The game ball sat on the kitchen counter, a stark, leathery moon in the soft glow of the under-cabinet lights. Kyle looked at it as he sipped his morning coffee. It wasn't a trophy, not really. It was a receipt. Proof of purchase for a lesson he'd paid for in two years of pain, fear, and humiliation. You are learning the language. Laso's words echoed, but a quieter, more insidious voice whispered beneath them: But are you still a scorer?

The victory against Žalgiris had been a triumph of intellect, a validation of his new path. But a deep, primal part of him, the part forged on cracked Jamaican asphalt and polished in the blazing lights of the NBA, felt unsettled. He had taken one shot. One. He'd been a facilitator, a cog. It felt… sterile. The animal joy of putting the ball through the hoop, of imposing his will on a game through sheer force of scoring, had been his identity since he was a boy trying to outshoot his father's ghost. That identity felt distant, muffled, like a shout from the other end of a long tunnel.

Practice that day was focused on offensive sets against zone defenses. The Greek team, Panathinaikos, they were facing next was a master of it. The drills were complex, demanding pinpoint passing and lightning-quick decisions.

Kyle was good at it. Alarmingly good. His height for a guard, his court vision—now being properly trained—allowed him to see over the zone and dissect it. He found cutters, hit skip passes, and orchestrated the offense with a calm efficiency that made Coach Laso nod with grim approval.

But he rarely shot.

In a drill against the second-team defense, he came off a screen and had a clean look from the wing. The muscle memory was there: the catch, the dip, the rise. But then his brain, the new, hyper-analytical engine Laso had installed, intervened. Tavares is rolling. Llull is flaring to the corner. The pass is the higher percentage play.

He passed. Tavares dunked.

"Good read, Mothers!" an assistant coach yelled.

It was the right read. The winning read. But as he jogged back on defense, a hollow feeling opened in his gut. The ghost of his old self, the scorer, watched from the sidelines, arms crossed, disappointed.

Later, during a water break, Sergio Llull sidled up to him, squeezing a bottle over his head. "You are thinking like a point guard, Americano. It is good."

"Doesn't feel like it used to," Kyle admitted, the words surprising him. He hadn't meant to be that honest.

Llull's sharp eyes studied him. "How did it feel before?"

"Like… like I had to take the shot. Like it was my job to put the ball in the hole. That was my value."

Llull snorted. "Your value is to win. Sometimes that is twenty-five points. Sometimes it is eight points and ten assists and the pass that no one else sees." He pointed a finger at Kyle's chest. "The problem is not your knee, campeón. It is here. You are afraid of what happens if you shoot and miss. So you do not shoot at all. You hide in the passes. It is safer."

The accusation was so blunt, so true, it felt like a physical shove. Kyle stared at him, speechless.

"Your first year in Boston," Llull continued, his tone softer. "You were not the man. You were a shooter. A weapon. You did not think. You just… shot. Remember that guy. He was dangerous. Find him again. But bring the new brain with you. The brain that knows when to shoot."

The conversation left Kyle rattled. Llull was right. He was hiding. The fear of failure, of not being the player he once was, was so deeply ingrained that he'd amputated that part of his game entirely. He'd become a ghost in the machine, efficient but incorporeal, a facilitator with no threat of his own.

That night, instead of walking through plays, he stayed late with one of the young assistant coaches, a former shooter named Alvaro. For thirty minutes, they did one thing: catch-and-shoot. Over and over and over. From the corner, the wing, the top of the key. No thinking. No reading. Just catching and firing.

The first few felt foreign, his release a hair slow, his balance slightly off. But by the twentieth, the rhythm returned. The beautiful, mindless rhythm of the shot. The ball spun perfectly off his fingers, arcing through the quiet gym with a soft, familiar whisper. Swish. Swish. Swish.

It was a small rebellion. A reclamation.

The game against Panathinaikos was a different beast entirely. The OAKA Arena in Athens wasn't just a basketball court; it was a cauldron. The sound was a physical force, a wall of noise from 20,000 fanatical fans that began an hour before tip-off and never relented.

The game was brutal. It was less basketball and more a form of controlled warfare. Every cut was held. Every screen was a collision. The zone they deployed was a shifting, snarling thing, designed to confuse and intimidate.

For the first half, Kyle reverted to his new safe mode. He probed, passed, moved the ball. He was fine. They were down six. In the locker room, Laso was livid.

"They are disrespecting you!" he yelled, pointing at Kyle. "They are playing off you! They are helping on everyone else because they do not believe you will shoot! You are letting them! You are proving them right!"

The words stung. He looked at the stat sheet. One shot attempted. Zero points.

Llull caught his eye and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Remember.

The third quarter was a grind. Panathinaikos extended their lead to ten. The Greek stars were taunting, talking trash in a mixture of Greek and English, knowing Kyle's pass-first mentality was playing right into their hands.

Then, with three minutes left in the third, it happened. Kyle passed up another open look from the top of the key, opting to swing it to the corner. The Greek defender who'd been guarding him, a veteran named Papapetrou, didn't even bother to close out. He just turned his back and boxed out, already assuming the shot wasn't coming. The disrespect was blatant, humiliating.

The ball eventually swung back to Kyle. Papapetrou was still turned away, shouting instructions to his teammates.

The ghost in the machine woke up.

Kyle didn't hear the crowd. He didn't hear Laso. He didn't even think. He saw the basket. He saw the defender's turned back. And the old animal, the scorer, took over.

He rose. The form was pure, untouched by the crash, unclouded by overthinking. It was the shot he'd been born with.

Swish.

The net snapped. Papapetrou spun around, shocked.

The arena didn't go quiet. It hissed. A wave of displeasure at the audacity of the American.

Kyle didn't react. He just backpedaled on defense, his eyes locked on Papapetrou, his expression blank. The message was clear: That was a mistake. Don't do it again.

Two possessions later, the same thing. Kyle caught the ball on the wing. Papapetrou, chastised, closed out this time, but he was a step slow, expecting the drive or the pass. Kyle didn't pump fake. He didn't dribble. He caught and shot again, a fraction of a second faster. Papapetrou's contest was a futile wave.

Swish.

The hissing grew louder.

The dam broke. The fear was gone, burned away by the pure, exhilarating act of scoring. He wasn't thinking about percentages or reads. He was playing. The new brain and the old instinct finally fused. He hit a pull-up jumper. He drove past a closeout, his knee screaming in protest but holding firm, for a tough, contested layup. He was drawing defenders now, and when they collapsed, he was kicking it out to open shooters. He was no longer just a scorer or just a facilitator. He was a threat. And a threat that can pass is the most dangerous weapon in basketball.

The double-team came. He was ready for it. He fired a pass to a cutting Tavares for an easy dunk. Then he hit Deck for a three. The machine, now with a sharp, scoring blade attached, was unstoppable.

They erased the ten-point deficit and took the lead by the end of the third quarter.

The fourth quarter was a battle, but Kyle was at the center of it, orchestrating, controlling, and yes, scoring. With under a minute left, the score tied, he found himself isolated on Papapetrou at the top of the key. The crowd was on its feet, screaming. The ghost of his NBA self begged for the iso, for the hero shot.

But the new brain, the one that spoke the language, saw Llull making a subtle back-cut behind his man.

Kyle took two hard dribbles left, pulling the entire defense towards him. As Papapetrou leaned, Kyle snapped a behind-the-back pass, no-look, through a tiny window. It hit Llull in perfect stride for a layup. They won by two.

In the locker room, drenched in sweat and the sweet relief of a road win against a European giant, the atmosphere was electric. Llull found him, grinning.

"The pass was good, Americano," he said, clapping him on the shoulder. "But the shots first… that was better. You made them respect you. Then you made them pay."

Coach Laso gave his post-game talk, but his eyes kept drifting to Kyle. Finally, he said, "Mothers. Twenty-two points. Five assists. You found the balance. This is what we need. Not a point guard. Not a shooter. A basketball player."

On the flight back to Madrid, Kyle leaned his head against the cool window, watching the lights of Greece disappear beneath the clouds. He thought about his father. The man had never seen him play in high school, never saw the championship, the All-Star game. He'd only ever seen the raw, hungry kid in Jamaica, the one who shot every time he touched the ball because he loved the sound of the net.

For the first time since the crash, he didn't feel like he was betraying that kid. He felt like he was finally building on top of the foundation his father had laid. He had become more than just a scorer. But he had remembered, finally, that he was still one.

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