Smooth Play (Brooklyn Monarchs 2)

DeMarcus Guinn had his back to Troy as he spoke to Oscar Clemente, one of his assistant coaches.

Troy’s approach drew the men’s attention. “Can I speak with the team?”

DeMarcus lowered his clipboard. “About what?”

“Keeping their grievances inside the organization.”

Oscar scratched the scalp beneath his thinning gray hair. “We covered that.”

Troy heard the resentment in the older man’s tone. “Hearing the message from someone else will emphasize its importance.”

Oscar narrowed his dark eyes. “You mean from the front office.”

Troy took the comment the way it was meant. Oscar was marking his territory. “That’s right.”

“It couldn’t hurt.” DeMarcus stepped around Troy. He blew the whistle suspended from a cord around his neck. The noise bounced across the practice facility. “Bring it in.”

The thirteen players looked over in surprise before grabbing their exercise bands and basketballs and jogging toward DeMarcus. Their sneakers squeaked against the court. Most of the men were NBA veterans facing the sunset of their glory days. The one exception was Jamal Ward, a nineteen-year-old rookie picked in one of the last rounds of the 2010 draft.

Barron Douglas gave Troy a cautious look as he sauntered past him. The point guard’s baggy, black nylon shorts, a match to his teammates’, skimmed his knees. His oversized black T-shirt hung past his hips and bared tattoos that extended like sleeves down his dark brown arms to his wrists.

Troy made eye contact with each of the players. Most seemed curious about his presence. A couple seemed disinterested. Troy understood. Players would rather the front office remained upstairs and left them alone. Over the years, he’d made a point of getting to know all of the players, though. That familiarity was especially helpful in pitching human interest stories to the media. But he also wanted to know the members of the franchise’s family.

“Monarchs.” DeMarcus paused while the players stilled to give him their attention. “Troy Marshall, our media exec, wants to talk to you.”

“Thanks, Coach.” Troy stepped forward. “Even before the season started, we were the target of a lot of bad press, more than usual.”

Jamal, the rookie shooting guard, raised his voice to interrupt Troy. “That’s Gerry Bimm’s fault, not ours.” A sheen of perspiration covered the wiry, six-foot-four-inch shooting guard from his clean-shaven head to his tattooed arms.

Troy held up his hand. “Gerry was the source of most of the negative stories, but not all of them. Coach asked you to keep whatever issues or concerns you have about each other within the team. Those complaints can’t leave the locker room. Definitely, don’t discuss it in the press.”

Jamal’s grin was sheepish. “But that Sports reporter is hot. You can’t have all the honeys, Trademark.”

Trademark. TM. Troy Marshall. He didn’t mind the nickname. He actually liked it. It made him feel like one of the players again.

Anthony Chambers’s dark olive eyes gleamed in his fair skin. The starting for ward’s rounded natural was a 1970s throwback. “Yeah. She’s hot. In a touchme-and-I’ll-rip-out-your-spleen way.”

Vincent Jardine, the team’s center, spoke with fake concern. “Does she scare you, St. Anthony?”

Anthony wasn’t amused. “Shut up, Vinny.”

“Jamal’s right.” The six-foot-ten-inch forward, Serge Gateau, cut through the bickering. The Frenchman’s shoulder-length, blond ponytail was pulled back from his lean, square features. “When a beautiful woman asks me a question, I must answer her. I cannot help myself.”

“Try.” Troy ignored the bite of jealousy. “None of you is new to this aspect of the sport. Even you, Jamal.

The media’s followed you since high school.”

Jamal puffed out his chest. “Yeah, but no one’s ever told me not to talk to them before.”

Troy arched a brow. “They should have. The media are enough of a distraction throughout the season. Negative stories make it worse.”

“You’re right, Troy.” Warrick Evans’s expression was solemn. The six-foot-seven-inch shooting guard passed a large hand over his bald, brown head. “This is the first time some of us have ever been to the playoffs, and it may be the last chance some of us will ever have. We can’t afford distractions.”

Troy swallowed a sigh of relief. Finally, someone understood. “Right. It doesn’t help anyone to complain about the team in public. But it hurts everyone to argue in the press.”

Barron shouted his question. “So if reporters ask me how everything’s going, what am I supposed to say?”

Troy faced Barron. The other man’s tension beat at him like a club. “Tell them everything’s fine.”