The way I see it, can't nobody stop my boy Marcus. Hell naw. Can't nobody in this city stop him from doing his thing: passin' the rock, runnin' his squad—havin' fun. For real. Marcus Lawrence: born fatherless right here in Las Vegas, raised on the city's gravel with a ball in his hand, leader of the Bishop Gorman 4A state championship team last year, tryin' to do it again right now, this week in Reno, with all the confidence and swagger in the world, and the local talent who will keep on playin' next year at UNLV. Can't nothin' stop him.
Not another player in this city, not the political controversy that's splintered his team's back all year, not even the half-century grudge that every other Las Vegas native holds against Gorman, a private high school and the most illustrious prep basketball program in the whole damn state of Nevada.
And definitely not Bonanza High School tonight, January 25, 2006. Cuz even though the Bengals put it to Gorman earlier this year by 28, while Marcus was missin' two of his starters, both his best scorer and defender, they didn't stop Marcus. Hell naw. Check the stat sheet or the game film. All they did was incite him. No more playin' to the level of his competition, like Coach Rice says, cuz he's got somethin' to prove: in this infertile basketball town Marcus and Bishop Gorman are exceptional: the former cuz of his skills and selfless style of play; the latter cuz no other school in Vegas can compete on the national level.
It's not like Bonanza's weak, though. They ain't; they're a pretty cool team—for Vegas. They're well coached; they play hard; and they done beat a lot of teams in the Valley with their deadly shooting. But Bishop Gorman's one of the top 10 teams on the West Coast, and Coach Rice is tryin' to get them up to one or two. Which is why Bonanza and their fans came in all excited, like it was their own state title game, be damned what happens the rest of the season. That's how it is with most teams. Like Demarco Murray, Gorman's beast of an athlete, says: Everyone brings their A game when they play Bishop Gorman.
But—ching! ching!—just like that, just after tip-off, Gorman was up two buckets, with Marcus assistin' on one and mastermindin' the other. The crowd was off the hook. It was a jacketless atmosphere, for sure, packed end to end with family, faculty and fanatical students from both Gorman (in the southeast corner, cheerin' for their team with deafening solidarity) and Bonanza (in the northwest corner, cheerin' against Gorman like mad heretics). Shoes squeaked and bodies dove and Gorman tried to speed up the tempo, puttin' pressure, pressure, pressure all over the ball; and Bonanza looked to slow it down, get some continuity going.
"WHOOOOoooooooo!" Marcus went, with all five-eleven, 170 pounds of his body beneath him. "WHOOOOoooooo!" His teammate Sam Goulet, a white boy with a pretty jumper, had just scored on a 15-footer, and before Marcus was even done hollerin'—yoink!—he got the ball in his hands again. A steal. But as a scorer he just decent right now, not great, and so he missed the short pull-up. Right in front of the Bonanza faithful too, and their rancor toward Bishop Gorman players—no different than the inherent bitterness public schools have toward private schools all across the nation—was pretty damn obvious in their indignant stares and heedless middle fingers. And if it wasn't explicit then, then it sure was five minutes later, after Bonanza had gone on a shooting flurry and captured the lead by one point and Marcus came down and missed another shot, and one fan, venom drippin' from his pubescent voice, hollered: "And that's the best you can recruit?!"
Marcus, though, brushed the haters off. The boy's used to it: Four years now he's been playin' in the Gorman gymnasium, where intense atmospheres are the norm, and four years he's been wearin' the Gael's regal blue and orange uniforms, for which hostility has been reserved long before he ever got there. And whereas the Bonanza kids might've found the clamorous tension to be foreign—their coach, George Jaekle, 55, would say after the game it was a reminder of them days he used to play ball, when high school kids had nothin' better to do than watch their peers act like heroes for a couple hours—Marcus just gulped it all down with a smile, and winked at his antagonists. Then he got a defensive stop, pushed the ball up the court, and with a no-look pass found his go-to guy Jonathan Tavernari for an easy layup. "WHHOOOOOooooo!" he went. Of course, he didn't know then that his team's endeavors to return to the playoffs would be jeopardized the following day on account of Jonathan.
At the age of 18, Jonathan Tavernari, an amiable and good-looking native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, with great range on his jump shot, is a spectacular basketball player, and he is Bishop Gorman's leading scorer. In Brazil he had accumulated six feet, six inches, exemplary practice habits, and the fruitful experience of international play while traveling with his country's junior national basketball team. When he brought all of it with him to Bishop Gorman on an F1 visa last summer, after befriending a Gorman alumnus through whom he arranged his living situation in Las Vegas, Gorman officials said it was their good luck to have him. And on one hand it has been. At the end of the regular season Tavernari was third in the Valley in scoring, at 22.2 points per game, and the major offensive force that had propelled Bishop Gorman to the top of not only their conference, but also the Las Vegas Review-Journal's rankings for best teams in Southern Nevada, with their 24-4 record. And he too considered playing for Las Vegas' most storied prep basketball program, which was coming off of a state title run the year before, to be a great decision in light of his athletic aspirations. Above all after his first few games running the fast break and offensive sets with Marcus Lawrence, the clairvoyant point guard whom Tavernari says "makes me look better than I really am."
What neither Tavernari nor his new team foresaw, however, was the public turmoil his presence at Bishop Gorman would stir. Even though they should have. For it's no secret that Bishop Gorman, a private institution which contends with rumors of foul play and bad faith every year, holds a permanent spot in the riflescope of public scrutiny. And so it was only natural that adopting a stellar athlete from another country was going to set off a flurry of bullets from critics just waiting to catch the school in a such an exposed position.
The most devastating shot came from the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association, whose executive director, Dr. Jerry Hughes, stationed in Reno, sent a message to the powerhouse down south last fall, stating that Jonathan Tavernari was ineligible to play this year, in accordance with the long-established NIAA law requiring any transfer not residing with a parent or guardian to sit out 180 days before participating with his respective team. Bishop Gorman appealed before an arbitrator in December, and lost. Only to have a court of law on January 5 deem Tavernari, a legal adult, emancipated, and therefore eligible to play by NIAA standards. Hughes had to swallow District Judge Valerie Adair's decision allowing Tavernari to play, but he did so with a bitter countenance, and vowed then and there to stop Bishop Gorman from circumventing the rules with their inexhaustible legal resources. The Gaels, just 7 and 4 before Jonathan became eligible, would not lose again going into their January 26 rematch with Bonanza.
Trickle, trickle, trickle. Trickle, trickle. And just like that, with three-pointers rainin' in like a steady and monotonous November downfall, Bonanza was winnin' by three, with two minutes and twenty-five seconds left in the first half. Winnin' cuz they play like a group that's been together for years, cuz their performance was academic and millimetric, and mostly cuz Marcus wasn't even in the game the second quarter. Naw: the boy lost his head. Again. He and dude from Bonanza went scramblin' for a loose ball at the end of the first quarter, and refs blew the whistle, called Marcus for a foul—said Marcus shoved dude with a forearm—and Marcus shouted in protest. He does' that sometimes. Raw competitive emotion, and sheer foolishness. So the ref T'd him up, and Coach Rice called him over to the bench, and that's when he really screwed up. He badmouthed Coach Rice, who to Marcus is like a father, just as all the coaches he's ever had have been like a father to him. The father he never had. And so he responded to Coach Rice just like an 18-year-old son: brazen, a bit indignant, and hard to handle. But that type of stuff don't fly at Gorman. Hell naw it don't. Coach said 'You ain't playin' the rest of the half.' And he didn't.
Which was too bad too, cuz the first half was a beauty, with momentum vacillatin' back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, just like the ball goin' up and down each end of the court, just like each team transitionin' offense to defense, offense to defense, offense to defense, and just like both teams goin' on intermittent and ephemeral runs. It was crazy, and at the end of the first half Bonanza ran into the visitors' locker room with a 2-point lead, leavin' the Bishop Gorman student cheering section—that indomitable orange wave at every Gorman game, home or away, called G-Block—with nothin' to chant except its unchanging source of authority:
"We have money!"—clap, clap—clap, clap, clap—'Where's your gre-en?!"
In reality, money's the only thing that separates Gorman kids from the kids at Bonanza, a public school built near West Charleston and Torrey Pines in the '70s, cuz with the score 38 to 36, the only definite conclusion to be made after the first half was that they're all just kids. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Just kids. That's what Gorman's four coaches, like frustrated fathers, had to remind themselves during halftime, while they rubbed their heads and blew out endless streams of hot air. They're all just kids. No matter how good they are, no matter how much Gorman tries to simulate the college experience in both academics and athletics, it don't matter none: just one day hangin' out with any one of them is all it takes to understand they're just kids. And so the coaches huddled in the hallway outside the locker room and let the kids grow up; let them work things out on their own in that somber yet resolute locker room.
My boy Marcus said to his teammates then, during that halftime during which the threat of losin' a game at home to a Nevada team for the first time since 2004 loomed unspoken and impenetrable in the air, he said: "Ahright: I'm gonna step up my game. Follow me."
And they would. Just as they always have.
Last year Marcus Lawrence led his team to the state title. It was Bishop Gorman's 11th championship, and one that had been long awaited in the Gorman community. For the Gaels had not won since 2002, when CJ Watson, now a star point guard at the University of Tennessee, was gracing the pages of USA Today for his heroics on Maryland Parkway and Coach Grant Rice was concluding his first year as head coach of Gorman's varsity team. Lawrence was only in eighth grade back then, and hadn't heard much of Bishop Gorman until his older cousin, another one of Lawrence's vicarious fathers, told him that he needed to play for the school from which NBA center Brian Williams and the great Danny Tarkanian had come, if he were ever going to have a real future in basketball coming out of this city. Sure, his cousin said, there are some exceptions: there's a Greg Anthony to come out of Rancho, or a Marcus Banks to emerge from Cimarron-Memorial; but they are exceptions, and Gorman is the standard. Lawrence had been playing basketball since before he'd entered school, throwing rolled up socks into clothes hangers mended into hoops, and like all the kids in not just his neighborhood but also his generation—blacks and whites and browns; everyone young and restless—he grew up in the black culture of hoops and hip-hop, two sources of identity all but inseparable from each other. And growing up he played without respite, shooting baskets in any hoop he could find, even if that meant garbage cans, and seeking the best possible pick-up games he could, always with older players. At 14 years old he knew only that he had a vocation for the game, that it was a lot of fun, and that he wanted to keep playing it, hopefully here in Las Vegas, the city which he'd grown quite accustomed to, having moved into four different homes and attended three different middle schools, for the rest of his life. And so he took his cousin's words to heart and entered the Bishop Gorman summer camp right before his freshman year.
He was accepted into the prestigious school of 920 students, granted financial aide, and given a spot on the junior varsity team his freshman year. His game was raw, street, and heavily influenced by the And-1 mix tapes, a modern day Harlem Globetrotters; but at Gorman he soon learned the fundamentals. That is, he learned how to use the triple threat to his defender's disadvantage, how to get in a low defensive stance and slide, and how to be economic with his dribbles and efficient with his moves. And by eight games into his sophomore year Lawrence started at the point for the varsity squad. They lost that season in the regional playoffs to Cheyenne, the public school Lawrence would have attended, with his neighborhood friends, until his cousin convinced him otherwise. It was a bitter defeat, and one that would multiply the pressure to win the next year, lest the Bishop Gorman community be forced to endure three eternal years without winning a state championship. But the season for Lawrence was a success. He had begun to take charge of the team, demonstrating the inherent and visceral quarterback qualities of a true point guard and showcasing a speed and tenacious pride on defense that gave Coach Rice reason to believe he had the next prodigy in Bishop Gorman's historic line of individual talents on his hands, still young and moldable. And so, to measure his merit Coach Rice took him to a summer camp in California, the most fertile basketball grounds on the west coast, and Lawrence excelled there. From that point on he held a firm position on the satellites of college coaches around the nation.
"I knew I was gonna eventually get a scholarship," Lawrence says. "So I wanted to get my teammates signed too."
And thus his primary goal going into his junior year, besides winning the state championship and alleviating the Gorman alumni and fans of their unbearable famine, was to make his teammates look good—feeding them the ball at the right places, at the right times, and maximizing their potential, like an authentic point guard should.
(And he succeeded: his big man CJ Portz, signed on to play at UC Davis, and his go-to guy Kashif Watson, brother of CJ Watson, signed with San Diego State, becoming the 10th and 11th players Coach Rice has sent to play post-secondary basketball in his four completed years at Gorman, half of which he's had the good fortune of Lawrence's altruistic play.)
Yet, when the playoffs came around that season, the spring of 2005, Lawrence knew that he would have to step up his game another notch. In Gorman's Sunset regional championship victory over Palo Verde and their superstar, P'Allen Stinnett—one of Lawrence's few outstanding coevals in Las Vegas—Lawrence went off for 20 points, the majority of which came after halftime, the portion of the game when great basketball players distinguish themselves from the multitudes of good ones. In his first state tournament game, Lawrence, with a defensive pressure so intense it was more of an offense than anything (in the same way a boxer defends himself by punching), led Gorman past northern Nevada powerhouse Galena and into the championship game. There, at the arena in the Orleans Hotel and Casino, in front of 6,000 fans who sounded more like 12,000, Lawrence would find Kashif—better known as 'Chief'—all night long, and in emphatic form on one definitive play toward the end of the game.
"I hit Chief on a fast break, and man, that nigga dunked the ball so hard!" Lawrence says. "At that point I had a good feeling we were gonna win."
They did, indeed, earning a state championship banner to hang in the rafters at Gorman's gymnasium, alongside the other 10, and capping off a season in which the Gaels did not lose a single game to a team from Nevada.
"I feel like I can distribute confidence, just like I do the ball," says Lawrence, who led the state in assists that year, with eight a game. "I feel like I can turn an ordinary player into an all-star."
Marcus been on point all year long. He came into this his senior season with big hype—ranked best point guard on the West Coast by several national scouting services, called most valuable player in the city by his coach—and he hasn't let nobody down. And that's cuz, like all the great ones, his motivation's fear—that implacable fear of disappointin' someone. A coach, a teammate, his mom, or somebody who might be watchin' him play for the first time, like a scout, or a journalist, or maybe even his real dad.
Oh, yeah, and fun too: the boy works hard every day cuz to him the game's still fun.
Been havin' fun all year too. I mean, look: everybody today is down with basketball, and its players are hot, and that's why a good baller is like a rock star. More than anyone else in schools today he gets the privileges, the idolization from peers, and, for real, the girly attention.
The day of the Bonanza game was just like any other. Marcus wakes up 'bout 6, eats some Top Ramen for breakfast—a habit retained from his poorer days in north town—catches a ride to school from one girl or another happy as hell to be havin' Marcus Lawrence in her (daddy's) car, sprints to make it on time to his first class, tries to concentrate on his studies (which he finds pretty damn challenging), shakes hands with and says wassup to, like, a million people in passin' between classes, kicks it with Demarco and other athletes during lunch, has girls comin' up to him with saccharine smiles, serpentine eyes, saying "Hey Marcus, do you still have my number ... No? Well, here you go: call me," and goes to study hall with his teammates after the last bell of the day, still tryin' to raise his 2.6 GPA in the winter of his senior year.
"I ain't no superstar," says Marcus, large iridescent earrings blingin' off each of his ears. "Kobe Bryant—he just scored 81 points in a NBA game—now he's a superstar. The way I see it, I'm just in high school still."
But then, with an unambiguous grin, he says: 'But oh yeah, it's real cool here. They show me a lot of love."
No matter what though, all day he be thinkin' about basketball. Whoever said 'It's not just a game—it's a way of life,' wasn't lyin'. It be consumin' his thoughts, influencin' the way he talks, dictatin' his style of clothes (when he ain't wearin' Bishop Gorman's school uniforms, I mean). That's to say, basketball assigns him an unclouded identity, which at 18 years old is a real comfort, ya know.
Then it's game time. All else aside, everything channeled onto that court like a wave of fans convergin' through the gym's front doors and into the small lobby, where the walls are adorned with trophies and pictures and plaques commemoratin' Gorman's prodigious history, in not just basketball but all sports, for both boys and girls. Servin' not just as a source of free pride to students, or justification to parents who pay $8,475 in tuition each year for their child to attend the Catholic school, but also as a source of intimidation for visiting teams about to play mighty Bishop Gorman.
This is not a basketball town. As of now, the Gaels, like true Celtic knights, have to devise a nomadic schedule each year to find worthy competition. They must travel to California and Wyoming, or summon teams from Colorado, to find competitors who will offer resistance, require them to exhibit bravery and courage on the court, and challenge them to play better than they normally are. For Gorman can't meet those types of teams on a nightly basis in Las Vegas. Their best competition within the mountains of this barren valley most often comes in practice.
Gorman is unique in that it provides hungry kids with the resources to excel, says senior guard Mike Flores, a starter and one of the few kids on the team to have worked his way through the freshman, junior varsity and now varsity ranks. He says at Gorman he can always get time in a gym, or a weight room, and always with guidance from one of the experienced coaches.
"Here you have all the opportunities to be good, if you're willing to put in the hard work," says junior Sam Goulet, whose father, a preacher here in town, just returned from missionary work in Rwanda with a seven-foot kid who will play for Gorman next year. "We're definitely an exception at Bishop Gorman; all those opportunities put us ahead of other schools."
UNLV Coach Lon Kruger, who often visited Bishop Gorman while recruiting Lawrence, says that good coaches make all the difference, and Gorman has plenty of them.
"They are doing a great job there," Kruger says. "The coaches provide the leadership, and access to the resources."
The problem with the rest of the valley, according to Danny Tarkanian, the celebrated Gorman alumnus who is now running for secretary of state in Nevada, is that the population is so transient that it's rare for good coaches to establish themselves at any given school.
Tarkanian says his experience at Bishop Gorman was phenomenal, in large part due to the school's intimate community and family atmosphere—two distinguishing elements not often associated with the rest of Las Vegas.
"There's little support for youth activities," says Tarkanian, who after his Gorman days went on to UNLV to play for, and coach under, the legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian, his father. "There's a tremendous amount of interest in basketball here, but the city doesn't develop its players."
It's true. In an adult town, where kids often look to grow up as soon as possible and delve into the bottomless sea of things to do, the emphasis Bishop Gorman places on its kids is an anomaly, according to several voluble parents attending the Bishop-Bonanza game on January 25.
Yet it's common knowledge that Gorman's enemies—and there are a lot of them—believe the private school maintains an advantage over the rest of the city by recruiting young prodigies and circumventing rules by which public schools must abide.
Or, as Bonanza Coach George Jaekle said, with all due respect and reservation, just after his team's game at Bishop Gorman:
"Well, they seem to always have big kids, and very athletic kids, and we don't."
Marcus came out in the second half sharp and unstoppable, just like a guillotine. First he hit a three, then dished out two dimes to teammates who put Gorman in the lead, and then he got a steal and set up a score two passes in advance. Then he came down, blew by his defender, penetrated the lane and kicked it out to Jonathan for two of his eventual 25 points that night.
Then, with two minutes left in the third quarter and his team up by five, Marcus scored on an implausible lay-up for two of the 15 points he was to score in the second half. Then he had the crowd hypnotized with his spellbinding handles on the fast break; and then he dazzled even his own teammates with a behind-the-back pass to Mike Flores, a six-foot, olive-skinned shooting guard who powered through a foul to finish the lay-up. "YEEAAAaaaahhhhhh," Marcus then went, slappin' Mike's ass.
"If I played at another school, I wouldn't be nearly as good," Mike says. "Marcus always finds me, and even if I'm missin', he keeps gettin' me the ball, sayin' 'I know you'll hit it; you've hit it a thousand times before.'"
It was Marcus who would make the big play when it was needed; it was him who would put the other 11 Gaels in his planetary orbit; and it was the kid who says deliverin' a great pass is the closest feeling to levitation in this world who would swing momentum in Gorman's favor for good.
With three minutes left in the fourth quarter, and Bonanza just callin' a timeout, G-Block chanted in Greek chorus what everyone in the gym already knew to be the unequivocal difference:
"We have Marcus!"—clap, clap—clap, clap, clap—"We have Marcus!"
In all truthfulness, Marcus Lawrence has weaknesses right now.
But not as many as before. And that's because he had worked hard to improve his game over the summer—the time of year when real players are made and the most serious prep basketball is now played. For Lawrence, the summer of 2005 was a definitive one.
Every day he woke up at 8 a.m. Sometimes 9. And before he went to sleep in Las Vegas' cool early morning hours, he would have shot as many jumpers as needed to make 500, split between two forays in the gym, defended bigger and more experienced guys like CJ Watson during structured pick-up games at Gorman High or Doolittle or Hartke Recreational Centers, and poured much sweat in a weight room whose ineludible mirrors reminded him that 160 pounds wasn't going to cut it when he would have to face Oak Hill Academy, a perennial powerhouse and the nation's best high school team in 2005-2006, at the front end of his senior season schedule. Yes, every day he did this.
For playing basketball is not a choice; it's what Lawrence feels he must do. After the heavenly celebration following Gorman's state championship victory in February of 2005, Coach Rice told his players to take a couple of weeks off, because a little rest is very important. And so Lawrence intended to do so, until two eternal days later, while feeling utterly lost and unsure of where to apply his youth's rage, he picked up a ball again and started calling his teammates to see if they wanted to play.
Soon he joined up with his Amateur Athletic Union team, the Las Vegas Prospects, a conglomeration of the state's best individual talents, and they would hit full steam the AAU summer circuit, where the best players from around the nation converge to showcase their potential in front of coaches from every college, as well as pro scouts.
AAU tournaments are held all across the country, and ever since Lawrence started participating in them in the fourth grade, he has seen much of the United States; but in recent years the biggest AAU summer tournaments have been held in Las Vegas. And so it is here, says Ron Montoya, principal of Valley High School and director of the most prestigious tournament, the Adidas Super 64, that the lack of good players in Southern Nevada becomes obvious, being placed in direct contrast and competition with big, tough kids from other urban cities, like Philadelphia and New York and Washington D.C. One of the only Las Vegas players to have shined, in truth, was Lawrence, the ambidextrous point guard who turned himself into a commodity amongst college coaches by the summer's end.
In those summer tournaments he defied the paradigm. That is: Instead if hoisting up a ton of shots to impress coaches and scouts, as most AAU players do, Lawrence resisted the pressure to veer from his game and stuck to what he does best: passing the ball. A whole lot.
His summer was so fruitful that come November 9, 2005, the first day high school recruits could sign with a university, Lawrence felt the ironic temptation to leave Las Vegas. For many universities around the nation were coveting him. Above all Oregon State, where the man whom he honors by wearing number 20 on his jersey, the great Gary Payton, went to college, and San Diego State, where his former teammate and good friend Kashif Watson had signed to play the year before. Nevertheless, he committed himself to UNLV because he'd had it in his heart since he was little to play for the Runnin' Rebels, the program which at the turn of the 90's was an absolute dynasty under Jerry Tarkanian but which now is stuck in the alluvium of mediocrity, in desperate need of a lift. He chose Las Vegas because his family is here, and nothing is more important than his mother and little siblings. And he chose to stay in his native town because the nightlife is ceaseless, the mountains encapsulating the valley are all within eyesight, and in this region there is no ocean, for if there is one thing Lawrence fears other than being separated from his family, it's large bodies of water.
During that same summer of 2005, Jonathan Tavernari was playing in a basketball camp in Utah, and he was desperate to stay in America. He had come to the city Provo from Brazil the year before, under an F1 visa that permitted him to attend an American public school for one year as a foreign-exchange student. Utah was a prime location, not only because Tavernari is Mormon but also because his cousin Rafeal Araujo had recently started for Brigham Young University's basketball team. Yet the important thing for Tavernari was that he was playing basketball in America, where he says technology and superior athletes abound, great cultural emphasis is placed on the sport, and the best chances of becoming a noteworthy player exist. After his year dominating high school basketball in Utah was over, his only hope of remaining in the U.S. was to find a private school to attend for a year, permissible under the F1 visa. At the summer camp in Utah—held in the backyard of BYU, where Coach Grant Rice's brother and former Runnin' Rebel Dave Rice is an assistant coach—Tavernari met a former Bishop Gorman player, who after hearing the Brazilian's story asked his father in Las Vegas if he could give Tavernari his old room for the upcoming year. His father acquiesced, and Tavernari was accepted into Bishop Gorman high school with no premonitions of the hoopla his presence would conjure.
"We have Marcus!"—clap, clap—clap, clap, clap—"We have Marcus!" G-Block was still chantin' after Bonanza's timeout was over, while the players headed back onto the court.
But then Bonanza hit a jumpshot, and G-Block got even quieter when Marcus missed a wide-open three-pointer on the other end. (It's one of the things he'll need to work on this summer, his set jumpshot. That's what Coach Kruger says. So defenders in college can't lay off him. And he also needs to get bigger and stronger too, so he can D people up in college. Coach Rice—he used to play college ball for UNLV about a decade ago, and before that on a prolific junior college team in California under coach George Tarkanian, Danny's brother and Jerry's son—and he says Marcus can be as good as anyone he's seen if he puts on some size. And if keeps his head straight.)
But then Bonanza missed a long three, Marcus grabbed the rebound, brought it up court and found Jonathan hiding under the basket for a score. It's weird how they're from different countries and all, but they always seem to have an intuitive sense of where each other is on the court.
On January 26—the day after the Bonanza game, and a day before Gorman was to play their archrival Durango High School—NIAA executive director Dr. Jerry Hughes announced the board's decision to prohibit Bishop Gorman from participating in the playoffs at the end of the season. His grounds were, as told to local reporters, that the private school had failed to cooperate with the NIAA's investigation into the case of Jonathan Tavernari, a violation of the governing body's laws punishable by however the board sees fit.
Earlier that day, while Bishop Gorman was in the trenches of another practice, preparing to handle the Durango Trailblazers and their star player, Andre McFarland, the NIAA had held a meeting with officials from Bishop Gorman, Bonanza and Durango, to discuss violations the board had found with each of those three schools which happened to be connected also by those surrounding three days. Coach Rice skipped the meeting, opting instead to lead his team's practice, thinking that the meeting did not concern him. Hughes took his absence as another act of defiance—the final strike—and so decided then and there to reprimand the Bishop Gorman program.
The news came down on Gorman players like lighting in a summer monsoon, apparently bringing an abrupt end to their endeavors for another state title.
The Gorman administration responded with no comment; the players, with taciturn aggression. They played the following day, January 27, in front of Durango's unmerciful crowd as if they had either every intention of making another state title run or absolutely nothing to lose. (It was the former, according to G-Block, who returned derisive chants of "No more playoffs!" from Durango fans with the rebuttal "We have lawyers!") Either way, they played some of their best ball of the season against Durango that night, winning by eight points, and they would continue to play better and better as the regular season came to an end, with their playoff hopes no longer in their hands but those of their lawyers, who would fight the NIAA in court 10 days later.
Right when the game looked like it was in the bag, BOOM!—Bonanza's back in it. Feisty little dudes, for real. They hit a couple jumpers; Gorman missed a couple free throws—and before ya knew it, they're back in the damn thing. And Coach Rice—he was standin' slouched on the sideline, holdin' two invisible drink trays, utterly flabbergasted.
It was the same look he had a day before the Bonanza game, when the stress of the season, exacerbated by the controversy surroundin' Jonathan all year long and the suspicious eye hoverin' over his shoulder ever since he became head coach of Gorman five years ago, rushed out like water from behind a broken dam:
"Obviously some people will always think we're doing something illegal here, because we're a private school—I understand, I played basketball at a public high school and I used to think the same things—but it's a misconception. I have to turn kids away all the time, because so many come to us. All they have to do is Google 'Basketball in Las Vegas' and obviously Bishop Gorman is going to come up, because we've had great success. And that success perpetuates itself. With success comes confidence, and confidence, momentum. Look at our freshman team: they're undefeated. I mean, I haven't been to a middle school game since I started because I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. We don't offer athletic scholarships here—yes, some kids get financial aide, but I have nothing to do with that—and we're one of the only teams in Las Vegas not to have a single in-city transfer on our varsity team."
And then, takin' a breath, he continued, his soft and affable voice resettlin':
"I know in my heart we've done nothing wrong. Trust me, if it meant the education or future of one of these kids I would resign today. There's many things I can do other than coaching, most of which would certainly make my wife a lot happier."
On February 6, 2006—one week before the playoffs were scheduled to commence—District Judge Valerie Adair voided the probation placed on Bishop Gorman's postseason, permitting Marcus Lawrence and his teammates to strive for another state title. Moreover, she warned the NIAA not to retaliate in any fashion.
The players, who were in the courtroom to hear the ruling, rejoiced. Dr. Jerry Hughes, and the countless others who believe the high school playing field in Nevada is not level, sighed.
With 90 seconds left in the game, and Bonanza creepin' back in it, Coach Rice needed his team to show some composure on the court. Somebody to hold it down. So he left the ball in the hands of not only Marcus but also sophomore point guard Kevin Loyd. Marcus' backup had filled in for him at the end of the first half without a glitch, and Coach Rice thinks he'll take over right where Marcus leaves off when Marcus goes to UNLV next year. Ain't no doubt about it: the kid can play. He's the son of a former UNLV player, and it looks like he'll be next in the line of great Bishop Gorman prospects. The boy's poise and solid decision-making skills helped ensure the 76-67 victory over Bonanza that night, but his real christening wouldn't come until February 16, during the regional championship game against Palo Verde, when his clutch shots, along with Jonathan's game-high 32 points and Marcus' stellar all-around play, sealed for Gorman another birth into the state tournament, to be played this Thursday and Friday at Lawlor Events Center in Reno.
The wheels just keep on rollin'.
But before the Bonanza game come to an end, there was this moment that, the way I see it, makes Marcus and Bishop Gorman and high school basketball in Las Vegas worth talkin' 'bout. See, with just a few seconds left in that game, as intense as it was, Marcus was at the free throw line, and after missin' his first, he knocked down his second. And that's when that big smile of his resurfaced. Smiled so big couldn't nobody miss it. And the truth is, no matter what happens in the state tournament, can't nobody stop him from smilin'. Can't nothin'—no controversies, no grudges, no nothin'—stop him from smilin'. Cuz he's just a kid, and the game's fun. For real.