Fergus had imagined telling his family that he made the team often enough that the actual moment felt strangely ordinary at first.
Diane was home when he arrived, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and several unopened letters beside her.
Angus was somewhere upstairs, while Hamish hadn’t yet returned from work.
Fergus tried to maintain the same composure he had managed inside the gym, but his mother noticed his expression almost immediately.
“Well?” Fergus dropped his bag beside the table.
“I made it.” Diane’s face broke into a smile before Fergus had even finished speaking.
She stood and pulled him into a hug, congratulating him while Fergus unsuccessfully complained that he wasn’t five years old anymore.
Angus came thundering downstairs after hearing the commotion and reacted with considerably less restraint, loudly declaring that Fergus was now a professional basketball player until both Fergus and Diane corrected him.
Hamish didn’t arrive home until later that evening.
He looked exhausted after work, but the tiredness disappeared from his expression when Fergus handed him the information sheet Coach McKenzie had provided.
“You made it?” Fergus nodded.
“Thirteen-player squad.” Hamish read through the sheet before looking back towards his son, and the smile that appeared was quieter than Diane’s but meant just as much to Fergus.
“Then we’d better start figuring out those fees.” The reminder of what his parents had promised to sacrifice briefly tempered Fergus’s excitement.
“I can help somehow.
Maybe I could…” “We made an agreement,” Hamish interrupted.
“You did your part, Fergus.
Your mother and I will do ours.” Fergus wanted to argue, but his father clearly had no interest in allowing it.
“Just remember the other part of the agreement.
Basketball doesn’t suddenly mean your schoolwork disappears.” “I know.” “And helping around here.” “I know that too.” Hamish smiled and handed the sheet back to him.
“Then congratulations, son.
You earned it.” Those words stayed with Fergus through the following day and all the way to his first official training session on Thursday afternoon.
Making the team had felt like an ending when McKenzie called his name, but Fergus realised almost immediately after entering the gym that it had actually been a beginning.
The thirteen selected players were already gathering when he arrived.
Arthur was taking casual three-pointers from one side of the court, while Finn shot from the opposite corner with the smooth motion Fergus remembered from tryouts.
Merrick and William were talking near the basket, and Jaime was dribbling between his legs while waiting for practice to begin.
Fergus watched Jaime for a moment and found himself paying more attention to his dribbling than he normally would.
Tight Handles had made him increasingly conscious of the difference between basic ball control and genuine dribbling skill.
Fergus was beginning to understand how the basketball should feel beneath either hand and how to keep it under control while moving, but Jaime was several levels beyond that.
He could cross from one hand to the other without looking down, change rhythm naturally and move the ball behind his back whenever he wanted.
Fergus couldn’t do any of that reliably yet.
McKenzie entered carrying a whistle and clipboard, his usual slight limp accompanying every step.
The relaxed conversations around the gym disappeared almost immediately when he pointed towards the far end of the court.
“Baseline.” Nobody needed a second instruction.
The thirteen players hurried towards one end of the court and arranged themselves along the line.
Fergus expected stretching or perhaps some light jogging to begin their first training session, but McKenzie apparently had no interest in easing them into anything.
“You’re going to learn something about me fairly quickly,” he said.
“I don’t care how talented you are if you’re too knackered to use that talent.
Basketball doesn’t stop because you’re tired, and neither does the bloke you’re supposed to be guarding.
We’re starting with conditioning.” Arthur quietly groaned beside Fergus.
McKenzie’s eyes immediately found him.
“Something wrong, Reid?” “No, Coach.” “Excellent.
Suicides.
Ten repetitions, twenty seconds between each one.
If you’re going to be sick, try not to do it on my court.” Fergus almost smiled.
Arthur noticed immediately.
“Why do you look happy?” “Long story.” The whistle sounded before Arthur could question him further, and thirteen players exploded from the baseline.
Fergus accelerated towards the first line before planting and changing direction.
The opening repetition felt easy enough, particularly compared with the fifty full suicides he had forced himself through to unlock Suicide Sprinter.
He returned to the baseline among the first several players and concentrated on controlling his breathing during the short rest instead of wasting energy pacing around.
The second repetition was faster, but by the fourth the group had begun separating.
Merrick’s larger frame made the repeated changes of direction harder for him, while Finn was visibly slowing after starting too quickly.
Arthur remained competitive but had lost some of the speed he showed during the opening repetitions.
Jaime was still near the front, and William’s long stride helped him cover the court efficiently despite his height.
Fergus stayed with them.
The experience of completing fifty repetitions had taught him far more than how unpleasant suicides could become.
He understood that sprinting as hard as possible at the beginning was a mistake when repeated efforts were required, so he accelerated strongly without exhausting himself, controlled his pace across the longer sections and used every second of the short recovery periods.
By the eighth repetition, Fergus was breathing heavily, but so was everyone else.
McKenzie noticed.
“Robertson!
Keep that pace!” Fergus didn’t have enough breath to answer, but he maintained it through the ninth repetition and forced himself through the tenth without dropping away from the leading group.
He eventually crossed the baseline only slightly behind Jaime and one of the other guards.
Arthur arrived several seconds later and bent forward with his hands planted against his knees.
“I hate you.” Fergus drew several deep breaths before answering.
“What did I do?” “You were smiling before we started.
Nobody smiles before suicides unless there’s something wrong with them.” William approached while catching his own breath.
“I’m more concerned that Flimsy is apparently fitter than most of us.” Jaime had overheard him and frowned.
“Don’t call him Flimsy when he does something well.
It ruins the point.” Fergus turned towards him in genuine surprise.
Jaime stared back.
“Don’t make this weird.” McKenzie’s whistle ended the conversation before Fergus could respond.
The conditioning continued with defensive slides, short sprints and repeated transitions from one end of the court to the other.
Fergus wasn’t the fastest player on the team, nor was he close to being the strongest, but he remained among the most consistent.
Suicide Sprinter hadn’t magically given him endless stamina; the training required to unlock the skill had improved his conditioning while teaching him how to manage repeated effort without exhausting himself too early.
McKenzie watched all of it.
Once the conditioning portion finally ended, the team moved into skill work, and Fergus’s limitations became considerably more obvious.
The first shooting drill exposed him almost immediately.
Players rotated through five positions around the perimeter, receiving a pass before shooting without taking more than a single settling dribble.
Arthur looked completely comfortable and regularly made several attempts in succession, while Finn was even more impressive from the corners, where his release barely seemed to change regardless of whether the previous shot had gone in.
Jaime was reliable from almost everywhere.
Fergus wasn’t.
His first attempt struck the back of the rim, while the second missed towards the right.
The third finally dropped through, only for his fourth attempt to barely reach the front rim.
“Robertson,” McKenzie called.
Fergus immediately looked towards him.
“You’re pushing the ball once you get outside comfortable range.
Don’t turn a bad shot into a worse one because you’re desperate to reach the basket.
Use your legs.” “Yes, Coach.” Fergus tried to apply the correction, and A Star’s Work Ethic made the instruction easier to process.
He began noticing the moment his upper body took over whenever he felt he was too far from the basket, and although adjusting his legs helped, understanding what he was doing wrong didn’t instantly repair his jumper.
There was no hiding the obvious.
Fergus was one of the weaker shooters on the team.
The passing drills weren’t much kinder.
McKenzie introduced a drive-and-kick exercise that required the ball handler to read a rotating defender and decide whether to finish, pass towards the corner or find a teammate cutting towards the basket.
Fergus understood the basic concept, but making the correct decision at game speed proved considerably more difficult.
On one repetition, he held the basketball too long and missed the corner pass entirely.
On another, he recognised the opening but delivered the pass late enough for the defender to recover.
“Earlier, Robertson!” McKenzie barked.
“The pass doesn’t become correct just because you eventually saw it.” Fergus nodded and returned to the line.
Arthur performed considerably better.
His head remained up while dribbling, and he seemed capable of recognising where defenders were moving before Fergus had even worked out what the drill was asking him to see.
That difference bothered Fergus more than his poor shooting.
He had always imagined himself becoming a point guard, but watching Arthur showed him what playing the position actually required.
Ball handling alone wasn’t enough.
A proper point guard needed to manipulate defenders, remain aware of teammates away from the basketball and deliver passes at the moment an opening developed rather than noticing it a second afterwards.
Fergus had a long way to go.
Practice eventually shifted towards live basketball, beginning with four-on-four half-court possessions before McKenzie organised the full team.
That was when Fergus began looking useful again.
His shooting might have been poor and his playmaking limited, but neither weakness mattered as much when his responsibility became simpler.
McKenzie placed him on the perimeter defensively and instructed him to prevent penetration.
Fergus could do that.
Perimeter Pest gave him an understanding of stance, spacing and positioning that many players his age lacked, while the lunchtime game and tryouts had begun giving him opportunities to apply those lessons against actual opponents.
Finn tried attacking him from the wing, but Fergus stayed in front and forced him to pick up the basketball.
Another guard attempted to beat him towards the baseline, only for Fergus to cut off the angle and force the ball backwards.
“Good, Robertson!” McKenzie called.
“Don’t chase the ball.
Keep your chest between him and the basket.” Fergus absorbed the instruction immediately and applied it again on the next possession.
He didn’t steal the basketball or produce anything spectacular, but his opponent failed to create an advantage and eventually passed away.
McKenzie nodded.
Fergus noticed.
When the team switched ends, his offensive role became equally straightforward.
Nobody asked him to control possessions or take difficult jumpers.
Instead, Fergus screened, cut towards the basket and stayed active whenever defenders looked away from him.
Arthur found him on one cut for a simple right-handed layup.
Later, Fergus collected an offensive rebound beneath the basket and finished softly against the glass.
When William challenged him at the rim during another possession, Fergus recognised the height difference and released a floater before William could properly contest.
The shot bounced against the front rim before dropping through.
“That’s your game right now, Robertson,” McKenzie said as everyone moved back on defence.
“Don’t complicate it.” Fergus wasn’t entirely sure whether that was praise, and apparently his expression revealed the thought.
McKenzie frowned.
“You think every player needs twenty moves?” “No, Coach.” “Good, because you don’t have twenty moves.” Several players laughed, and Fergus couldn’t really argue with the assessment.
“You defend, you run, you cut, and when somebody gives you the ball near the basket, you finish the simple ones,” McKenzie continued.
“Until the rest catches up, make yourself useful doing what you can actually do.” Something about that clicked with Fergus.
He had spent years believing improvement meant becoming good at everything.
Better shooting, better dribbling, better passing, more complicated finishes and eventually all the spectacular skills he watched professional players perform.
McKenzie was telling him something different.
A basketball player didn’t need to do everything to contribute.
That lesson became even clearer when the final scrimmage began, and McKenzie separated five players into yellow bibs.
Arthur took point guard, Finn lined up alongside him on the perimeter, Jaime occupied the other wing, William played forward, and Merrick settled into the centre position.
Fergus looked at the five of them together and immediately understood what McKenzie was showing everyone.
That was the starting lineup.
There was no announcement and no dramatic explanation because none was necessary.
Arthur was the team’s best organiser, Finn provided outside shooting, Jaime could create his own offence, William brought size and versatility, while Merrick anchored the middle.
Fergus joined the opposing group, and the difference between the starters and reserves became obvious almost immediately.
Arthur controlled the tempo far better than any other guard on the roster; Finn punished defenders who helped too far away from him, while Jaime could create something whenever a possession stalled.
William and Merrick gave them a considerable size advantage around the basket as well.
The reserves struggled to score, and Fergus struggled with them.
When he received the basketball beyond the arc, Jaime deliberately backed away and dared him to shoot.
Fergus accepted the invitation once and missed badly enough that Jaime grinned while collecting the rebound.
“Thought so.” Fergus wanted to answer by taking another jumper the next time the opportunity appeared, but McKenzie’s earlier instruction returned to him.
Don’t complicate it.
When Jaime sagged away again, Fergus moved the basketball towards the top of the key and immediately cut along the baseline.
Jaime relaxed for half a second after the pass, giving Fergus enough space to reach the opposite side of the basket before the defence reacted.
A teammate found him underneath.
Fergus finished with his left hand.
McKenzie slapped his clipboard against his thigh.
“There you go!
Stop playing the game your defender wants you to play.” Fergus sprinted back on defence.
A few possessions later, Jaime attacked him directly.
The first crossover nearly caught Fergus leaning, but he recovered and stayed attached.
Jaime shifted towards his right, hesitated and accelerated again, yet Fergus refused to surrender the lane and forced him towards a difficult pull-up.
The shot missed.
Fergus immediately turned and boxed him out.
“Good defence, Robertson!” McKenzie’s voice echoed across the gym, and Fergus couldn’t prevent the smile that appeared as he ran towards the other end.
He wasn’t close to being a starter, and the practice had made that painfully obvious.
His outside shooting was unreliable, his playmaking remained rudimentary, and Arthur was considerably better suited to handling the basketball than Fergus currently was.
Even Tight Handles wouldn’t change that overnight because controlling simple dribbles with either hand was only the beginning of becoming a capable guard.
Yet as practice continued, Fergus began to understand why McKenzie had selected him.
He was useful.
If the starting guards needed rest, Fergus could enter without demanding the basketball or disrupting the offence.
He could defend opposing perimeter players, run hard in transition, cut whenever defenders stopped watching him and convert straightforward opportunities around the basket.
It wasn’t glamorous, but Fergus didn’t care.
A few weeks earlier, he hadn’t even known whether he was good enough to make the team, and now he was beginning to identify a realistic path towards earning actual minutes.
The final whistle eventually brought the scrimmage and the first training session to an end.
Most of the team immediately headed towards their bags, exhausted after nearly two hours of conditioning, drills and live basketball, but Fergus remained on the court and collected one of the loose balls.
He moved towards the perimeter and thought about the shots he had missed earlier.
McKenzie noticed him while gathering cones.
“Robertson.” Fergus stopped and tucked the basketball against his hip.
“Coach?” McKenzie studied him for a moment, his expression as grizzled and difficult to read as ever.
“Your jumper needs a lot of work, your handle isn’t good enough for a guard, and right now you see passes about a second later than you need to.” Fergus nodded.
None of those criticisms surprised him, although hearing them stated so plainly by a former professional still stung.
“But you run harder than most of them,” McKenzie continued, “you don’t stop defending because somebody beats you once, and you haven’t complained a single time I’ve corrected you.
Players who know how to work are easier to coach than players who already think they’re brilliant.” Fergus wasn’t sure what to say, so he remained quiet.
McKenzie glanced towards the basketball tucked against his side.
“Keep defending like that, keep doing the simple things properly, and I can find minutes for you.” That sentence immediately pushed every criticism from Fergus’s mind.
McKenzie wasn’t promising him a starting position or even a major role, but he was talking about actual playing time.
After entering the afternoon simply hoping he could keep up with his new teammates, Fergus had been given a path towards getting onto the court once the season began.
“Yes, Coach.” McKenzie nodded towards the basket.
“Twenty minutes, then go home.
You’re thirteen, not a bloody professional.” Fergus smiled.
“Yes, Coach.” McKenzie limped towards the equipment room while Fergus remained on the court, considering what he should practise with the limited time he’d been given.
His floaters had worked well, his simple finishing had been reliable, and McKenzie clearly liked what he provided defensively.
Those weren’t the weaknesses exposed by training.
For the next twenty minutes, Fergus remained around the perimeter and worked on the part of his game that had looked weakest beside his new teammates, paying careful attention to the correction McKenzie had given him about using his legs rather than forcing the basketball towards the rim with his upper body.
Shot after shot left his hands.
Plenty missed.
Fergus kept shooting anyway.