Summer Ball

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2007

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Chapters 25-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 25 Summary

Danny meets his mother on Saturday. Although everyone is talking about the championship, “Ali didn’t want to talk about the big game, she wanted to tell [Danny] he needed a haircut as soon as he got home and was he packed and if he was packed, was he sure he had everything?” (224). Tess comes with Ali to watch Danny play. Danny brings his mother around each of his friends, especially his new friends, like Tarik, Zach, and Rasheed. After his mother double-checks his packing and they have lunch, Danny prepares for the big game.

Before tip-off, Coach Powers speaks to his team. To explain the significance of this game against the Lakers, he tells the boys, “‘So if I told you that tonight was only one of the three or four times in your life when you might play for the title of something, how dear would you hold this one game of basketball?’” (227). He urges the team to make sure nothing stops them from winning.

While Danny and Will warm up on the court, Lamar chucks a ball at Danny. Danny ignores this. The two teams play a quarter with neither gaining a lead. Danny watches Lamar play, noting how Rasheed and Lamar match up. Lamar is lazy on defense and only interested in taking the ball himself. Rasheed, a team player, works hard on both defense and offense. When Danny enters the game, the Laker’s guard initially overshadows Danny, and the Lakers pull ahead.

At halftime, Coach Powers blames the boys, “calling them the worst thing in the world: Quitters” (230). As he heaps blame on Danny specifically, he makes a grammatical error. Danny’s mother, an English teacher, is behind Coach Powers. She corrects his grammar, which elates the boys. Coach Powers still pulls Danny aside to threaten him: “You don’t guard, you don’t play, whether your mother likes me or not” (232). Danny, upset, sees his father, Richie, at the game.

Chapter 26 Summary

Danny’s father tells Danny he should have been here earlier, saying to Danny, “‘I’m always telling you that you gotta let stuff go eventually. So I followed my own advice for a change’” (233). Happy to have his father back in his corner, Danny resumes play. Rasheed shoots well enough to bring the Celtics back into the game, but Danny knows they must do something extreme to pull ahead of the Lakers. Coach Powers, however, refuses to change tactics, maintaining “[h]is way, to the end” (234). Rasheed orders Coach Powers to put Danny in the game; otherwise, Rasheed will refuse to play. Rasheed then turns to Danny, looking to him to devise a plan while the players essentially ignore Coach Powers.

Coach Powers puts Danny in the game and Danny’s plan to guard Lamar, in order to annoy him, works. Lamar even complains to Nick Pinto, who is refereeing the game. Although Lamar normally gets his way, Nick responds, “‘You play, Lamar. I’ll ref. Let’s see if we can make that work for both of us’” (237). Lamar begins missing shots and losing the chance to take shots, which angers him enough to knock Danny down. Even though his parents come onto the court and Danny hurts his knee, Danny pulls himself back up to a standing ovation. Due to the foul, Danny gets and makes two free throws, and ties the game.

In the final moments of the game, Danny fakes a pass to Rasheed, drawing Lamar to one spot on the court. Rasheed opens himself up at another spot, catches the pass, and “pulled up and took the kind of midrange jumper the announcers always said was becoming a lost art in basketball” (240). Lamar takes the ball with the game on the line, but fails to make his first shot; then, breaking away, Lamar transfers the ball from hand to hand to take a shot, only to have Danny slap it away from him. The horn sounds as the ball rolls away. With that, the Celtics, and Danny, win the championship. Danny receives the coveted game ball; he takes the ball and kicks it perfectly through the open doors of the main court. He turns to Coach Powers and says, “‘I could play soccer if I wanted […] [b]ut I’m a basketball player’” (244). Dannyproves to everyone, including himself, that when he plays the right way, he gets the best results.

Chapters25-26 Analysis

On the day of the championship game, Coach Powers reveals a truth about life: for the few that compete at such an elite level, this game may be one of the only chances these boys have to win a title: “‘People who don’t play sports will never have this feeling for one day in their lives’” (228). Danny notes Powers’ delivery is like a sermon. For these boys, this court resembles the hallowed ground of a church: they spend their lives training for moments like these, working through injury and heartbreak to get here. For those participating, a game like this resembles a religious experience. For people like Coach Powers, the only thing that matters is winning. For Rasheed, winning takes on another connotation: it means he gets one step closer to pulling his family into a better life. For Lamar, this game will be just another way to confirm his own sense of superiority. For Danny, this game represents his chance to vanquish his self-doubt, proving to his father, to Coach Powers, and to himself that he can compete with any player, anywhere.

The game also seems like a David and Goliath match-up, with Lamar’s team the one that’s favored to win. Josh Cameron remarks how Danny facing Lamar seems like a mismatch, except that “‘[i]t just turned out to be a mismatch the other way’” (242). Danny outsmarts Lamar because Lamar plays selfishly and lazily: he puts too much emphasis on his powerhouse shooting, and Danny easily slaps the ball away from him. Although Danny does not get the result he wants after Lamar breaks Tess’s camera, he gets it on the court, when he beats Lamar one-on-one. Danny wins because he works hard, while Lamar does not. He uses his height as an advantage when Lamar can only see Danny’s height as a handicap.