On the court, the Louisville Sires are warming up. A few players shoot baskets, some stretch, others mill around. The Sires’ star player, point guard Antonio “Tony” LaSalle Jr. takes a few shots. He doesn’t look at the fans who call to him, though most of them wear his jersey.
It’s only their first season, but the Sires—the NBA’s newest franchise—have already amassed a devoted fan base. Fans pack the stands in their pale blue and gold team gear, trying to catch their favorite player’s eye. Their enthusiasm has become something of a joke to fans of more established teams, who are ready to denounce their favorite players after a single bad game.
Most of the players love the attention, signing jerseys until they’re ushered away, but Tony keeps his hood up, narrowing his field of vision to what’s in front of him. The press likes to speculate about this behavior: some say his ego makes him aloof, others interpret it as anger that he wasn’t picked up by a better team. Tony doesn’t correct them. Any press is good press, his father always said, though he hadn’t taken his own advice. Instead, Antonio LaSalle Sr. spent all 15 years of his NBA career on the same team, playing single-digit minutes in front of emptying stadiums. As Tony got older, he got tired of watching his father sit on the bench, the older man’s LaSalle jersey always covered by a team-issued sweatsuit. Tony stopped wearing his father’s number, stopped going to games. Tonight, as he waits for the game to start, all Tony can think about is how much he hates the bench.
He’s spent the past ten games sidelined after an on-court brawl during the team’s match-up with the Celtics. Tony has replayed the game in his head over and over: the way Warren Kline, the Celtics’ power forward, baited him into fouls all night. He’s seen videos of himself shoving Kline, but he doesn’t remember that part. He doesn’t remember smashing his fist into Kline’s jaw, or even the moment when Kline gave him a black eye in return. But afterward, waiting in the locker room to hear how many games he’d miss—that he remembers. He remembers every second he spent watching as his team sank into the worst losing streak in the league, and the silent treatment from his teammates after each loss. Kline was suspended too, but the Celtics had other players ready to step in; their season went on as usual.
Tony knows everyone blames him for the team’s run of bad luck, but tonight is his chance to fix things. His suspension is up and, although head coach Nick Elder—an old-fashioned coach who demands that his players earn their minutes—has refused to comment about Tony’s return, fans pack the stadium, eager to witness their star’s comeback. When the announcers list Antonio LaSalle Jr. among the starters, the arena erupts into cheers. Tony jogs along the line of his teammates who give him half-hearted high-fives, but can’t meet their eyes.
As Tony strips his sweatshirt off, waves of light bloom in the corners of his vision. He feels the buzz of the game clock in his chest and the game starts. The Knicks put the first points on the board, but the Sires answer basket for basket. Halfway through the quarter, Tony steals a pass and drives to the hoop, beating everyone down the court. He finds his shot and launches the ball, but as it leaves his hands a defender knocks him down.
The crowd erupts, drowning out the referee’s whistle. One of Tony’s teammates offers him a hand, but Tony is already up and walking toward the foul line. He feels thousands of eyes on him as he imagines what the commentators must be saying over the broadcast. They’re talking about his fight, his temper, his father, but then the referee tosses him the ball and it’s time for him to take his free throw.
Micah has never been to a Sires game before—he’s never been to an NBA game—and is already regretting his decision to attend. He’s only been back in Kentucky for a few days and, despite having grown up here, he feels out of place. Everyone around him seems so happy. Not just here, at the game, where they eat and drink and cheer, but everywhere. It’s in the way they embrace each other at supermarkets and roll down their car windows to greet a neighbor. This de facto cheerfulness used to be the thing he loved most about being from the South, but now just makes him lonely.
Since returning from Thailand, Micah has felt like a failure. He’s spent most of the week in his parents’ basement, blaming his seclusion on jetlag, but the truth is that he doesn’t want to see anyone. He’s hasn’t told anyone that he’s back, but word has spread quickly—Micah blames his mother. It’s why he wasn’t surprised when his old friend Gideon called to invite him to the Sires game. He accepted, ready for a few hours away from his parents’ enthusiastic questions and gentle concern. Micah knows that his mother tells everyone all about her son the missionary: the ladies at the nail salon, any checkout clerk who asks how she’s doing. Knowing how proud she is of him used to feel like confirmation that what he was doing was right and good. Now, he wishes she would stop talking to people about him. The pastor at his parents’ church called yesterday to invite him to visit Sunday’s service and talk about his work in Thailand. They have supported his work financially, so he owes them testimony, but it feels unfair that he’s still accountable for a plan that God himself has defaulted on.
The weekly newsletters that he sent during the last few months of his time in Thailand were full of prayer requests for new converts, and lists of their names—but they were largely false, just names he’d copied down from TV shows and magazines. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he promised his donors too much when he’d sold them shares of a miracle. What he found, when he stepped off the plane with a duffle of Thai Bibles, was a modern city. All his life, he had heard missionaries tell stories of barefoot children, hard-faced men, and ragged women who would be eager to listen, but in Thailand he found glinting skyscrapers, water so blue it hurt his eyes. Who needed his invisible God in a place like that?
Back then, he still believed that God had called him there. Micah could tell the story of his life in such a way that anyone would believe that everything had occurred solely to propel him towards missionary work. So, at first, he was honest: his third newsletter hinted about the difficulty he was facing, attempting to evangelize in such a city. But when the dip in donations was sudden and pronounced, he heard the message from his supporters as clearly as he’d heard God’s call. From then on, his updates contained only success stories that gleamed like the buildings around him.
Micah knows now that he should have left when what he was doubting was his calling, not his faith. Instead, he tried to endure what he thought was a temporary trial, only to discover that God had disappeared, His absence as palpable as His presence had once been. Micah watched the people around him and wondered what he could give them that they didn’t already have. Prayer, once the answer to everything Micah faced, became difficult, then impossible. Words felt insufficient. There there was no one there to receive the burden of his needs.
The dissonance between the donations rolling in and his spiritual state widened into a chasm of guilt. He kept up his routines—reading his Bible, going out into the city—until he couldn’t any longer. He longed to return home, hoping that maybe God would be waiting back on his side of the world but, so far, that hope has been fruitless.
After a few days in the isolation of his parents’ house, the bustle of the game overwhelms him. Fans swarm in, a sea of blue and gold that fills the cavernous arena. He’s relieved when Gideon steers him to their seats. The game has already started and Micah studies the players. He doesn’t know much about basketball, but even Micah can tell that the visiting team—the Knicks, each player a bold streak of blue and orange—moves as a unit, anticipating each other’s movements, pushing the ball down the court. It’s not that the Sires don’t score at about the same pace, but Micah can see the way they second-guess each other, settling for worse shots instead of passing, relying on individual skill instead of organized plays.
The camera tracks the Sires’ star player, Antonio LaSalle Jr., as he goes for a layup. LaSalle jumps, smiles as the ball leaves his hands, but an opponent knocks him over in an attempted block before he can land. The crowd gets loud, crying “Foul!”, but Micah can’t take his eyes off LaSalle’s expression, magnified on screens around the arena: his cocky grin is gone, replaced by a furrowed brow and flashing eyes. Even when the camera pans to other players, Micah can’t stop thinking about the struggle on LaSalle’s face.
At the foul line, Tony shakes his shoulders out. He shoots, sinks the first free throw breezily. He’s preparing to take the second one when he feels the shift. He bounces the ball—once, twice—before lofting it into the air. And then, it happens.
The shot chunks off the rim, dropping into the arms of an opposing player like a gift, and Tony turns to sprint down the court. But somewhere between the second bounce and the moment the basketball leaves his hands, Tony and his teammates feel a new weight descend over them.
That’s when the Louisville Sires, all fifteen of them, become God.
As Tony chases the ball down the court, he feels a new link to his teammates. They become aware of the needs and prayers of eight billion people, each an individual to them.
The team’s new divinity doesn’t affect their ability to play basketball. Their shots still miss the basket sometimes, their defense is imperfect. But as Tony drives to the basket, prayers reach him in waves. He can feel the desire of every fan in the stadium. When he jumps for a rebound after the Knicks miss, he feels a surge from the fans: hope, gratitude, desperation. It’s not only the people in the stadium: elsewhere, someone asks for healing for a child with cancer, someone intercedes for a distant island ravaged by a storm, and many voices request love, money, justice. Tony’s teammate sets up for a pass, positioned for an alley-oop, but Tony takes the shot himself. It falls short and the prayers are answered: no. There’s a painful brightness behind his vision and Tony sees it in his teammate’s eyes too. I’ll do better, he thinks.
As the game enters the second quarter, the Sires are down by nine. The Knicks dominate, every possession yielding more points, but the Sires, fueled by the weight of their new responsibility, play hard. The referee blows his whistle: Foul, Knicks. The Sires inbound the ball and now it’s in Tony’s hands again. This time, he passes and his teammate scores. A thousand lost dogs turn up at their families’ doorsteps. Three hundred babies are born wailing, healthy, and whole. Yes. Tony’s teammates make their shots and the Sires take the lead. Every successful pass, every blocked shot is an affirmatively answered prayer. Ease loosens Tony’s body. Face radiant, he congratulates his teammates when they score, meeting their eyes as they move the ball down the court.
And then, Tony is fouled again. He’s shooting when a defender reaches for the ball and elbows Tony’s face. Tony explodes. He hears the referee’s whistle from a distance as his rage dims the prayers and tears his consciousness away from his teammates. All he can hear is his own anger. One of his teammates puts an arm across his chest but Tony shakes it off, ignoring the pain in his neck that means someone has gotten the worst news of their life. He moves toward the player that fouled him, then pivots and stalks toward the foul line.
“Give me the fucking ball!” he shouts at the referee. The stadium ripples, but Tony’s gaze doesn’t leave the ball. He ignores his teammates. The referee intersects his hands in an uppercase “T”. “Technical foul,” the announcer echoes, and the players march to the other basket. Tony stays put, arms crossed, glowering.
The shooter for the Knicks scores and then it’s Tony’s turn. As he bounces the ball twice before releasing it, he tries to disregard the desire radiating from his teammates. When he misses the first shot, he feels them brim with anger. The fans groan. Hundreds of miles away, a hostage is killed. The echo of a gunshot ricochets in Tony’s chest. He misses the second basket and two airplanes collide on a runway in Quebec. This he feels too; his hamstring cramps and he crumples.
Coach Elder pulls Tony from the game. As he limps toward the bench, Tony reads the defeat on his teammates’ faces, the frustration in their posture. Why is it so hard for him to be the player they need him to be? The player the fans believe he is? Tony puts his sweatshirt back on and pulls the hood up. He watches the quarter run to a close as the Sires fall behind again.
Going into the second half, the Sires are down by fifteen but it might as well be fifty. A few fans leave at halftime: no one wants to watch another brutal loss. Next to Micah, Gideon sweats through his LaSalle Jr. jersey, crunching pieces of popcorn between his teeth like he wants to punish them.
Gideon keeps repeating to himself, “Come on, come on…” and Micah is reminded of the hours he spent praying. Is this what he’d sounded like, asking some universal power to see to his needs, his wants?
Just over a week ago, he’d spent a day walking the city streets of Bangkok, desperate to share God’s word with someone. “Guide me,” he’d prayed as he walked. “Show me one person who needs You.” He’d approached clusters of people, holding out a Thai New Testament, but they looked away. He sat outside at a café, smiling at passersby, but no one would meet his eyes. Micah walked into parts of the city that he’d never seen before, trying to start conversations with vendors, but they were all busy. At sundown, sweaty and parched, Micah had returned to his apartment. Looking over the vast city, he had been struck by its size—millions of souls—and yet, not even one person had spoken to him. The next morning, he booked a ticket home.
He hasn’t told anyone about his decision to leave missions; his parents think that he’s just visiting. How could they know? The update he’d sent last week, titled “God’s Work in Thailand,” described joyful baptisms in the waters of a local beach. There was no reason for anyone to suspect he was lying.
There’s something about the crush of the stadium that reminds him of that last attempt at ministry. He’s spent most of the game watching the fans respond to each movement on the court, devotion plastered across their faces. At first, he found it silly, but towards the end of the first quarter, the crowd’s cheers began to feel like a Sunday service; as the Sires moved toward their opponents’ goal, the fans surged. It felt to Micah as if they were the ones willing the ball to hit its mark—but then the shot fell short and the moment was over.
“They need to put LaSalle back in,” Gideon says. LaSalle is clearly unhappy to be sidelined. He’s sitting forward on his seat, watching as his teammates miss shot after shot.
Eight minutes into the third quarter, Coach Elder calls timeout. As the players gather around the bench, the team’s mascot, a blue racehorse with a crown hanging jauntily from his ear, tosses t-shirts into the jostling crowd. The teams scatter back onto the court as the announcer says “Antonio Lasalle Jr. in for Pete Denisovich.”
Fans love Denisovich, Gideon tells Micah, for his lopsided grin and his sportsmanship, so much that they’re willing to forgive his terrible defense. Denisovich waves at the crowd and punches his teammates’ shoulders while LaSalle, who might as well have a cloud hanging over his head, walks back out.
Gideon gestures toward the court. “I’m calling it. LaSalle’s going to hit a three pointer, they’re going to come back.”
Micah nods. He recognizes his own action as benign dismissal; he saw it so many times from people in Thailand, but he always kept trying. Instead, Gideon turns his attention back to the game. The Knicks attempt a lightspeed-quick drive, but one of the Sires players plucks the ball from the air and passes it to LaSalle, who takes off down the court with a renewed vigor. Hope sparks in Micah’s stomach.
“Let’s go Tony!” Gideon shouts, punching each syllable.
Okay, Micah catches himself praying. He doesn’t mean to, but he recognizes the cadence of supplication. Make this shot, he asks. Please. I know you can. The words bubble up from somewhere nameless, surprising him with their sincerity. And then, for the first time in months, a buoyant feeling: someone has heard him.
LaSalle is lining up from mid-court. As he releases the ball, another player leans to block the shot, and they topple onto the hardwood together. At the same moment that the ref calls a foul, the ball gasps through the net. Gideon throws his popcorn in the air, showering kernels over Micah and everyone around them. No one cares. The shot is a clean three-pointer. The crowd is on their feet, but LaSalle stays on the ground. When the player who knocked him down offers a hand, LaSalle glowers up at him.
“Oh no, no, no,” says Gideon. “Not now.”
Even from their seats, Micah can feel LaSalle’s anger radiating out around him. No, he thinks, adding his thoughts to the crowd’s. Don’t do it, man. Stay calm. Focus. Play the game. It feels foolish, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t know much about basketball, but he knows how it feels to be the object of so many expectations.
And then, a few of the Sires haul LaSalle to his feet. The team clusters around the point guard, making a lighthearted show of guiding him to the free throw line for the bonus shot. At first, LaSalle’s face is stony; he looks over at the opposing team like he’s thinking about making a break for it. LaSalle’s teammates high-five him as he prepares to shoot, and the muscles in his face visibly relax. LaSalle pauses for a minute to look up into the stands and smiles, and Micah can feel his searching gaze. Then, LaSalle bounces the ball twice and shoots, sinking the basket and closing in on the Knicks by another point.
Micah jumps and cheers with the rest of the crowd. The relief is immense. He relaxes, gives himself to the flow of the game. He feels freedom, ease, hope—this is what he’s been searching for. By the end of the game, Micah no longer cares how narrow the seats are or how much his sneakers stick to the concrete. It’s enough to be here, surrounded by people who want to believe as desperately as he does.
Tomorrow, he’ll tell his parents that he’s not going back to Thailand, but he won’t say anything to them about God. He’ll tell them he’s going to stick around Louisville and wait for his next calling. There’s a job fair at the stadium; maybe he’ll apply so he can keep coming to the games. But first, he will return the unused money to his donors. That, at least, feels like the right thing to do.
After the game ends, the Sires return to the locker room, but Tony lingers. He can feel his divinity fading as he sits on the bench, watching fans trickle out as the sweat dries on his skin. A few of them shout his name, then whoop when he nods up at them and Tony feels a vague flash of warmth, but it quickly dissipates.
The win feels good. They always do, but tonight is different. He’s struggled with the mindset of the game at times—knowing how many people were rooting for him or hoping he’d fail—but tonight is the first time that he’s understood how much that matters, how sincere their belief really is. He’s felt their expectations blossom in his teammates’ minds and in his own, compelling them to bring so many desires to fruition.
Tony wonders who was God before the Sires took over, but he doesn’t have to wonder why they needed a break—or why the power didn’t stay with the team for too long. Tony thinks about his grandmother who attends Mass every day, lighting candles to carry her prayers to heaven. It comforts him to know that someone hears her prayers, even if he’s not sure who.
Tonight, in the heat of the game, Tony felt someone praying for him. For his game, but also for his peace. Someone who understood how hard it was to carry the weight of expectation and fail publicly. He heard the prayer and knew that the answer was within his power, that it always had been. Yes. Yes. He could have stayed in that moment forever, but the game moved on, taking him and his revelation with it. He still had to play, to win—for the fans, his team, his father, for everyone who hoped and believed, but also for himself.
Someone taps him on the shoulder and he turns to see an usher.
“Sorry, Mr. LaSalle. We’re turning the lights off now.”
He heads toward the locker room and, behind him, the lights cut off with a click. The final awareness of divinity leaves him and all of the prayers in the periphery of his mind disappear. He’s just Tony again—exhausted, sweaty, desperately in need of a shower. As he enters the locker room, his teammates greet him with smiles and eye contact. He’s missed this.
In the coming years, Tony’s career will take him across the country for stints on different teams—some better than the Sires, some worse—until a knee injury ends his career as a player. For a while he’ll live off of clout and cash, until he can’t stay away from the court and becomes a coach. By then, it will have been years since the Sires were God for one night. Though Tony won’t know it, the role will have been passed along, shared by a Girl Scout troop, a pair of game show hosts, a team of airline stewardesses, and a school of dolphins, among many others; the responsibility remains real, but the title is fickle. Even after everything—the trades, the injury, the coaching—the weight of belief will linger with him.
The next night, when Tony is fouled, he hits the court hard. He’s read the articles that say he brings it upon himself with his aggressive play, but none of that matters. He accepts a hand up from the player that fouled him and stands, bouncing the ball once, then twice, and launching it toward the basket.
