A/N: I see we've reached the goal of 50 power stones—I'm glad! Let's try to reach it again. I also want to let you know that there won't be a chapter on Patreon today because it's my birthday and I have plans, but if you want to know how the story continues, don't forget to subscribe to my Patreon and leave me your questions or comments about the story.
The Kentucky locker room was in total calm, which was interrupted when the players entered in a line, with the muffled noise of the stadium still filtering under the door while the support staff distributed towels and water bottles with the efficiency of those who have repeated the same protocol hundreds of times.
Coach Calipari entered last, closed the door behind him and stood in front of the group for a second without saying anything, with that calculated pause that his players already knew how to interpret: it was not the silence of someone looking for words, but that of someone who wants the room to quiet down before speaking.
Then he pointed in the direction where Aaron was.
"Chris," he called, addressing the team's medical assistant, Chris Simmons, who had already positioned himself next to the bench with his medical bag open. "Check him first."
Simmons approached Aaron with the calmness of someone who knows exactly what he is looking for. Aaron did not protest or ask how long it would take. He took off his jersey carefully, slower than usual because the movement of raising his arms generated a dull resistance on the left side of his chest that during the game he had successfully ignored, but now, in the silence of the locker room, was impossible not to notice. He left the jersey on the bench while Simmons began the systematic examination.
The silence in the locker room changed in nature as soon as the jersey fell.
Julius was the first to see it. Then Andrew. Then the rest, one by one, in the order in which their eyes found the same spot on Aaron's chest.
The bruise was large. Dark in the center, with edges of an intense purple that spread toward both sides of the rib cage in the irregular shape of an impact received full-on. It was not the kind of mark left by casual game contact. It was the mark of an elbow thrown with intent.
"Man," Julius murmured in a low voice.
Aaron did not look down. He kept his eyes forward while Simmons carefully pressed different points around the bruise, observing Aaron's reactions with clinical attention.
"Does it hurt here?" Simmons asked, applying gentle pressure on the lower left rib.
"A little," Aaron replied.
"Here?"
"No."
Simmons continued the examination in silence for another minute, palpating methodically, verifying the mobility of the torso, asking Aaron to breathe deeply twice and observing if the movement generated any visible reaction.
Finally he stood up and turned toward Calipari.
"The bruise is superficial," he said calmly. "It is on the skin and subcutaneous tissue. There is no rib compromise. He can play."
Coach Calipari exhaled slowly. It was a visible, discrete relief, the kind that experienced coaches do not show easily but cannot always avoid completely.
"Good," he said simply.
He turned toward the rest of the group, who kept their eyes between Aaron and the coach, processing the information with the same attention with which they had listened to the diagnosis.
"Now listen to me. We have twenty minutes and there is work to do," Calipari began, with the tone that signaled the formal start of the analysis of the first half. "The score at the end of the first half was 43-30. That was good. But not enough."
Antigua placed himself next to the tactical board while Calipari continued.
"What we did well: tempo control, transition defense, offensive rebound. Julius, your two blocks in the last quarter of the first half were exactly what we needed after the incident. Andrew, the handling under pressure was solid. That does not change in the second half."
"What we have to improve: rotations on the weak side when Henton goes out to the perimeter. Three times in the first half we left them open in that corner and two of the three ended in a triple or a foul. That gets corrected," he said, looking directly at Andrew. "You."
Andrew nodded.
Calipari paused before continuing.
"And about Aaron," he said, with a tone that dropped slightly in temperature. "He goes in at the six-minute mark of the second half. Not before."
Aaron opened his mouth.
"No," Calipari said, anticipating the objection with the same speed with which Aaron would have formulated it. "It is not a discussion. It is a decision. We have a sufficient lead to manage those six minutes without exposing you to more contact than you already received."
Aaron closed his mouth and nodded without putting up any objection to his coach's instructions.
"Good," Calipari repeated. "When you go in, I want the same game. No changes. Without trying to prove anything extra because of what happened before. Understood?"
"Understood coach," Aaron replied.
At the other end of the hallway, separated by a wall of concrete blocks, the Providence Friars' locker room had a completely different temperature.
Ed Cooley was not the type of coach who wasted time on recriminations during the break. He had been in this league for enough years to know that the first five minutes of halftime should be used to understand what had happened, not to regret it. Regrets could wait until Monday.
"Thirty points in twenty minutes," Cooley said, standing in front of his board with his arms crossed. "It is not catastrophic. We have faced worse situations than this."
His players listened to him in silence, some with towels over their shoulders, others with water bottles in hand, all with the expression of those who know that what comes next is going to require concentration.
"The problem is not the score. The problem is their player number 15," Cooley said, remembering the player in particular with the same seriousness with which he would have pronounced the name of a meteorological phenomenon. "We have been trying to defend him for several minutes with what we had, and what we had is not enough. I know that. You know that. Let's not waste time pretending it is not so."
His assistant Larry began to point on the board while Cooley continued.
"What we can do in the second half is change the conditions in which he receives the ball. Less space in the low post. More body on the catch. If we force him to receive two meters further from the rim than he wants to receive, we complicate all his post-up moves. We don't stop him, but we slow him down. And in twenty minutes, slowing him down can be enough to make the rest of the game competitive."
Henton raised his hand.
"But Coach, when he receives in the high post he executes the skyhook," he said. "And when we pressure him near the rim he spins out forcing changes of direction in the post. What do we do if he adapts?"
Cooley looked at him for a second.
"If he adapts, we lose," he responded with an honesty that disarmed half the room. "But we cannot play with fear of what he is going to do. We play our best basketball and see what happens."
It was the most honest answer Coach Cooley had given in a locker room in many years. And his players knew it.
What followed were four minutes of intense tactical work, with the coach drawing on the board the specific rotations they wanted to implement on Aaron's post game, pointing out the exact angles from which his players should pressure to deny him comfortable catches and the help points that the rest of the team would have to cover when that pressure generated spaces on the perimeter.
His assistants were not idle either; they listened, added nuances, corrected some detail. His players took notes with the attention of those who know that the next period can be the difference between a dignified defeat and an exhibition.
The referee called the teams five minutes later.
The second half started with Kentucky controlling the tempo from the beginning, with Aaron's teammates covering his absence with a collective energy that Calipari observed from the sideline with complete satisfaction. Julius dominated the paint in the first possessions, scoring four consecutive points in the post with the type of determination that only appears when a player has something to prove beyond the game itself.
Providence responded with two consecutive triples from their shooting guard that cut the difference to 11 points, and the Barclays Center recovered some of the tension that the comfortable score had put to sleep during the final minutes of the first half.
47-36.
On the bench, Aaron followed the game with total concentration, the jersey back on his shoulders and the towel draped over his neck. Each possession he processed quickly in his head, thinking about what he would have done in each situation, as if keeping the mind active were as important as keeping the body ready.
The clock of the second half marked fourteen minutes when Calipari turned toward him.
"Warm up."
Aaron stood up, took off the towel, passed it to the assistant and went toward the control table to register the substitution. The Barclays Center saw him stand up and responded before he even reached the sideline.
The roar was immediate, compact, with the specific quality of the stadium recognizing the return of one of their own after a forced absence. It was not the roar of the first game of the season nor that of a spectacular basket. It was something more personal, more charged with meaning, the kind that only a city generates when it feels that one of its own has been treated unfairly and that now he is going to do something about it.
In the fourth row, Paola was the first to stand up with Mia in her arms, who woke up startled by the noise and looked around with wide eyes before deciding there was no reason for alarm and resting her head back on her mother's shoulder. Melissa applauded from her seat, Hannah applauded without standing up, with her hands and with the same emotion she had carried all night.
Ed Cooley heard it from the sideline and did not need to turn toward the scorers' table to understand what was happening. He called timeout immediately.
"Listen to me," he said to his players as they grouped around him, with the roar of the stadium as a backdrop. "Reed is coming in. You know what that means. I want a two-three zone as soon as he crosses half court. We do not give him comfortable passing lanes toward the inside. And Henton, when the ball gets near him, body. Within the legal limit, but body."
His players nodded.
The timeout ended. Aaron entered the hardwood and the Barclays Center went up another step in volume.
What followed in the remaining fourteen minutes was not the type of performance that generated flashy individual statistics. It was something more like a masterclass of how to dismantle a two-three zone with patience and surgical accuracy. Aaron systematically found the weak spots of the Providence defense, distributing the ball to the best-positioned teammates before the zone could adjust, and when the Friars collapsed toward the outside shooters, he moved toward the vacated space to receive in comfortable conditions.
Each possession ended with a basket by Kentucky or with a turnover by Providence.
The score kept moving away with the inevitability of a tide.
56-40. 63-44. 71-51. 79-58.
Ed Cooley called two more timeouts in that stretch, reorganizing his defenses with the determination of one who knows he is not going to win but is not going to surrender either. His players responded with everything they had: more intensity on the perimeter, more body in the paint, more aggressiveness in rotations. Nothing was enough.
With three minutes left to play and the score at 83-62, Calipari took Aaron off the court for the second time in the game. This time it was not out of medical precaution but out of respect: the work was done and there was no reason to expose his most important player to more minutes than necessary. Aaron left the court, raising his hand briefly toward the stands before heading to the bench, and the Barclays Center responded with one last ovation that had nothing to do with statistics or the score but with something much more difficult to quantify.
Aaron sat on the bench with the towel over his shoulders and his eyes on the scoreboard.
The referee blew his final whistle with the timer at zero, putting an end to a game that had had drama, tension and the confirmation that this Kentucky team knew how to handle both things without losing their way.
88-65.
"Kentucky defeats Providence 88 to 65," announced Tom Hart from the booth, with the voice of someone who knows that the result was expected but that the path to it had given much more than anticipated. "Eighth victory of the season for the Wildcats, who remain undefeated and who tonight demonstrated something that goes beyond the scoreboard: the ability to manage adversity, physical pain and the emotional tension of a game without losing a single gram of the identity that has brought them here."
"And at the center of all that, Jon, as always," added Sundvold.
"Aaron Reed," confirmed Sundvold. "Number 15 of the Kentucky Wildcats. Eighteen years old. College freshman. And tonight, in his city, with a mark on his chest that most players would have used as an excuse to perform below their level, he scored 23 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and distributed 7 assists in twenty-six minutes of play."
"Without losing his calm a single time," added Tom Hart.
"Without losing his calm a single time," repeated Sundvold.
Authors thought
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