Free Dunk Under Pressure by Rich Wallace

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    Published by Penguin Group
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First published in 2006 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group
     

     
Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2006
    All rights reserved
     
    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
    Wallace, Rich.
Dunk under pressure / Rich Wallace.
p. cm.—(Winning season ; #7)
    Summary: Free throw specialist Cornell “Dunk” Duncan joins the YMCA summer
basketball league all-star team, but after losing his confidence in an important game
the seventh-grader makes some decisions about becoming an all-around player.
    eISBN : 978-1-101-11855-9
    [1. Basketball—Fiction. 2. Self-confidence—Fiction. 3. Aunts—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W15877Dun 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2005023554
     
    S.A. Set in Caslon 224 Book
     
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FOR JEREMY

I
    The Specialist
     
     
    C ornell Duncan. The guys call him Dunk, but he couldn’t dunk from a six-foot ladder. He’s flat-footed and slow and jumps about two inches. But he knows the game and is a good defender.
    And, man, can he shoot.
    Free throws, that is. Put him at the foul line and he doesn’t miss.
    He made thirty-two in a row one time in practice. Twenty straight is routine.
    He makes it look easy.
    It isn’t.
    He’ll tell you. Last winter he got cut from the sixth-grade team. Didn’t come close to making it. Walked out of the gym blinking back tears and didn’t look at a basketball for nearly a week.
    Then he read about a college player at Georgetown who led the nation in free-throw percentage. “Easiest shot in the game,” the guy said. “Or at least it should be. No one guarding you. Just up, over, and in.”
    Dunk thought about that and decided that the college player was right. He could shoot free throws. He could make some of them. With a little practice (or a lot), Dunk could become a free-throw magician.
    He found a video at the library that demonstrated the perfect technique. Watched it seven times. Then he went to work at it.
    He started with a hundred in his narrow driveway every afternoon for a few weeks. When the weather turned icy, he started finding off-moments at the Hudson City YMCA—early in the morning before school, for example, or during the fifteen-minute interval between the evening aerobics classes that his aunt taught.
    He could take about sixty shots in those fifteen minutes if his aunt rebounded for him.