The Last Shot

A tale of never ending struggle, plain and simple.  Their one glimmer of hope resides within a 94×50 rectangle and is dependent on a 22-ounce, neon orange ball successfully passing through an 18-inch snap-back rim.

In Darcy Frey’s marvelous story, “The Last Shot”, there are four characters: Russell Thomas, Corey Johnson, Tchaka Shipp and a 15-year-old Stephon Marbury.

Playing at one of the top high school basketball programs in New York City, Abraham Lincoln High, the young players have the same goals as nearly 500,000 other high school basketball players in the country, but in their case much more is on the line.  Three of the boys, Russell, Corey and Stephon live in Coney Island, one of the most treacherous, dangerous and downright hopeless neighborhoods in the entire country.  The team’s 6 feet 7 inch center, Tchaka is the odd man out, residing in a mildly safer Queens apartment.

Through all the wind sprints up 14 flights of stairs, defensive slides with bricks literally in hand and thousands and thousands of collective set shots, jump shots and free throws, the four talents face more obstacles than you or I could ever imagine.

Frey recounts all the possible distractions, which are seemingly endless.  Girls, low-life promoters and agents, SAT requirements, drug dealers, gangs, stray bullets, an uncertain tomorrow.  The one way ticket out of constant jeopardy is the game of basketball and each of them want out. Badly.

While frustration is a clear theme in Frey’s book, another is the relatively similar  nature that the close friends share with every other teenager in the world.  They worry about the unexpected and unwanted, from a forehead pimple to an uncertain future. They have dreams, hopes and a naïve way of looking at the world. The four literally grow up  on the very pages that Frey writes in in such a revealing way, not too many writers would be able to attain the exclusive relationship and insider advantage that he successfully engineers.

Frey’s decision to write the book in a new journalistic form is what really takes this story and places it in the non-existent (yet) sports book hall of fame. He brings the reader into his own personal experience following the four, sitting at a meeting with Texas head coach Rick Barnes, who was then the head coach at Providence College, and the struggles he personally goes through when trying to get Stephon’s father, Donald, to sit down for an interview. The ever “opportunistic” father Marbury believes that if he speaks with the media, it better be worth his time or there’s no point in talking.

So many before them have failed where they strive to succeed and Frey paints a vivid picture of the frustration that’s simmering in each of their heads to the point of exhaustion. At one point he gets into the mind of a young Stephon Marbury, who reveals to be wise beyond his years, exclaiming “Somebody’s got to make it, somebody’s got to go all the way. How come this shit only happens to us Coney Island niggers.”

15 years later, as we all now know, Marbury made it.  Speaking with Frey, he  successfully predicts his own future, getting out of Coney Island and attending Georgia Tech, being a lottery pick, making millions upon millions of dollars. This of course isn’t important in the books success and had Marbury failed to see his dream like three brothers before him, the chronicle would still be a legendary one.

Through Frey’s little-over-a-year journey with Thomas, Johnson, Marbury, and Shipp, a classic book is created.  Due to the private, ever more so corrupt dealings that go on in today’s world of  amateur basketball, there will never be again be a book quite like “The Last Shot”.  It’s a one of a kind treasure that should be read once by everyone and at least twice by true basketball junkies everywhere.