The article was a tremor. The phone call that followed was the earthquake.
Two days after the playoff victory, Principal Evans once again summoned Alex to his office. This time, the man wasn't pale with anxiety; he was flushed with a bewildered kind of excitement.
"Alex, sit down," he said, gesturing to the chair. "I just got off the phone with a man named David Reeves. He's a scout. For the University of Michigan."
Alex kept his face neutral, but his mind raced. Michigan. A blue-blood program. This was faster than he had anticipated.
"He wasn't calling about a player, Alex," Evans said, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "He was calling about you. He'd seen the tape of the game. He said your offensive sets were... 'statistically fascinating.' He wants to meet you when he's in town next week to scout a player at Southside."
The offer—the validation—was a siren's call. It was everything he had wanted after his fall from the NBA. But a cold spike of caution drove itself into his gut. Vance Sterling's words echoed in his memory: "It's a small world." The basketball elite was a tight-knit, gossipy fraternity. A scout from a major program doesn't just call a high school coach out of the blue. Not without someone noticing.
"Did he say who gave him my name?" Alex asked, his tone carefully flat.
Evans waved a dismissive hand. "Does it matter? This is incredible! For the school! For your career!"
It mattered. It mattered a great deal.
He didn't tell the team about the scout. They had enough pressure, riding a wave of confidence into the semi-finals. But the news created a fissure in his own focus. During practice, as he watched Ben confidently practice hook shots and Marcus ran the plays with a new, unselfish authority, his mind was elsewhere.
He was running probabilities.
Scenario A: Meet with Reeves.
Positive Outcome: 40%. Makes a powerful ally, gets his name back in the collegiate sphere, potential future job offer.*
Negative Outcome: 60%. A trap set by Sterling. Reeves is a friend, gathering information to discredit him further. The meeting is leaked to the press, framing Alex as arrogant and already looking past his current team, destroying the trust he'd built.*
The numbers were clear, but the potential reward was a ghost he'd been chasing for years.
The conflict boiled over at practice during a scrimmage. Diego drove the lane, and Alex saw the opening—a kick-out to Samir in the corner was an 85% look for a three. But Diego, feeling the momentum of his drive, attempted a difficult, twisting layup. 45%.
The ball ricocheted hard off the backboard.
"Diego!" Alex's voice was sharper than he intended, the stress of the scout's call bleeding out. "The corner! That's an eighty-five percent look! What was that?"
Diego stopped, hands on his hips, and glared. "We were up by twenty, Coach! It was a playoff game! You want me to pass up a layup for a three? That's crazy!"
The gym went quiet. It was the first real pushback in weeks.
"It's not about the points," Alex said, his voice tight. "It's about building the habit. It's about taking the optimal play, every single time. An 85% three is a better statistical outcome than a 45% contested layup. The math doesn't lie."
"The game isn't just math!" Diego shot back, echoing the old, tired argument, but now it came from within his own ranks. "Sometimes you gotta play! You gotta feel it!"
Before Alex could respond, Marcus stepped between them.
"Hey," Marcus said, his voice low but firm. He looked at Diego. "He's right. The corner was open. I saw it too." Then he turned to Alex. "But Coach... we're not robots. We got this."
We got this.
The two words were a shock to Alex's system. They weren't defiance. They were... assurance. They were the team telling him to trust them. The system was no longer his alone to enforce; it was their shared language.
He looked at their faces—Diego's frustration, Marcus's calm leadership, Ben's quiet concern. They were a team. And he was their coach. Not a statistician auditioning for a bigger job.
The probability in his mind shifted. The 60% chance of the scout being a trap solidified into a near certainty. Sterling was trying to lure him out, to make him take his eyes off the prize. To make him betray the very trust that was now his greatest strength.
"You're right," Alex said, the fight going out of him. He looked at Diego. "My bad. Let's run it again."
The tension broke. Practice resumed.
Later that night, Alex sat in his silent apartment. He pulled up David Reeves's number and typed a single, definitive message.
"Thank you for the interest, but my focus is 100% on my players and our playoff run. Perhaps another time. - Alex Corbin."
He hit send. A wave of immediate relief washed over him, so powerful it felt like a physical weight lifting from his shoulders. He had chosen his team. He had chosen the synthesis over the cold calculus of his own ambition.
He was no longer the disgraced analyst, the robot coach, or the maverick genius.
He was the coach of the Northwood Titans.
And they had a championship to win.