the return pass for another twisting lay-up. Cambridge tries to answer but misses and Holley emerges from the pack with another huge rebound. With 1:51 left, Monty dishes to Cliff for a back-breaking lay-in. Leading by six, Southie has survived everything Cambridge has to offer.

This is ours.

When the final buzzer sounds (75-68), the Southie kids leap into a gleeful pile at mid-court, chanting "Fleet! Fleet!" because Tuesday's state semifinal will be played at the spanking-new Fleet Center. After finishing off hugs in a joyous locker room, they proudly pass around the North Sectional championship plaque. Benny starts doing a strip tease in the middle of the room, singing "We goin' to the Flllllleeeeeeeeeeet." Abens joins him and they gyrate wildly like bellydancers.

In the middle of this chaos, Holley quietly enters having just talked to more media members then he'd ever seen in his life. Monty spots him, walks over and simply wraps his arms around him. Just a year ago, Holley has been averaging over 20 a game as a sophomore for Lexington Hight. When he transferred to Southie in the fall, Loughnane explained that he already had three scorers; what he didn't have was someone else like Clif, someone to bang in the trenches with taller players and run the wing on fast breaks. Can you handle that? Loughnane asked. That's what we need from you. So Holley did the dirty work. For most of the year, he played for Southie but didn’t totally feel like he was defending anything. He hadn't won with them when it really mattered. At least not yet. There was a moment at East Boston in January, when Holley dribbled down the right wing and soared in the air as an East Boston forward soared with him... only Chris was soaring higher... and higher... and then he was DUNKING the ball one-handed on this poor kid's head, an absolutely vicious, gut-wrenching slam. It was the most exciting moment of the season. In the cramped East Boston gym, fans actually jumped forward onto the court in sheer delight and hugged one another like they had just won the lottery. The referees stopped the game for a few seconds to calm things down, but the ecstatic Southie players continued to point at him and high-five each other from the bench. And Chris Holley finally felt like part of the team.

Now he has Monty hugging him in the locker room. Sixteen points, fifteen rebounds. Southie needed them all. They wouldn't have won without him. "Thank you," Monty whispers into his ear, continuing to squeeze him. "Thank you."

The rest of the players swagger around the locker room, whooping and high-fiving and getting their money’s worth. Beyond earning their the Fleet Center trip, they vanquished a team that hadn't shown them enough respect. The Southie players and Cambridge players also know each other (Cambridge dips into the Mattapan/Roxbury/Dorchester group as well), giving the Southie boys has something to brag about all summer. Ironically, they hadn't even played that well. DePina and Roberts had subpar games; only Monty (23 points) and Chris excelled. It was the kind of game champions tend to win, when they prevail even if they aren’t at their collective best, when size doesn’t matter and neither does a dwindling fan base that was outnumbered ten-to-one.

"I guess we aren't wearing these jackets by mistake," Roger hisses as he slips into his red, "1995 State Champion" letterjacket. He nods defiantly, still wearing his game-face, and slaps Benny's hand. "All that shit they were talkin.' They can come see us play Tuesday."

"At the Fleet Center!" Benny adds, high-fiving Roger again. "Six dollars a ticket!"

Even Loughnane seems satisfied. The following afternoon he sits in his little basketball office reading newspaper accounts of the game. The Herald ran a picture of Jonathan and Chris on its front page which has everyone in school buzzing. Still, there's one quote from the Cambridge coach that bothers him. Moore had told both local papers: "I still feel we have the better team." Even though I know he'll come up with some typically-evasive response, I ask Loughnane about the quote. You never know.

Loughnane peers up from the sports section and frowns, his face finally breaking into a satisfied smile. After 3-and-a-half months, he finally decides to throw me a bone.

"All I know is one thing," he tells me, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "We're playing tomorrow and they're not."

*****

THE LETDOWN: Brookline

With everything pointing towards Cambridge for three months, what happens now? That’s the question. When the Brookline game starts in the Fleet Center two days later, you can tell the Southie boys can’t summon the right level of intensity. DePina looks terrible, Roger is in a funk, Cliff is jogging around. Only Monty delivers with 19 points in the first 12 minutes. He's pumping his fist, slapping butts, imploring teammates and playing out of his mind. It looks like he might score fifty points.

Only one problem: Roger and Jonathan stop feeding him the ball.

Monty - smokin' hot, in the zone - finishes with just 29 points. Three different times Roger spots Monty wide-open on a fast break and drives to the basket instead. Even reporters who haven't seen Southie all season pick up on the selfishness. Still, Southie possesses too much raw talent to stumble against Brookline, the quintessential "happy to be there" team from the suburbs. Maybe Brookline plays admirable, mistake-free basketball, about as well as they can play, but Southie still cruises by twelve. Monty and the gang don't even really celebrate after it's over. The Fleet Center seems to epitomize everything: It’s not the Boston Garden. It doesn't smell like it or feel like it. It’s not like last year. After the game, it’s difficult to discern whether Southie won or lost; nobody played together and nobody is speaking after the game. Walking out of the Fleet Center, Chris Holley breaks the silence by yelling to himself, "Come on, y'all, we got to start playin' ball!" It's a bizarre scene. Maybe the players finally realized that nothing could ever top the emotion and purpose from last season. Maybe the allure of college ball shifted the collective focus of the team. Maybe it was both.

Loughnane is bitterly disappointed, more distraught than I've ever seen him. "They iced Monty," Lock grumbles after the game, sitting on the schoolbus, waiting to go home. "He could have had 40 or 50 points and they fuckin’ iced him."

Roger, Jon and Benny skip the bus and head home with friends, another bad omen for a potential upset in the Finals. Roger submitted a suicidally bad game. With Boston University finally showing interest in him, head coach Dennis Wolff showed up and caught Roger’s worst game of the year: only nine points and at least 9 turnovers. If he came away thinking Roger was a selfish showboat, you couldn't have blamed him. He would also be wrong. Blessed with more natural talent than anyone on the team, no Southie player brings fans out of their seats quite like Roger, whether it's a no-look pass, a double-pump reverse lay-up or his patented between-the-legs, behind-the-back, step-back, in-your face three-pointer. Roger also has serious style, a charisma that can’t be taught or learned. The coolest player on the court, he never exerts too much energy and never stops regarding opponents with complete disdain. Over everything else, he hates looking bad. During the Peabody game - a blowout where the officials were letting fouls go to hurry the ending - Roger was blocked from behind on a lay-up and absolutely flattened. No call. Roger picked himself up, frowned, dusted himself off, and frowned for the rest of the game. It ruined the victory for him.

He's simply the most interesting guy on the team. Monty gives Southie a go-to guy; Jonathan runs the show; Benny leads in the locker room; Chris and Cliff do the dirty work. Roger provides the swagger and sets the tone. When Roger plays well, Southie wins. When Roger is trash-talking and going to the basket? Southie is unstoppable. Nobody has better moves around the basket; nobody except Monty has better shooting range. His teammates absolutely revere him. They think Roger Roberts can do anything.

"Rog can play at any level he wants, no doubt," Monty said once. "He gets better when the players around him are better. I know he's gonna make it."

Every good basketball team invarably has one player who enjoys testing his coach. For Loughnane, Roger is the burden. He saunters around with a slight limp and a comfortable grimace, always looking injured even when he’s healthy. He’s the one who turns to spectators during scrimmages and starts conversations; the one who takes one final shot two seconds after the coach gathers the team at midcourt; the one who suddenly starts loafing during a running drill with phantom back pains. Loughnane allows him considerable leeway because, after all, Roger is Roger, the leader of the team and one of its best three players. Lock knows exactly how to handle him. When Roger has his little on-court funks, most coaches would ask, "Are you okay?" or scream "Come on, Roger, you're doggin' it!" Loughnane puts the burden on Roberts: You want a rest, Rog-ah? Knowing Roger would never ask out of a game, he appeals to his pride as an athlete and competitor.

During an early-season scrimmage against Walpole with Monty sidelined, Roger played the best stretch of basketball from a Southie player all season. He rained three-pointers, grabbed every loose ball and stray rebound, found teammates with outrageous passes... I mean, he dominated the game. Then curiously - with Southie up by a considerable margin - he let up. Loughnane noticed immediately. "Rog-ah, you wanna come out?" he asked.

Roberts shook his head no. His play immediately picked up. Loughnane laughed about it later, saying, "Rog is so talented. The only thing that can stop Roger is Roger. Even against Walpole, I think he could have played even better than he did. Just once I want to see him leave everything he has on the court."

Maybe there's a reason for that. If the Brookline game showed anything, it illustrated the complex relationship between Monty and Roger: Teammates for four years, summer-league teammates, close friends and unspoken rivals. Ever since the ninth grade, Monty generated most of the publicity. Monty received most of the letters and phone calls from college. Monty made the "All-Scholastic" teams in every newspaper. Monty earned the basketball scholarship from UMass. Even if Roger's best game equals Monty's best game, Monty’s consistency sets him apart and Roger knows it. So Roger tantalizes everyone with unstoppable stretches, always leaving them wanting something more. I could never decide whether he acts that way because of Monty or because that's simply who he is. Like Dennis Johnson, the former Celtic, Roger's best games always seem to happen against good teams and his worst games against bad teams. He has no tolerance for inferior opponents. None. In the Peabody game, Roger up-faked an opponent who crashed into him and landed clumsily at Roger's feet. Roger stood over him and shot him a look of utter contempt, a scowl that said the guy didn't even belong on the court with him. It was an unforgettable moment.

So maybe the Brookline game was inevitable. Roger didn't really respect them. Monty caught fire early. Boston University was there for Roger, he knew it... and he tried to do too much. It makes sense when you rationalize it, but it didn't make sense at the time. It was also something that never would have happened last season. Last year there was too much at stake not to play together.

This year?

"I've never been this unhappy after a win," Loughnane sighed, waiting for the bus to take them home.

*****

THE WAITING

As they drove back from the Brookline game, only the second high school game she'd ever seen him play, Monty Mack's mother sensed her son was upset. She squeezed his arm and said, "Baby, you're lucky. You're one lucky boy. I hope you realize that."

He does. Not a day passes that Monty doesn't remember it. He's probably the most introspective member of the team, deliberate and soft-spoken, wise beyond his years. When someone asks him a question, he'll ponder a response for a few seconds before finally answering. I wondered for awhile why Monty jumped so quickly at UMass when most prized recruits wait until March of their senior year. After spending enough time with him, the answer became increasingly clear: The whole thing would have driven him crazy. UMass offered Monty security and he took it, mainly because needed to feel secure more than him.

Monty's father left home when he was three. His mother raised him and two brothers by herself in Roxbury, working two jobs and barely seeing her sons. Mack's older brothers joined gangs but protected little Monty, shielding him from the streets and pushing him towards basketball because he was a natural, the only person in the family with true talent. Monty remembers following his brother Ron out of their apartment one day when he was eleven or twelve. Ron asked him where he was going.

"Wit' you," Monty said. "I wanna hang with you."

"No way," said Ron, who was selling drugs at that point and ended up spending two years in jail before straightening out his act. "I don't want you to end up like me. You're stayin' home."

So Monty devoted himself to basketball and played in Roxbury's playgrounds every day. Soon he was playing on various CYO teams and summer league teams, developing a reputation as a little kid with a can't-miss shot. As a ninth-grader he attended Burke in Dorchester, the roughest school in the city, before his mother read a newspaper story about a shooting there and immediately made him transfer. Monty landed at Southie and befriended Clif, Roger, Benny and Emir, with the first three making varsity that season. When Jonathan joined the group as a freshman the following season, the core championship group was in place. After a surprising tournament run in 1994 that ended in the North Sectional Finals, they figured 1995 and 1996 would be their years to shine, and they were right... although Emir never made it. Monty followed the '95 championship by playing with Roger and Jonathan on Leo Papile's highly-regarded Boston Athletic Basketball club, a team that travels all over the country playing over 100 games per summer. Two of their teammates were Scoonie Penn and Wayne Turner, now playing at Boston College and Kentucky respectively. Most college recruiting is done during these tournaments, an optimal chance for coaches to see talented kids playing with other talented kids. Monty acquitted himself well and drew some extra attention, eventually receiving steady letters and calls from fifty or sixty schools.

When UMass coach John Calipari visited the Macks in October, there was a moment that sealed the family on UMass: Riding in the elevator of their apartment building, having already offered them a scholarship, Calipari told them, "Even if you break your leg or blow out your knee, your scholarship would still stand. We'd still pay for all four years of college."

Monty looked at his mother and saw her wide face break into a beam. And he knew, right then and there, that he was going to the University of Massachusetts.

Like anything else with the inner-city, even the happy endings aren’t that happy. Two months before he committed to UMass, a good friend of Monty's named Jamal Jackson was stabbed to death in Dorchester while Mack was traveling with his BABC team. Jackson, a star player at Cleveland State, was someone who seemingly had made it out of the ghetto. Now he was dead. Monty went on another trip and received a second devastating phone call: two of his cousins were critically wounded in a drive-by shooting in Roxbury. One cousin, Rasheed Fountain, eventually died. The other, Keon Santos, barely survived.

"It got so I was afraid to go on another trip," Monty says now. "I thought if I went away again, somebody else that I loved was gonna get killed."

His senior basketball season didn’t make things any easier. There was the ongoing SAT debacle; through March, he still couldn't secure his 820-minimum. His nagging knee problems hobbled him through December. On the home front, Ron's three-year-old son moved in with the Macks around the same time because of Ron's grueling work schedule, and Monty broke up with his longtime girlfriend before Christmas. Everything was piling up on him. During holiday road trips, Monty – usually one of the most social players on the team - moped in the front of the bus away from everyone else, losing himself in his headphones, clearly troubled and unhappy. He grew apart from Benny, Jon and Roger and grew closer to Clif; they both had longtime girlfriends and neither liked to go out much. Monty also started spending more time with Loughnane, confiding in him and frequently asking for advice. No surprise. When I first spent time with him in December, we were talking about the coach and Mack suddenly piped, "Lock's like the father I never had. He's like a father to me."

"You ever tell him that?" I asked.

Monty glanced to the ground, mulling the question as always. "Naw, I never did," he finally replied. "I should. I guess I never really thought about it before."

And so when Mack was feeling his lowest in January, he was assigned to write an autobiography about himself for an English class. Much of it ended up being about South Boston's basketball team. Included was a piece about his coach. It was everything Monty Mack ever wanted to say to Bill Loughnane, indirectly: You are important to me. I wouldn't be a good player and a good person if it weren't for you. You are like a father to me. One day before practice, he handed the autobiography to his coach and told him to take a look. You know, when he got the chance.

Loughnane handed it back to him the following day. He didn't say anything - not a word - but their eyes met, and Lock simply nodded. When Monty retells the story now, two days before his final high school game, his eyes glisten over.

"He didn't say anything, but we both knew," Monty says softly. "I'll always remember that."

Monty finally played himself out of his funk in late-January. His first big outburst came at the end of the month, when he nailed four three-pointers in the second half to lead Southie over a hungry Charlestown team. Monty was playing with confidence again and not favoring his knees. You could see the difference. And he never looked back.

"It's Monty's team again," said Loughnane in February, when I mentioned how Monty seemed to be playing better. "When he was hurt, the pecking order changed a little bit. Now it's his team again."

During the tournament Monty cemented his reputation as the top player in the state, doing all the little things to help Southie win. And it went beyond scoring. Monty made the biggest plays of the Everett and Cambridge games when he grabbed defensive rebounds in traffic to seal those wins. He’s the type of player you need to watch a few times to truly appreciate. UMass assistant James "Bruiser" Flint recruited Mack and explains why the school liked him in the simplest terms: "He's just steady. He's so consistent. He does everything well. Everything. I think he'll be even better at the next level."

The next level. Does it even seem like it’s happening? With the NCAA tournament starting today and UMass getting the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Regional, it seems like light years away from where we are, sitting in the lobby of his apartment building in Boston and shooting the breeze. Monty nods. Sometimes it doesn't seem real to him, he admits. He remembers watching an ESPN game with Ron in January - UMass against somebody - and Ron said, "That's gonna be you next year, Dog." And Monty zoned out, right then and there. He imagined himself in the uniform, on television, sitting in class, sitting in his dorm room... it never seemed real to him until that moment. It was one of the best feelings he ever had. It's gonna happen. It's really gonna happen.

"Now I think about it a lot," he says. "Especially when things were goin' so bad."

Monty sighs and gazes out onto the street.

"Sometimes I wish I could just be there right now," he says, almost to himself.

*****

THE RESPECT: St. John's of Shrewsbury

There's one more game to play, a Saturday trip to Worcester to win the state championship. After Loughnane calls off a Wednesday practice so everyone can clear their heads, they return Thursday for their best practice in weeks. The players sense the stakes and that Loughnane is itching for any reason to explode on them. It's a spirited practice. Bodies fly everywhere. Of course, Roger is the dominant player on the court, the fulcrum of anything and everything. I catch most of the practice with Hakeem Johnson, a skinny sophomore nursing a thigh injury and bathing in the best basketball Southie’s played in three months. At one point Roger drives down the middle and throws a no-look pass to Clif for a lay-up... behind his head. Hakeem's eyes almost pop out of his head.

"Roger does some shit," he says admiringly, watching Roger saunter back up the court.

The difference between Roger and Hakeem is obvious: Confidence. Hakeem and another sophomore, Marvin Grayson, are Loughnane's two pet projects. Neither contributed much all season, but Loughnane threw them out every game for little two-minute spurts to wet their feet for next year and maybe even for this year (in an emergency). Marvin and Hakeem sprinted up and down the court during those moments, all energy and adrenaline, playing spirited defense and looking for stray rebounds. When they came out, Loughnane always slapped them on the butts and encouraged them ("Good job, Hawk!" he said to Hakeem every time). Marvin matured more during the season than Hakeem, developing into a legitimate 10-15 minute guy off the bench and a comedic locker room force off the court. His progress is easily the best story of the season; last year he was too nervous to even try out for the team. One year later, he looks like a future All-Scholastic forward. Hakeem progressed a little more slowly. At 6-foot-2, with long arms, he's still growing into his body. This will be a big summer for him.

"You gonna follow us next year, too?" Hakeem suddenly asks me.

"I don't think so," I tell him. "My story's really about this season."

"Oh," he says, nodding. "Too bad. We're gonna win next year, too."

Next year?

"Even without Monty and Clif and Roger?" I ask, eyebrows raised.

"Definitely. Nobody's gonna give us a chance, just like last year and just like this year. But we're gonna show 'em."

Hakeem keeps eye contact with me and nods. The look consumes his face, a defiant glare. It's the same look Monty and Roger and Clif and Benny wore all season. It's a look he learned from them.

Two days later, they’re screaming at each other in their locker room at the Worcester Centrum. The season is slipping away again. Halfway through the state championship game, Southie trails a surprisingly-tough St. John's team by one point and lost Clif to a fractured foot. He's near tears in the corner of the locker room, practically in a state of shock. Monty and Benny stalk around the locker room, slapping shoulders, saying "Come on, y'all! Come on!" It can't end like this. And it won't.

Because they finally find the intensity that carried them last spring. Maybe they needed to lose Clif so everyone would have to work that much harder. Whatever the case, Southie plays Southie Ball again. Everyone is rebounding and making the extra pass; they can’t afford to look for their own shots, not now. Hakeem and Marvin take Clif's place and perform admirably inside, as Loughnane's little ongoing gamble finally pays off. Holley carries the rebounding load, a burden which will become even larger next season. Benny plays valuable minutes off the bench. Monty moves down low and grabs a team-high ten rebounds. Roger's shooting is still hampered by his injured wrist, but he atones for it with quality passing and defense. Best of all, there's Jonathan... healthy and happy, skipping along the court, totally unstoppable. Jonathan pours in 22 points in the second half (33 for the game) from all angles and Southie needs each one. Nobody cares about publicity and numbers. They need to win. Period. And Jonathan has the hot hand.

Up by three with five minutes to play, Loughnane spreads the floor and brings St. John's out of their zone. Jonathan, Roger and Monty take turns handling the ball, whittling the clock down as the St. John fans serenade them with boos. At the three-minute mark, Loughnane calls time and sets up a trick play: Southie will “start” its weave again, only Jonathan will break it by exploding towards the hoop for a lay-up. Somehow it works. Lulled temporarily to sleep by the weave, the St. John players watch him skitter towards the basket and foul a step late, only Jonathan gets off a twisting lay-up that rolls around the rim... and IN!!! Southie's bench explodes. Roger and Monty happily hop over to Jonathan and wrap him in a bearhug. Everyone else breathes again except for. Loughnane, who waits until Southie leads by ten with 12 seconds to play to pull his starters. Upon the final buzzer, the Southie kids charge the court; Monty spots Benny and they fall in the floor in a relieved embrace. Monty and Clif are sobbing hysterically. Even Roger looks misty-eyed, although he denies it later. Everyone jumps on everyone else, and finally Benny calls the team in the middle of the floor to pray for Emir. This is something they've done all year - there were even arguments about it during the season when younger players talked in the huddle. Now the team piles into one silent group at midcourt, on command. Jonathan will continue it as captain next year. Marvin and Hakeem will lead the prayers in 1998. And so on. Emir Quintana lives.

Later Monty sits in the press room, dabbing his eyes and composing himself for the post-game interviews. He's just won two straight state titles. He's headed to number-one ranked UMass in five months. Everything that happened during the last year seems like a bad memory.

A reporter asks Monty how he feels, expecting the typical "jock" answer: It feels great. I'm happy we won. I think they'll win again next year. Jonathan's a great player...

He doesn't know Monty.

Monty sits back and thinks about the question. How do I feel? Well...

"I'm not sure," he finally says, looking the reporter right in the eye. "I feel happy we won, but I feel sad because I won't have the chance to play with these fellas again. I'm gonna miss playin' with them. I really am. We went through a lot together. So I'm kinda torn. I guess I feel happy and sad."

The reporter frantically writes the words down. He wasn't expecting such an eloquent answer. Not from Monty, the kid headed to UMass with the can't-miss shot, the kid who can't even get an 820 on his SAT's.

I catch Monty's eye and smile at him. He nods at me.

It's funny. I never thought my favorite moment of the entire year would happen after the season.

*****

THE AFTERMATH

Now it's Wednesday. Four days have passed. I'm bothering Bill Loughnane one final time.

He’s more candid than ever, just like Bob Healey predicted a few weeks before. Sitting uncomfortably in his math classroom on two wooden chairs, we discuss Monty's rollercoaster season ("He's really ready for UMass, he became a great all-around player this year"), Marvin and Hawk ("We wouldn't have won without them"), and the sad ending for Clif's career ("He'll recover in time to play Div-Two next year"). He mentions the team's grade point average for the season – two-point-nine - a statistic that brings him more satisfaction than 25-1. Even Clif almost cracked the honor roll in the previous semester.

"Can you believe that?" Lock asks. "You need a 1.75 to be eligible to play, and Clif was the kind of kid who would get a 1.75000001. Now he almost made the honor roll!"

Like with their other two championships, the town of South Boston neglected to hold any parades or banquets for the team after the season. Some people care - the South Boston Savings Bank buys everyone championship letterjackets, and the Boston Athletic Club starts a collection so everyone can have championship rings - but the general ignorance is telling. In a suburb like Wellesley or Everett, Loughnane believes, the season would have been celebrated differently. It's a sad reality. Because of busing, the team and the town will always be two separate entities. Loughane understands it and accepts it, but he doesn’t like it.

We talk about the USA Today's "Top 25" national poll, which Southie cracked for the first time ever. We talk about Roger for a long time. Loughnane still shakes his head over the Brookline game. I tell him how one local newspaper editor was in attendance, a friend of mine, someone in charge of one of the two coveted All-Scholastic basketball teams. I had been harping to my friend all year that Roger was one of the best players in the state. After Brookline, my friend turned to me frowning, saying there was "no way" he was putting Roger on the team.

Loughnane nods. He's clearly worried about Roger. In December he told me about some of the Southie stars who didn't play college ball because they were derailed by personal baggage, all quality players who dreamed of attending a big-time school and never quite made it. Roger looks like a decent bet to become the next guy in that group, needing to crack 900 on his SAT's for a full scholarship at Hofstra, a fine Division One program that's definitely not UMass. So many talented players like Roger reach this point and never make that final push to ensure their future, maybe feeling like it’s not worth the sacrifice unless the reward is playing on ESPN eight times a year. Despite cajoling from the Bill Loughnanes of the world, they don’t care that it’s still a victory for them to play basketball and study for free, that the rest of their lives could be shaped by a college degree. They postpone college for a semester, and then a year... suddenly they're 21 years old and the chance has slipped away for good.

"Roger's attitude kills him sometimes," Loughnane says softly. "Like in that Brookline game. I always told him that he was my Kevin McHale, the guy who never gets the attention his teammates get. Roger was in the shadows for three years with Monty and Jonathan, but everyone around the team knew how important he was for us. Still, sometimes it's not enough. That's why maybe he went for a little publicity of his own in that Brookline game. And you know what? It probably cost him with B.U.

"What can you do now, you know? It's over. We have these kids for four years, we teach them right from wrong, we teach them to shake people's hands and show each other respect... what else can we do? If Roger doesn't make it than I guess we've failed. But it's up to him in the long run."

I ask Loughnane if he sees himself moving to college some day. He shrugs. We're playing cat-and-mouse again. I can't get a straight answer out of him. Suddenly the door opens and it's Roger. Maybe his ears were ringing. He plops down at an empty desk and pretends to listen to our cat-and-mouse game for a few minutes. He's between periods. He just feels like hanging out with his coach.

"Why would I ever want to leave here?" Bill Loughnane asks, waving his hand around the room. "Where else would I get the chance to coach someone as special as Roger?"

He grins at Roger, cracking up. Roger smiles.

"Nobody else wants you anyway," Roger fires back. "You're old."

They grin at each other again. Roger leans back in his chair. His state champion letterjacket grazes the rear chalkboard.

"You been hitting that SAT book?" Loughnane asks.

"Yeah, sometimes," Roger answers, shrugging.

Loughnane shrugs back, mocking him. The coach turns back to our interview. I start asking about Monty, but in the middle of my question, Lock turns back to Roger again.

"Hey, make sure you hit that book this week," Bill Loughnane tells him.

**END**

Copyright by Bill Simmons, 1996