My minutes start creeping up in ways no one announces. Coach just leaves me out there a little longer. Pulls someone else first. Stops checking the clipboard so often when I’m on the floor.
My name stops coming with qualifiers. No morerookie Ollie, no moreyoung guy off the bench. Just my last name, clean and uncomplicated, like it belongs where it is.
We have a home game tomorrow. I’m sitting on a folding chair in the locker room, taping my ankles the same way I’ve done since college—left first, then right, not too tight, not too loose—when something flickers on the screen mounted above the lockers.
Pregame graphics. Stats. Matchups. Headshots sliding across the screen in slick broadcast fonts. I glance up without thinking. And there I am. Not centered. Not highlighted. But there.
My face, cropped clean. My number. A couple of bullet points that make me feel like I’m looking at someone else’s résumé. I stare at it longer than I should, fingers frozen halfway through wrapping the tape.
Marco catches me and snorts. “You gonna finish that, or you trying to manifest something?”
Dan claps me on the shoulder as they pass. “You good, man?”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, dropping my gaze back to my ankle. “Just admiring the lighting.”
He laughs and moves on while my heart keeps kicking against my ribs like it wants out.
By mid-March,the arenas feel different. Not bigger. Not better. Just louder and definitely sharper.
Drawing to the end of the season does that—it takes an already chaotic environment and cranks it until everything feels slightly unhinged. Every fan thinks they’re part of the story. Every possession feels like a referendum.
We’re on the road, third game in six nights, and my legs feel like someone swapped them out for wet sand when I wasn’t looking. Everything hurts in that dull, background way you learn to ignore or you don’t survive.
Late in the fourth, Coach sends me to the line. I bounce the ball once. Twice. And then I hear it. My name. Not shouted by one drunk guy with good timing but chanted. It rolls through the lower bowl in a steady rhythm, like the building itself decided to get involved.
I blink and stare down at my hands because if I look up—if I see faces—I might forget how to do the one thing I’m here to do.
The ball feels heavier than it should. I exhale. The first shot drops clean. The second follows it. The sound that comes after hits me square in the chest. Not the applause, but the approval. It’s loud, immediate, unrestrained.
I jog back on defense telling myself,Don’t be weird.
Immediately, I’m weird about it.
My awareness spikes too high. I overcorrect on the next possession. Close out too hard. Recover late. Marco yells my name, and I snap back into place like I was yanked by a cord.
Focus.
Just play.
After the buzzer, the locker room is a mess in the way winning locker rooms always are. Music blaring from someone’s speaker. Guys arguing about where we’re eating. Ice bags already appearing on knees and shoulders like magic.
I drop onto the bench, breath still coming fast, and pull my phone out of my locker before I can overthink it.
Me: Crowd was loud tonight.
The reply comes instantly.
Rafe: Told you. They know now.
I snort, rubbing a towel over my face.
They know now.
Cool. No pressure or anything.
I lock the phone and sit here for a second longer than necessary, letting the noise wash over me, letting the feeling settle without naming it. Because naming it might make it real, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.
It doesn’t stop with the noise.
