A/N: What do you think about setting a goal to collect 50 power stones today so the fic can climb in the rankings and more people can discover this fic
With the score at 31-18 for Kentucky and less than 8 minutes left to play in the first half, the game had adopted the calm and predictable rhythm of a team that controls without needing to accelerate. Providence tried every few possessions to inject urgency into the game with fast attacks or pressure on the perimeter, but every time the Friars threatened to cut the distance, Kentucky's defense closed with a solidity that made the effort seem useless before it ended.
Aaron received the ball in the low post from a slightly different angle than usual, with Henton glued to his back and a second Providence defender floating toward the paint to anticipate any turn toward the rim. He processed it all in the space of a second: Henton's position behind him, the angle of the second defender, the space that was left free toward the baseline if he executed the pivot in the right direction.
He made the fake to the left. He followed him. He took the step to the right, felt how the space opened before him and began the hook movement with his right arm.
What came was not the resistance of a well-positioned defender.
It was an elbow.
The impact came straight to the chest, dry and deliberate, with enough force to cut the movement in half and make Aaron lose his balance. His feet searched for the floor but the momentum was too much, and for an instant that seemed longer than it was, he felt as if his body was suspended across the whole court.
The hit of Aaron's body against the hardwood resonated throughout the Barclays Center.
The silence lasted exactly half a second.
Then everything else arrived at the same time.
The main referee's whistle cut the air with three quick and sharp blasts. The stands responded with a compact and unanimous boo that rose from the Kentucky fan sector like a wave and spread through the rest of the stadium until practically the entire Barclays Center was expressing the same thought with different decibels.
And Julius was no longer where he had been a second before.
He had crossed half the distance between his position and the Providence player in the time it took Aaron to touch the floor, and when the assistant referee intercepted him it was too late for the gesture to be completely harmless. Julius's push was enough to move the Providence player one step backward, no more, but in the context of a college game with a full stadium it was exactly the type of reaction that turns an isolated incident into the most tense moment of the night.
The whistles multiplied.
Three referees converged toward the center of the action from different angles, with arms extended and open palms, separating the players with the firmness of one who knows that the situation has exactly ten seconds to calm down before becoming something worse. The Providence players approached their teammate. The Kentucky ones placed themselves around Julius with the instinctive combination of calming him down and being there if things escalated.
"Enough!" shouted the main referee, pointing his finger toward Julius with an expression that left no room for any interpretation. "One more and you are out of the game."
Julius raised his hands with palms up, in the universal gesture of one who says that is it, that nothing else is going to happen. But his eyes remained fixed on the Providence player for a second longer than would have been strictly necessary.
In the stands, the atmosphere had completely changed. It was no longer the festive and satisfied warmth of a game in which the favorite team played in total calm. It was something more electric, more tense, with the background of disapproval from the booing mixing with the angry comments of fans who had seen exactly what had happened and were not willing to let it pass in silence.
"That is a flagrant foul!" shouted someone three rows behind where Aaron's family was sitting, with the volume and conviction of one who has no doubts.
In row four, Paola had abandoned her seat the moment Aaron touched the floor and only Hector's arm, which grabbed her by the elbow with the speed of someone who already knew her reactions, prevented her from standing completely up.
"Son of a bitch!" Paola exclaimed, with a volume that she did not try to moderate at any time. "That was on purpose, on purpose!"
Around her, other Kentucky fans reacted in a similar way. A woman two rows higher was shouting something at the Providence player in an English that the nearby children should not have heard. A man with a blue t-shirt in the adjacent sector slammed the railing with the palm of his hand while shaking his head. The stadium, which until that moment had had the temperature of a celebration, suddenly had the temperature of something completely different.
"Paola," Hector said in a low voice, without letting go of her arm.
"Don't come to me with Paola!" she replied, although she lowered half a tone without reducing a single gram of intensity. "That guy elbowed him in the chest on purpose!"
Vicky, from the other end of the row, looked at the scene with wide open eyes. Melissa had Mia held tightly against her chest, instinctively protecting her from the noise and movement around her, with her gaze fixed on the court where Aaron was still on the floor.
Hannah had not said anything since Aaron touched the floor. She had her hands intertwined in her lap and her eyes fixed on the court with an expression that Vicky, who knew her well, had not seen before on her face. It was not panic. It was not drama. It was something more contained and more solid than either of the two things.
"Is he okay?" Vicky asked in a low voice.
"Yes," Hannah replied, without taking her eyes off the court where Aaron was already getting up from the floor.
Vicky nodded and said no more.
On the court, Aaron got up calmly. Not suddenly, not with the type of dramatism that some players use to emphasize before the referees the gravity of what they have just received. He sat up first, touched his chest once as if verifying that everything remained where it should be, and then used his arms to lift himself with deliberate slowness.
A Kentucky assistant came running from the sideline.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yes," Aaron replied, without stopping to think about it.
The main referee approached after having finished the conversation with both benches.
"Personal foul on number 15 of Providence," he announced with the regulation gestures. "Free throw."
In the broadcast booth, Tom Hart waited for the atmosphere to drop enough to speak.
"A very clear foul on Aaron Reed, and what we have seen immediately after is the type of reaction that defines a team's culture," he said, with a graver tone than usual. "Julius Randle did not think about it for a single second. He saw his teammate on the floor and went over there. That is instinct, and that instinct says a lot about what is inside that locker room."
"And what also says a lot, Tom, is the way Reed got up from the floor," added Sundvold. "No theater, no looking for the camera, no trying to make the referee see something he had already seen. He got up, checked that he was okay, and went to the free-throw line. Simple as that."
"Which is exactly what we already know about this boy," responded Tom Hart.
"And speaking of the foul itself, Jon, what we are seeing tonight is exactly the problem that players with Reed's characteristics present," continued Sundvold. "When you have a seven-foot center with the ball-handling of a point guard and the game vision of a playmaker, defenders have to make impossible decisions in fractions of a second. If you give him space, he destroys you with the hook or the skyhook. If you stick to him, he destroys you with the pass to the shooters. There is no correct answer, and when defenders have no correct answer, sometimes they make mistakes like the one we just saw."
"And that is exactly what is going to make him so difficult to stop when he reaches the professional level," added Tom Hart.
"When he reaches. Not if he reaches. When he reaches," corrected Sundvold without hesitating.
Aaron walked toward the free-throw line with the ball in his hands, while the Barclays Center continued to buzz around him with that mixture of irritation and expectation generated by the moment prior to a free throw in a tense game. He placed himself on the line, bounced the ball three times with his right hand as was his custom, inhaled slowly and shot.
The ball entered cleanly, brushing the net without touching the rim.
The stands responded with an applause that had more of vindication than of celebration.
32-18.
Calipari did not wait a single second more. Before the referee could signal the restart of the game, the Kentucky coach had raised his hand toward the control table and asked for the substitution.
"Reed out," Antigua told him by his side, in a low voice but with the firmness of a decision already made.
Aaron walked toward the sideline without protesting, wiping his hands on his jersey while the replacement player passed by his side in the opposite direction. Calipari intercepted him before he reached the bench.
"How is the chest?" he asked, with a tone that was not that of a coach evaluating an asset but that of someone who wants to know how the person is.
"Good," said Aaron.
"Sit down. You rest the remaining first half."
"No need," replied Aaron.
"I already know," said Calipari, with a brief smile that closed the topic. "Sit down anyway."
In the stands, Paola continued with her arms crossed and her jaw tightened, although the initial heat of her reaction had begun to settle into something more like sustained indignation.
"Let them throw him out for good," she murmured, this time in a volume that only reached Hector and Melissa.
"They already took him out," said Hector calmly.
Melissa said nothing. She only continued looking at the court where Aaron had sat on the bench with a towel over his shoulders, his body relaxed and his eyes fixed on the game.
The game restarted and Kentucky continued where it had left off, with Aaron's teammates responding to the tension of the moment with the same solidity that had characterized the entire game. Julius scored in the post with the additional determination of someone who has something to prove after the referee's warning. The same Randle who three possessions before had crossed half court in pure reaction was now the most focused player on the court, as if the adrenaline of the incident had found a way to become useful energy instead of unproductive heat. James connected a triple from the corner. Andrew executed a peripheral vision assist that would have generated headlines in any other game but that night was eclipsed by everything before.
From the bench, Aaron observed each possession with the towel over his shoulders and a water bottle in his hand. From time to time Calipari would approach him to ask him some brief question and Aaron would answer with the same conciseness as always, a couple of words that the coach processed and then transferred to the assistants on the sideline.
The final minutes of the first half passed without further incidents. Providence tried one last offensive action that Kentucky dismantled with the same coldness with which it had dismantled all the previous ones, and the score continued to move away progressively until the referee made his whistle sound with the timer at zero.
43-30.
"With that score the Kentucky Wildcats go to the break," announced Tom Hart from the booth. "A 13-point advantage in the first half of a game that started to get complicated for a moment but that this team knew how to manage with a maturity that, I insist, is unprecedented in a group of first-year players."
"And the story of this first half, Tom, has two protagonists," said Sundvold. "The first is evident: Aaron Reed, who in the minutes he was on the court demonstrated again why analysts across the NCAA are talking about him as the most difficult player to defend that has passed through this tournament in years. Seven feet tall with the ball-handling of a point guard and the game vision of a playmaker: there is no written defensive manual for that, because never before had there been the need to write it."
"And the second protagonist?" asked Tom Hart.
"The second protagonist is what happened after the elbow," responded Sundvold calmly. "Randle's reaction. The way Reed got up. Calipari's decision to take him out without anyone asking him to. All that tells us something about the kind of team Kentucky is this season. And that, in the long run, matters as much as any statistic."
On the bench, Aaron left the towel on the seat and stood up ready to head to the locker room along with the rest of the team. Touching his chest when he got up from the floor had not been a calculated gesture for the cameras, nor a message for the referee nor for the Providence player. He had simply verified that everything was where it was supposed to be.
He was fine.
The rest could wait for the second half.
Authors thought
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