You can hear it in Jim Nantz’s voice – dread, disgust, alarm – listen, it’s there every time, even on playback, even eight months removed, even though you’ve seen the replay enough times to know exactly what is going to happen.

‘Look at this shot!’ Nantz screeches incredulously. He’s courtside, hair coiffed and suit tailored, broadcasting the national championship game, but you get the sense that if he was only sitting in the bleachers with some buddies and some beers, he’d be calling Syracuse freshman Gerry McNamara a damn fool. His commentary might sound more like, ‘What the hell is he thinking?’

Then there’s Billy Packer, CBS’ candid colorman, dropped into the Superdome scene right beside Nantz. You don’t hear his voice, but he’s getting ready – you’re sure of it. When McNamara misses this shot, this 3-point prayer from Insanityland, Packer will call it a freshman mistake, perhaps a mental lapse. You’re up by six points and the game’s only seven minutes old, for cripes sakes. Slow it down. Pass it around. What’s the need to spot up from almost 30 feet away?

If the announcers stopped for a second – this very second, just as McNamara catches his lone defender off guard, then blithely leaves the ground – they’d still miss it. The cameras, were they to pan out, would surely miss it, too. One man in a section of Syracuse fans is sitting still, calm as he might look on a lunch break from the post office where he works.

This has nothing to do with Chiz McNamara’s bonhomie, though he has that, too; no, this is pure confidence. Perhaps you’d have it, too, if you’d raised Gerry, if you’d decided long ago that your son would become a basketball wonderkind, if you’d watched him play hero so many times that the plot was becoming almost predictable.

First time Gerry shot a basketball in a game? He was 6 – he must have forgotten that 6-year-olds aren’t supposed to make 3-pointers. And if by some one-in-100 chance they do, they ought to celebrate, go out to ice cream after the game, brag about it to their teachers. Gerry turned around, ran back down the court and got into his defensive stance. Oh man, Chiz thought. This kid’s been ready to shoot a basketball since birth.

Now half an arena thinks McNamara is crazy for taking this shot. He’d already drained two 3s earlier in the game, so maybe that must explain it. The kid’s trying to put on a show. Trying to make a shot from a place where most people wouldn’t even bother guarding him. Right in the middle of the NCAA championship game.

‘Well, doesn’t he have a right to?’ John Bucci is thinking. Let Bucci stand up for McNamara, his former high school star. Let Bucci tell you and everybody else who’s willing to listen that the best 3-point shooters better be able to shoot whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want. Pull a player from the game one time for missing a bad shot and he’ll become tentative, he’ll start playing with fear – or worse yet, doubt.

At Bishop Hannan High in Scranton, Pa., Bucci gave McNamara the eternal green light. And look here – Bucci can’t help but smile as he sees what’s happening. Confidence. Attaboy, Gerry. Stick this shot. Let ‘er rip. You have nothing to lose, to hell with the fact that this is the biggest game of your life.

McNamara’s got it all tuned out. That’s what the best ones do. He has no doubt he’s hitting this shot, just like the shot he took the previous time down the court, 30 seconds earlier.

This is easy. Catch and shoot. McNamara releases the ball at the top of his jump – Nantz goes silent; Chiz stays silent; Bucci leans forward – and it’s just like the hundreds of thousands of shots he’s taken before.

In middle school, Teddy Blume, a family friend, coached Gerry on his CYO team, but after practices, Gerry would stay at the Holy Rosary Center with his dad. He’d shoot 3s by the hundreds, hours at a time. Chiz would rebound and keep count. Most times, you could bet on Gerry making about 70 of 100 3-pointers. If he got hot, he’d make close to 85.

Gerry would shoot until he got tired; then his shot would fall flat – that was the only problem Gerry ever had with his jumper. Chiz would then instruct his son to back up, take a few more steps away; more, more. No, even more. OK, stop there.

See Gerry now? If you’re standing under the hoop, by now he’s so far away that he’s out of focus. Is he a seventh-grader sweating through drills at the Holy Rosary Center? Or has he become one of the best 3-point shooters in college basketball?

Every good shot feels the same when it’s in the air. Things change, though, when this one nosedives in, rotating end over end as it ripples the net, giving SU a big nine-point lead against Kansas. ‘My goodness!’ Nantz gulps. An arena exhales. It’s McNamara’s third 3 of the game. He’ll have 6 by halftime, and you’ve heard the story so many times by now, you know how it all ends.

But go back and watch the tape. It’s OK that you still get a kick out of it. Just one warning: If you listen to Nantz too closely – Look at this shot … My goodness! – you won’t even notice the most interesting part of it all. By the time the shot falls, McNamara is already backpedaling, ready to play defense, ready to do it all over again.

Published on February 28, 2006 at 12:00 pm