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53 pages 1 hour read

John Feinstein

Last Shot

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005

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Character Analysis

Steven Thomas / Stevie

Stevie is the main character of the novel and the first person the reader meets. The letter that opens the book addresses him. The narrator can reveal any of the characters’ thoughts but mainly focuses on what’s happening with Stevie. He’s the protagonist, and the narration is structured to set the reader up to root for him despite his flaws. Stevie can be stubborn and sexist and is a 13-year-old boy with a lot to learn about the world.

At first, he treats Susan Carol dismissively and snidely. The narrator writes, “Whatever. Susan Carol wasn’t who he wanted to meet anyway” (21). Stevie appears to have a crush on her, which he expresses in a rather stereotypical fashion: by being mean to her. His contempt for her matches his disdain for Duke, Susan Carol’s favorite team. In the hotel elevator, Stevie spots a woman with an ABD (“Anybody But Duke”) button and tells his dad he wants one for himself.

What Stevie wants more than anything is to be a top college basketball journalist. He’s been going to local Philadelphia games with his dad since he was four, and through the internet, he reads the top sports journalists like Lupica and Kornheiser. Early in the narrative, Stevie asks, “Dad, why would anyone want to do anything else?” (15). Stevie is a dynamic character, so he’s a work in progress. His love for college basketball journalism holds firm but his views on the sport, its inner workings, and Susan Carol undergo a keen change.

He meets media figures like Vitale and Kornheiser and realizes they’re overwhelming and grouchy. Through the fixing scandal and his talks with Weiss, he discovers college basketball has myriad problems. His relationship with Susan Carol fundamentally alters, too, as he goes from deriding her to working closely with her to solve the mystery. By the end of the championship game, Stevie and Susan Carol are on equal footing. They’re crying and hugging. Stevie also drops his scorn for Coach K. He admits the Duke coach is “pretty classy” (290). There are a lot of bad actors in college basketball, but Stevie learns Coach K isn’t one of them.

Stevie is an honorable and smart character too. He writes his articles well and quickly, and he can come up with convincing lies to get out of troublesome situations. He has a moral compass, and he dedicates his weekend to helping Chip figure out who’s blackmailing him. He sets his activities aside and becomes part of a bigger cause. Thoughtful and introspective, Stevie can be vulnerable. After Feeley’s alleged confrontation with Jurgensen fails, Stevie doubts his mantra: “We can do this” (254). Yet Stevie solves the mystery and showcases his persistent, tenacious character traits. He’s becoming the kind of person who will be a professional journalist with integrity and ethics. reflecting a motif of the book.

Susan Carol Anderson

Susan Carol is the second main character. She’s taller and more mature than Stevie. She drinks coffee and is less insecure than him. While Stevie is initially off-putting, Susan Carol is gracious from the start. She reads his contest-winning story and tells him, “It was very good. I’d like to go to the Palestra someday” (25). Yet Susan Carol is no pushover. She stands up for herself and contests stereotypes. Stevie says he thinks everyone from the South is a Republican, and Susan Carol replies, “Oh yes, and we’re all good ole boys and Southern belles, too. I do declare, Steven Thomas, you are just full of misconceptions” (63).

Stevie tries to provoke her, and the grownup men at the Final Four tend to treat her in an objectifying and predatory way. Multiple men call her “honey” (71, 117) and “pretty” (188), but Susan Carol uses her looks, infectious Southern voice, and those men’s sexism to her advantage. Considering her age—she’s 13–she is not depicted as a stereotypical femme fatale, but in the context of the story, Feinstein plays with the trope by having Susan Carol use her feminine charms to get access and advantages—such as access to Chip early in the book—that advance the investigation into the mystery.

Like Stevie, Susan Carol is thoughtful. She, too, contemplates the possibility that they’ll fail to stop the fix. She admits, “Stevie, I think we’re all in over our heads here” (254) after Jurgensen allegedly refuses to cooperate with Feeley. As with Stevie, Susan Carol is a dedicated basketball journalist. She even one-ups him because she arrives at the Final Four with her first article finished. Susan Carol can come up with persuasive lies and remains cool under pressure. When Gary ties up her and Stevie, she doesn’t panic but tries to talk Gary out of further involvement.

Susan Carol’s dad is a minister, but she doesn’t appear religious. She arguably subverts her dad’s occupation with her email: SCDevil@aol.com. The cheeky address aside, Susan Carol is a sincere person with a moral compass. She wants to help Chip and stop the bad guys. She’s not as dynamic as Stevie and doesn’t change as much as he does, mostly because she is presented as having fewer flaws, so she doesn’t have to make any many adjustments. Yet, like Stevie, Susan Carol learns a lot about college basketball and its inimical elements. About college basketball, she tells Stevie, “It’s easier to be a fan when you watch on TV” (90).

Chip Graber

Chip Graber is the third main character, though Feinstein doesn’t provide an up-close portrait of him until Chapter 10. Until then, Feinstein keeps Chip at a distance as a star college basketball player and “the rock star” (54) of the Minnesota State team. Most media attention is on him and the human-interest story of his playing for his dad. Stevie wants to write an article about him but chooses not to because countless articles will focus on him. Fame shrouds him, so for the first part of the book Chip’s character is a mystery.

His opaque identity increases when Stevie and Susan Carol overhear the conversation between him and Whiting. Media attention aside, Stevie and Susan Carol know little about Chip’s character. Stevie “kind of assumed that Graber was a victim—but maybe he’d done something really bad and was trying to cover it up” (91). In the first handful of chapters, Chip’s status as a peripheral character enhances the book’s mystery.

In Chapter 10, Chip tells his story, revealing more of his character’s motivations and flaws. He’s not perfect, and his performance at school reinforces the argument that the term student-athlete is dubious. Chip goes to school only Tuesday through Thursday, and he failed a class. He’s not going to graduate on time, but he’s closer to graduating than the other seniors.

Grades aside, Chip is honest and practical. He understands his situation, and his wealth won’t come from academics but from professional basketball. About the pending scandal and its impact on his NBA career, Chip tells the young reporters, “Those guys only care if you can win games. But it would affect my marketing. I’ve already got people lining up to pay me to sell their products” (153). Money, however, isn’t Chip’s main concern. He wants to help the teen journalists because of “right and wrong” (154). He and his dad aren’t “bad guys”—it’s Whiting and the other men who are the “sleazebags” (154).

For the remaining chapters, Chip’s character is central. Through Chip, Stevie and Susan Carol learn about Wojenski, and Chip uses his connections to get a car so they can interview Wojenski. The young reporters also rely on Chip’s cell phone for communication. Chip becomes a member of their team. He’s as invested in cracking the fixing scheme as the teen journalists are, and his bond with them creates loyalty. When he feels that Jurgensen is following them and possibly presents a threat, he refuses to abandon the teenagers and yells at the guard and representative at the Superdome until he allows Chip to enter the press conference with Stevie and Susan Carol. He doesn’t play well at the start of the championship so as not to endanger them. As he tells them after his game-winning shot, “I kept trying to convince myself you’d be okay, but I couldn’t shake the vision of you tied to those chairs” (300).

Benjamin Wojenski

Of all the bad guys, former Minnesota State dean Wojenski is perhaps the most consequential. He’s a key red herring who creates another red herring in Jurgensen. Chip, Susan Carol, and Stevie think Wojenski is on their side and can prove Chip didn’t fail one of his classes. Wojenski isn’t on their side—Jurgensen, however, is. Wojenski depicts himself as a harmless, retired man, but his character is dishonest. He is part of the fixing scheme, and his motives have to do with money. He has significant debt, and Jurgensen says his “house is mortgaged to the hilt” (282).

Steve Jurgensen

Jurgensen’s character transforms superficially in the mystery: He doesn’t change, but the reader’s perceptions of him alter. Due to Wojenski, the reader—along with Stevie, Susan Carol, and Chip—is led to think Jurgensen is a bad guy. Chip’s dad supposedly took the coaching job away from him at Davidson, making revenge his primary motive for fixing the championship game. By the end of Chapter 17, however, Jurgensen becomes a hero. He rescues the kidnapped reporters and gets them to the Superdome so Chip can see that they’re fine and can play well. Jurgensen was never nefarious. He and Chip’s dad are friends, he never wanted the coaching job, and he’s Chip’s dad’s lawyer. The assumption that Jurgensen is in on the scheme is central to the mystery and the surprise at the threadbare hotel.

Thomas R. Whiting

Whiting is a professor and Minnesota State’s athletic department faculty representative. Stevie and Susan Carol identify him as the man blackmailing Chip, and his inimical character doesn’t change. He’s presented as a bad guy from start to finish. His motive for taking part in the scheme is a lucrative job at Duke. Whiting teaches a class on morals and ethics, and he appears on a panel about the failings of college sports. His character adds to the irony of the mystery and advances the theme of the role that morality and ethics plays in college basketball.

Stuart M. Feeley

Feeley is the board chairman at Duke and a “software billionaire. Sort of the East Coast’s answer to Bill Gates” (231). In the last year, Feeley’s finances suffered, so money is the motive for his participation in fixing the championship: He needs a big gambling win. Feeley is a red herring. Stevie and Susan Carol think he’s on their side and can dissuade the supposedly bad Jurgensen from blackmailing Chip. His character is integral to the plot and its surprises.

Tony Kornheiser

Wilbon and Kornheiser are the hosts of ESPN’s show Pardon the Interruption and Stevie’s “two heroes” (14). Kornheiser is a real-life person, and his fictional character plays a key role in terms of the theme of illusion versus reality and the motif of good journalism. Kornheiser’s tantrum at the hotel shows that the personas presented on TV are illusions, and Stevie’s TV heroes are not perfect in real life. When Stevie meets Kornheiser again, his contemptuous attitude toward TV and his own persona indicates that he doesn’t think highly of people on TV because he doesn’t see them as true journalists.

Through his fictionalized version of Kornheiser, Feinstein also comments on the motif of gender. Kornheiser doesn’t objectify or act inappropriately toward Susan Carol like some of the men at the Final Four do. Kornheiser tells Stevie, “If you’re smart, you stick with her. She definitely has a future. We need more women in sports” (173). Thus, his fictionalized depiction in the book, though brief, is multidimensional, revealing both positive and negative facets of his personality in his brief encounters with the young reporters.

Mike Krzyzewski / Coach K

Coach K was the real-life coach of Duke from 1980 to 2022. His fictionalized character adds to the theme of illusion versus reality. Stevie goes to the Final Four with many negative assumptions about Coach, but when he meets him in person, he has to admit that the legendary Duke coach is a good guy.

Dick Vitale

Vitale is another sports personality from real life. By recreating Vitale’s character, Feinstein shows the over-the-top nature of TV hosts. Unlike Kornheiser, Vitale’s character isn’t self-deprecating. As with the Final Four, he’s a spectacle.

Dick Weiss

Weiss—“Hoops”—is Stevie’s guide for the Final Four. He’s a real-life writer, and through his character, Feinstein delves into the economics of college basketball and its impact on the sport.

Bill Brill

Brill is Susan Carol’s guide. He’s a real-life writer, and as with Weiss, he helps the young teens learn more about college basketball.

Bill Thomas

Thomas is Stevie’s dad. He’s a static character. A lawyer and a big sports fan, Thomas gladly accompanies his son to New Orleans and doesn’t question his lies. He adds to the romantic element of the story by gently teasing Stevie about his relationship with Susan Carol. He quips, “A girl who knows a lot about basketball. And she’s pretty” (106). He also counters Stevie’s negative tone toward Susan Carol. After one of Stevie’s unkind remarks about Susan Carol, Thomas tells him, “That was a snotty thing to say” (33).

Don Anderson

Anderson is Susan Carol’s dad. He’s a minister, but he doesn’t appear to impose his religious beliefs on Susan Carol. He dresses casually. Like Thomas, Anderson is a trusting parent and doesn’t question his daughter’s lies about what she and Stevie are up to. Don’s character contributes to the theme of the media when he says that “most people will crawl through mud to be on TV” (158).

Earl Koheen

The president of Minnesota State, Koheen plays a central role in the scheme, although he doesn’t make an appearance until the final chapters. What motivates Koheen is becoming president of a big-time school like Duke.

Rick Applebaum

Applebaum is an FBI agent who worked with Jurgensen in the past. His character represents law and order because his appearance marks the capture of all the culprits except Wojenski.

Gary

Gary is Feeley’s assistant. His motives for taking part in the fix are unclear, so Susan Carol thinks she can talk him into freeing her and Stevie. Gary is muscular, but Feinstein makes his character somewhat goofy by dressing him in a flowery shirt.

Alan Graber

Graber is the coach of Minnesota State and the dad of Chip. Feinstein doesn’t develop Graber’s character, but his presence helps motivate Chip’s search for the truth. The coach is blameless, and his son doesn’t want to see his father’s reputation harmed through the publication of Chip’s false transcripts or a fixed Final Four loss.

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By John Feinstein