End Game

This is the conclusion of a three-part series by Neil Swidey, who followed the Charlestown High boys basketball team on its hunt for a state title. The series explores bonds that transcend race and one coach's drive to push players beyond their troubled neighborhoods and into college.

Michael Fung scans a spreadsheet tracking his school's standardized test scores and taps his index finger on the column for 1999-2000. "This," he says, "is the year basketball saved Charlestown High."

It's Friday afternoon, March 4, and Fung is sitting in his office. On top of his computer table are stacks of reports and layers of dust; underneath it is a pair of slippers. In a few hours, the Charlestown basketball team will play its first game in the state tournament. Fung loves days like these.

He's in his eighth year as headmaster of Charlestown High. Basketball coach Jack O'Brien admits that when he first heard Fung was coming to his school, he fell back on the stereotype. An Asian scientist with an MIT degree? He feared Fung would be all about academics and that the successful basketball program O'Brien had spent four years building might suffer a death of neglect.

O'Brien was right about one thing: Fung has made it his mission to bring academic rigor to Charlestown. But along the way, he's become the basketball team's biggest booster, riding with O'Brien on the bus for every road game, wearing the same gray T-shirt under his dress shirt, because he's convinced it brings the players good luck. "Without basketball," the 61-year-old with thick glasses says, "I probably would have quit by now. It really gives me something to look forward to."

Fung and O'Brien now joke about the coach's mistaken first impressions. Fung is used to being misjudged. He shuffles more than walks, speaks with the still-strong accent of his native Hong Kong, and presents a sort of disheveled appearance. But he's also tough to the point of stubborn, clued in as to who's doing what in the chaotic corridors around him, and wealthy enough to never have to worry about an income.

He came to Charlestown with a plan: Force out the burned-out, clock-punching teachers and replace them with eager recent graduates of elite colleges, young people willing to work hard and stay late. But by the 1999-2000 school year, his campaign was in deep trouble. He had alienated the veterans on the faculty. The school's MCAS scores were awful. And a pulled fire alarm one day had escalated into a racially charged clash between Boston police and the Charlestown student body, which by then had gone from mostly white to mostly black and Hispanic.

Fung was running out of rope.

Then, that March, O'Brien led the Charlestown team to the first state title in school history. "That takes everybody's mind off the problems," Fung says. "After that, the whole culture changes. Kids considered themselves winners."

The next year, Charlestown's MCAS scores improved so dramatically that the school earned a $10,000 award. Fung directed a chunk of that money to support the basketball program.

O'Brien and his boys then made history, stretching their state championship win to a four-year streak. All the while, Fung was remaking Charlestown High. Today, the school's MCAS scores are the best among Boston's district high schools. The average age of the teachers has dropped from 56 to 34. The faculty is awash in Ivy League grads.

None of that should suggest that Charlestown High is an academic powerhouse. Its MCAS scores may be better than other Boston high schools', but they're still not very good. The main demand the school makes of students still too often seems to be time served, rather than true learning. And, as O'Brien, a Salem State graduate who teaches phys-ed at the school, likes to remind Fung, some of his young hires from elite colleges get crushed in their classrooms and move on after a year or two.

Fung and O'Brien often playfully spar. On bus rides after games, the headmaster will critique the coach's performance in his preferred language of science, saying things like "Your players shot an incredible 92 percent from the foul line" or "You did not call enough timeouts." The coach will fire back, "Your hiring isn't very good."

But on the big points, they couldn't agree more: No one ever helped a disadvantaged kid by feeling sorry for him and letting him make excuses. Hard work beats natural ability every time. The most reliable route out of poverty is college.

In the last decade, O'Brien has helped more than 30 of his players get to college - some to prestigious places like Bowdoin and Bates, some to big-time basketball programs like the University of Florida, and many others to more modest local schools whose names end in "State."

"In the US," Fung says, "if you have a better house, your kids get better schools. With better schools, they get better jobs. The only way out of this vicious circle is to get our kids to college. Some of Jack's players, if they don't have basketball, they would be on the streets."

Later that same afternoon, senior co-captain Jason "Hood" White sits in his law and justice class. The room is swarming with Harvard graduate students decked out in their Banana Republic best, clutching grandes from Starbucks. They come once a week to help Hood and his classmates with college applications. Some of them connect easily with the Charlestown kids. Others do not.

A Harvard volunteer with wire-rimmed glasses and a dirty-blond ponytail sits on a desk near Hood and makes small talk about tonight's big game. "One assumes one is going to win tonight," she says. "Then what happens next?" Hood ignores her, but she doesn't seem to mind. She has more to say. "There's a Chinese saying for this: `A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.'"

After class, Hood confers with assistant basketball coach Steve Cassidy, a 30-year-old history teacher.

Cassidy is in his sixth year at Charlestown, making him Fung's longest-serving hire. He stresses that the teachers who work at an inner-city high school purely out of white liberal guilt never last. "I believe in urban education. These kids often get a raw deal," he says. "But you need to be tough, or they'll eat you alive."

Fung says that when he recruits from top colleges, he never has to worry about his teachers knowing their material. They've helped him boost the school's test scores. But he admits that if a teacher can't manage the classroom, little else matters. He relates the story of one hire, whom he liked very much. One day, he passed her classroom and noticed a student sitting in the teacher's chair. Fung advised the teacher not to let that happen - students must be taught to respect boundaries. No, the teacher replied, she wanted to teach them that they are respected and trusted. Not long after that, her students stole her lunch. Then her credit card. Then her $300 jacket, which they set on fire and burned to bits.

She's no longer at Charlestown High.

Survive and advance. That's how it works in the state tournament. Charlestown's 20-2 record is now in the past. One loss now, and they're out.

When the first game finally starts, against Belmont, Lamar "Spot" Brathwaite finds his groove, scoring Charlestown's first 8 points. But O'Brien worries that his other players are forgetting about the fundamentals that got them to the post-season. "Who the hell are you guys to waste time out there?" he screams during his halftime talk, the closest he comes to swearing all season. "You're not that good!"

Charlestown, up by 25 points at the half, goes on to win by 43.

Later, O'Brien says it's hard for him to explain, but he wants desperately to send this team off with a state title, even more than previous years. These guys don't have as much talent as his championship teams, but they have heart. He's grown so fond of the seniors. Still, he doesn't want them to get cocky. Confidence is good. Cockiness gets you sent home early.

As O'Brien runs his players through practice drills on the Sunday morning after the Belmont win, a coach from Adelphi University sits in a black chair at the edge of the Charlestown court. James Cosgrove, who had dispatched his assistants to scout Hood in earlier games, has come to see him for himself. When Cosgrove coached at Division III Endicott College in Beverly, O'Brien steered some of his players there. But the stakes are higher now, since Adelphi, on New York's Long Island, is a Division II program. That means Cosgrove has athletic scholarships to offer.

For months now, O'Brien has made it his goal to help Hood score one of those. Over the years, he'd seen Hood go from angry troublemaker to loyal leader. He recalls how Hood's mother, who is now doing well after lung surgery, asked him to help give her son direction. He wants to be able to tell her that her boy has earned a four-year scholarship.

Even in the relatively pressure-free environment of practice, Hood performs with the nervousness of someone being watched. His jump shot, never the best feature of his game, is off. But based on earlier conversations with Cosgrove, O'Brien is confident it's going to work out. As he watches the college coach lead Hood into a small office off the gym, O'Brien grins. "He's going to offer him."

Twenty minutes later, Hood and Cosgrove emerge from the office and shake hands. Hood heads for the locker room. A little while later, he struts back into the gym.

How does he feel?

"Good."

Did he get his offer?

"Nah. He said I'm going to take a visit after the season's over." His voice trails off.

Good news before game two. Spot learns he's been admitted to Westminster School, a $35,000-a-year prep school in Connecticut, halfway between Boston and New York. The idea is to spend a postgraduate year there, buffing up his grades and his basketball skills, in the hopes of earning a college athletic scholarship for the following year. He'll have to wait to see what kind of financial aid he gets from Westminster. But Spot's Hollywood smile is unmistakable as he walks into the gym on March 10 for the next round of the state tournament.

The program says Charlestown vs. Lynn Classical. But Spot and his teammates still have East Boston on their minds. They just know they'll face their bitter rivals after tonight's game, and the sting from losing to them in the City League championship two weeks ago has yet to subside. They need redemption.

So, despite O'Brien's warnings, they commit the cardinal sin of post-season play. They look past the game in front of them. Lynn Classical makes them pay, forcing the game into overtime before Charlestown wins, 88-76.

In the locker room, a familiar face is back.

Terry Carter. A muscular sophomore with model good looks, Terry had been stabbed at the start of the season and then disappeared in early February. He returns, having grown an inch, to 6 foot 5. He'd just been released after 15 days in a Department of Youth Services lockup.

The players welcome him back easily.

O'Brien is polite but less forgiving. He'll allow Terry to try to earn back his spot on the team next season, but that's about it.

Outside the locker room, Terry admits he messed up. He says he was hanging around with the wrong people. He says there were issues of substance abuse. He says he deceived the people who care about him - his guardian, his coach, his teammates. "I got in trouble a lot before. But this is the final straw, because I let the team down. This is my first high school team."

Terry says it didn't dawn on him what a great opportunity he had blown until he was in the DYS lockup. "When I'm in there, I'm different from the rest of them. Like, all of those kids, they're arrested for like shooting at somebody. And I was a basketball player. Even the staff, they're like, `I just seen your name in the paper, and then you're here.'"

The boys get their rematch. But first Hood gets his retake. On the snowy Saturday morning of March 12, hours before Charlestown will face East Boston one last time, Coach picks Hood up at 8 o'clock and drives him to take his SATs again. The College Board couldn't locate his answer sheet from the last time.

By the afternoon, Hood and his teammates are walking into the 6,500-seat Tsongas Arena in Lowell. For the first time all season, there is a live person singing the national anthem rather than the usual tinny recording. Whoever wins this game will still have to survive two more rounds before getting the state title. But Eastie coach David Siggers knows better. "This is the state championship game - right here," he says. "This is the real one."

It's the fourth time Eastie and Charlestown have faced each other this season. In the first three games, the team that started the strongest was the team that won. Twice, that was Eastie.

This game begins with Eastie ahead, 21-8. But Spot scores to spark a Charlestown comeback. Co-captain Ridley Johnson follows by hitting a 3pointer. Senior George Russell, his face layered with sweat, succeeds in shutting down Eastie's explosive big man.

At halftime, the game is tied at 40.

Then, as he had done so many times before, Hood takes over late in the game. Senior Westly Perryman does the same for Eastie, hitting clutch 3-pointers down the stretch. The game turns into a big one-on-one.

With 40 seconds left, Charlestown takes the lead, 72-70. Timeout. O'Brien kneels in front of the bench, moving circular magnets around his white clipboard to show his players how to set up their defense. The season is on the line, the crowd is going wild, but O'Brien and his clipboard offer a Zen-like calm. "We need a stop," he says.

They don't get one. Eastie ties the game. Hood pushes the ball up the length of the court and scores a short jumper with about 10 seconds left, giving him 22 points in the game and his team a 74-72 lead. Another timeout. Eastie's Perryman releases a fade-away jumper. Unlike the final-seconds heroics of Eastie's win in the City League finals, this shot misses. Ridley pulls down the rebound. The buzzer sounds.

This time, the huge pile-on at center court belongs to Charlestown.

In the locker room, O'Brien fights back tears. "In all my years of coaching, at Charlestown, Salem, I don't know if I've ever been as proud." He surveys the ecstatic faces around the room. "People say, `Hey, why don't you coach in college?' I don't think I could ever be as happy as this."

Outside the locker room, Terry is sobbing. He could have been part of this.

Hood sports a grin as he walks out of the locker room. It only expands when he sees who's waiting for him. James Cosgrove, the Adelphi coach, had come back to see Hood play. He'd picked a good night.

"Great game," he tells Hood. "We're going to make this happen."

At 8:30 the next morning, O'Brien is sitting in his minivan outside Hood's place in Roxbury, beeping the horn. He'd already picked up George at Mission Park, and he'll go next to Ridley's apartment in Dorchester to collect the other three seniors. Then they will all head to the American Legion hall in Dedham, where O'Brien will receive an award for good sportsmanship from the regional referees' association.

As O'Brien drives, George talks about how Terry had been crying after last night's game.

"Of course he was," O'Brien says. "A big party, and he's not invited. But would he have been there if we were 0 and 18?"

O'Brien drives past the Church of God of Prophecy as Elvis croons "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the minivan radio. He drives past the sea gulls feasting on the overstuffed dumpsters around the Franklin Field housing project, and stops in front of a gray three-family home. He beeps, and out come Ridley, Spot, and Ricardo "Robby" Robinson.

A few minutes later, Spot makes an announcement. "Coach, I didn't put my contacts in, on purpose."

O'Brien, who for two seasons had been hounding Spot and Hood to wear their lenses, looks at him through the rearview mirror. "Why?"

"'Cause I want you to yell at me. It's gonna be over soon, and you're not gonna be there yelling at me."

O'Brien laughs. "Put 'em in, and I'll yell at you anyway."

As the minivan nears the American Legion, Spot squirts a few drops of saline into his palm and plops the lenses in his eyes.

O'Brien is wearing a jacket and tie. His five players are wearing either sweat pants or jeans. In the parking lot, he says, "Guys, I think you should leave the do-rags in the car." They comply.

The first major award goes to a longtime referee. The man thanks his wife, his children, and his brother, who are all seated at his table.

When it's O'Brien's turn, he thanks the five guys seated at his.

Monday afternoon. In a few hours, the boys from Charlestown will play under the bright lights of the FleetCenter. They file out of the Charlestown gym and begin striding up Elm Street.

It's a tradition the team began during its four-year state-champion reign. Walk to Papa Gino's for a late lunch and then walk over to the FleetCenter.

After four years, the seniors are still strangers in Charlestown. They stick to their haunts - the Spanish market on Bunker Hill Street, the takeout place behind the school that offers $3 lunch plates. During the busing wars, it was unsafe for blacks to walk around Charlestown. There's nothing preventing them from exploring now. There's just no interest.

Earlier in the season, Hood's father gave him his car so he could commute to school more quickly - and safely, given the housing-project turf wars that overlie the MBTA map. "I don't even look at Charlestown," Hood says. "I just look at the stoplights and how long it takes me to get to school."

But today, the boys take the scenic route, walking along brick sidewalks on Main Street, past gas street lamps and restored town houses, past the listings hanging in the windows of realty offices for $849,000 condos. The irony of Charlestown is that busing created the boom. Before the early 1980s, houses in this one-square-mile neighborhood were generally kept in the family, so there wasn't much of a real estate market. The race battles persuaded many Townies to sell, opening up a trove of historic housing located minutes from downtown Boston.

As the boys arrive in City Square, they can see the FleetCenter in front of them. Spot looks up and smiles. "Man, I never knew it was this close."

When they get inside the locker room, the players begin to strut like Celtics. "Listen, in two years, I'll be here for good," Hood says. Ridley taps his chest three times. "I'm going to be Paul Pierce tonight."

He comes close. During the game against Catholic Memorial of West Roxbury, Ridley sinks five 3-pointers and unleashes a monster dunk, leading Charlestown to a 63-52 win.

They're going to the state finals.

After the game, O'Brien guides Ridley and Hood into the media room. The co-captains stand by the soda machine, watching their coach comfortably handle the first round of TV interviews. Ridley and Hood, who had not been close when the season began, have developed into easy friends. Ridley says he never knew how hilarious Hood could be, once you get past the scowl. Hood now usually spends weekends hanging out at Ridley's house. And he doesn't seem to mind that after the reporters are done with O'Brien, they only want to talk to Ridley.

Saturday, March 19. The players munch on their $3 takeout lunch plates in the Charlestown High bleachers, waiting for the bus that will take them to Amherst for the state championship game. Spot is showing off the new pair of $60 rose-gold cubic zirconia earrings he'd bought for the occasion.

Meanwhile, O'Brien is in the locker room downstairs, showing off the wall of achievements - his "refrigerator door" of clipped articles and gold stars - to the four eighth-graders he had picked up earlier in the morning. All four had already selected Charlestown High as their school for next year. He is bringing them along for the big game today, so they can see where hard work gets you.

The team rides in style. Fung had resisted O'Brien's push for an upgrade to a coach bus. He liked the image of the scrappy city team arriving at the University of Massachusetts in an old yellow school bus. As usual, O'Brien's relentlessness had won out. That, and his assistant coach had found a bus company willing to charge half the going rate.

Still, everything else about the experience suggests a step down from the FleetCenter. They don't even get to use the UMass basketball team's locker room. Instead, they're assigned a narrow women's room that's a 10-minute walk from the court.

In addition to his customary team prayer and review of plays, O'Brien uses his pregame talk to reflect on the year. "We've had our ups and downs. Some other people are not here. But you know what?" he says, choking back tears. "I could always count on you guys."

He reminds Ridley that he came in as a shaky ninth-grader, "and you're leaving as one of the best basketball players in the state." He thanks Spot, George, and Robby for being tireless and true.

"And Hood," O'Brien says, putting his arm around his co-captain. "Tough beginning, man. But I don't have to tell you, the basketball stuff's been awesome. And as a person, you've been even better.

"This is hard for me, because it's the last time I'm going to have a chance to coach you seniors," he says, his voice cracking. "But what better way to go out than to win a state championship and walk out of here feeling like a million bucks. That's what you deserve."

All that stands in their way is the team from Oakmont, a regional school in Central Massachusetts. The Oakmont fans have shown up in full force, painting their faces and wearing green wigs to match the school colors.

Charlestown has drawn no more than 200 fans.

But when the game begins, the Oakmont players look intimidated. They bobble easy passes and repeatedly turn the ball over. Still, the Charlestown boys have trouble capitalizing. Their shooting is cold. Nearly four minutes expire before the first score of the game, which comes from Oakmont.

But once the Charlestown players come alive, they never look back. In the second half, Ridley soars above defenders to score 17 of his game-high 25 points. Offensively, Hood's performance is uneven. Spot's is painful - in the final minutes of the game, he scores his only point, from the foul line. But both keep up the defensive pressure that helps Charlestown put the game away, 68-48.

As the buzzer sounds, all of the Charlestown players charge onto the court and pile on top of one another. Hood pulls them together to do their "rock the boat" huddle chant one last time. He yells, "Charlestown!" They scream, "Riders!"

After the media interviews, O'Brien walks into the narrow locker room. Terry Carter, wearing street clothes, is sitting next to his former teammates, exchanging back slaps and soaking up the joy.

"Hey, guys," O'Brien says before the door has even closed behind him. "If you're not a member of the team, would you please leave?"

Terry looks up, says, "Arright," and walks out of the room.

O'Brien tells his players, "You should feel good about yourselves, you seniors especially. All five of you are going to college." Ridley has his Division I scholarship at the University of Toledo. Hood's Division II scholarship at Adelphi appears to be his if he wants it. George and Robby have their acceptance letters from Salem State, and Robby also has one from Virginia's Radford University, his dream school he still knows very little about. Spot has his post-grad year ahead of him at Westminster, which awarded him a fat aid package requiring him to pay less than $500.

"As hard as it is to say goodbye," O'Brien says, "we'll always be there for you."

They bring it in for one last huddle. Ridley calls it out, "`Family on three.'" The guys yell, "Family!"

Spot is now feeling loose enough to make fun of his performance on the court. He smiles and says, "Coach, I got one!"

Ridley walks into the lobby. There's someone waiting to congratulate him. Toledo head coach Stan Joplin, who had first laid eyes on Ridley back in September at the Charlestown gym, had returned to see his prospect play. He has no regrets.

As Ridley chats with Joplin, he sees his father, McClary Johnson, out of the corner of his eye. He waves him over. "Coach, this is my father," he says warmly.

McClary says later that the season gave him new insight into Ridley. "Everyone says he is a great kid, and I got to see that for myself."

Ridley makes his way over to the concession stand to talk with his girlfriend, Ashley. Then he walks over to his Aunt Emily and tells her, "She wants to meet you, but she's afraid you don't like her." Emily Hunter-Coleman, who has stressed that she wants Ridley to go off to college focused only on his future, gives in to the moment. She strides over to Ashley and gives her a hug. "If he loves you," she says, "I love you."

Fung treats the players to whatever they want from the concession stand but struggles to pay when he learns that credit cards aren't accepted. O'Brien chuckles. Fung comes from the incredibly wealthy family that runs Hong Kong's largest trading company. The headmaster eventually finds a stray $100 bill in his pocket.

Fung and O'Brien board the bus. There's a lot more room for the return trip since most of the players are going home with their families. It's pretty much just the underclassmen, the coaching staff, and the four eighth-graders O'Brien had brought along for the ride. Two hours later, after the bus pulls in front of Charlestown High, O'Brien grabs the canvas bag containing the team's six practice balls, bounds off the bus, and climbs into his white minivan. The eighth-graders follow closely behind.

Neil Swidey is a member of the Globe Magazine staff. He can be reached at swidey@globe.com.