52 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamSooley
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 36-50Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapters 36-39 Summary
Robin texts Samuel all the next day, so he spends his day at the gym and decides to sleep there, too. The team loses all three games in New York, and Derell Compton, dissatisfied with his playing time, quits the team, leaving them with eight active players. The team returns home, and Murray is devastated when Robin leaves him for another man.
When the season restarts, Murray has a breakout game and earns a starting role on the team going forward. They win two games before losing to Florida A&M, a team that was picked to be top of the conference in the preseason. Four players (including Samuel) catch the flu on the flight home, and the decimated team loses another two games while everyone recovers. The team is now 6-13. Lonnie stops dreaming of getting promoted to a bigger school and begins worrying about keeping the job he has.
A week later, Samuel has finally recovered from the flu and is back in the gym. Lonnie approaches him with the prospect of playing in their next game because they desperately need help. Samuel is ecstatic and practices with more determination than ever. Their opponent is Maryland Eastern Shore, and the game begins evenly matched. Samuel is subbed into the game in the second quarter when two other players get fouled out. He is initially overwhelmed by nerves and makes a few mistakes, but settles into the game after using his length and athleticism to make two big defensive plays. In the second half, a loose ball ends up in Samuel’s hands with only two seconds left on the shot clock. He confidently launches it from 42 feet, hitting nothing but net. This becomes known as “The Shot” and begins the legend of Samuel Sooleymon’s rise to prominence.
Samuel gains confidence as he realizes he can use his impressive vertical leap to shoot over any guard, and makes multiple three-pointers before the end of the game. The Eagles win, Samuel finishes with 17 points in just 14 minutes, and his coaches and teammates realize they have a star on their hands. The next day, when Samuel attempts to call his mother, he cannot get through. This has happened before, though, so he does not worry.
The Eagles ride Samuel’s hot streak to six more wins in a row, evening their record at 13-13. He continues to start on the bench but plays increasingly longer each game, and by the end of this streak, is leading their offense. His profile begins to grow, and the team’s home games are suddenly selling out. Samuel becomes so popular that Murray has to show him how to change his phone number. During the team’s physical check-up, Samuel measures in at six foot seven and weighs 227 pounds.
Part 2, Chapters 40-42 Summary
The tents in the refugee camp begin to show wear because they were not designed as permanent residences. Beatrice buys three tarps from the local market to patch up her friends’ tents, but this attracts unwanted attention. One day, upon returning from dropping the children at school, Beatrice and her friends realize their tents were plundered. All their food and personal items, such as blankets, water bottles, pillows, and the NC Central clothing they received from Ecko, are gone.
Central wins three more games, making their record 16-13 as they enter the final game of the regular season against Florida A&M, the team with the best record in their conference. Samuel is now averaging 31 points and 8 rebounds a game and has become part of the starting lineup. He has also garnered enough national attention that ESPN broadcasts the game. During the pregame, they run a feature on Samuel and what is happening in South Sudan. Lonnie and Ida prevent Samuel from giving an interview, which he is fine with. NC Central wins a tight game, and Samuel has another breakout performance, scoring 49 points, grabbing 11 rebounds, and passing for 10 assists. The new attention on Samuel makes living on campus untenable. Samuel is constantly stopped for photos and autographs, and people knock on their dorm door at all hours. To get away from the chaos, he moves into the Walkers’ basement, and Murray takes back his old room upstairs.
Because of the poor start to their season, NC Central needs to win their conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament, also known as “March Madness.” The team wins their first two games, earning them a spot in the final. Before the game, Murray is approached by Reynard Owen, a representative of professional sports agent Arnie Savage. Reynard talks to Murray about Samuel, because NCAA rules prevent college athletes from talking to professional agents. He claims Samuel is likely bound for the NBA draft and will be a lottery pick, meaning he would earn a guaranteed contract worth millions and need an agent to negotiate the deal. Murray is skeptical and debates telling Lonnie about it but decides to keep it to himself for now. NC Central then go on to win the final. Samuel dominates the game and earns the tournament MVP. For only the second time in school history, they are headed to “March Madness.”
NC Central has to play Florida State in their first NCAA tournament game. However, the night before they’re supposed to leave, an ice storm hits Durham, knocking out most of the city’s power and making the roads too dangerous to travel. The team cannot leave until 8:00am on gameday, and the trip takes them ten hours. The entire ordeal leaves them woefully unprepared for the game, but Lonnie motivates his players by showing them a disrespectful newspaper article from The Tampa Bay Times.
Part 2, Chapters 43-46 Summary
In their overconfidence, Florida State had not even scouted NC Central and are not prepared for Samuel’s hot shooting. He scores 47 points in a comfortable win, the seventh-highest point total in tournament history. This is also NC Central’s first-ever March Madness win.
After the game, Lonnie is bombarded with emails, texts, and calls from people wanting to get a piece of Samuel. Samuel, who is very superstitious, has a bad dream involving an airplane, and asks if the team can travel by bus instead of flying. Lonnie decides it is a good idea, because they can travel to Memphis slowly instead of going back to the NC Central campus, avoiding media attention after their big upset.
Their next game is against Duke University, which houses one of the most successful basketball programs in the country. Duke is also a private school, with endless financial resources, a team of players projected to enter the NBA draft, and a number-one ranking going into the tournament. NC Central is an underresourced public school ranked 16th. In the history of the tournament, a 16-seed has never defeated a number one. Samuel continues his strong individual play, but NC Central struggles to keep pace with the immense firepower of Duke’s roster. In the final two minutes of the game, the Eagles are down 79-64. However, through a defensive frenzy that causes Duke to turn the ball over multiple times, and Samuel’s hot shooting, they manage to tie the game at 79-79 just before the whistle. Murray shoots a game-winning basket, and NC Central completes their most improbable upset yet. Samuel finishes with 58 points, the second-highest in NCAA history.
After the game, Samuel talks to the media for the first time, and the frenzy around him and the team grows. They win their next game against Arkansas, allowing them into a stage of “March Madness” called the “Sweet Sixteen.” Lonnie does what he can to shield Samuel and the team from the attention and adulation that now follows them everywhere. The team’s success has already earned the school $600,000, and more wins will mean more money. More agents try reaching out to Samuel, and Lonnie considers that keeping Samuel in school an extra year could help his job prospects after basketball.
Part 2, Chapters 47-50 Summary
In the refugee camp, a Ugandan beer magnate who loves basketball pays for two 150-inch screens to be installed for everyone to watch Samuel’s next game. Beatrice and her sons are considered guests of honor, and she watches with tears in her eyes.
Before the game, Lonnie talks with Ecko about everything that has happened and what he expects Samuel to do at the end of the season. Both agree he will likely enter the NBA draft because it will be impossible to reject the money and prospect of saving his family sooner. Both worry that once he is outside the protection of the team and coaches, the media circus and fame could cause problems.
NC Central is set to play Providence, and they no longer have the benefit of being unknowns. Providence double-teams Samuel, causing the Eagles to get off to a slow start. They claw their way back by halftime, and the second half is a physical and closely contested battle, but Samuel catches fire toward the end of the game, finishing with 40 points and leading the Eagles to another win. NC Central then beats Maryland handily in the Elite Eight game, earning them a spot in the Final Four. When the team arrives back at campus the next day, so many people show up to greet them that police barricades are required to protect them.
The next game isn’t for another week, so Lonnie takes the team to North Arizona University and keeps the location a secret—even from the players—to get away from the pandemonium. The Athletic Director at Central is worried about the players missing another week of class, but Lonnie has earned the school another $2 million, so he gets his way. As the game nears, the players must speak to the media, and Samuel’s smile and positive attitude endear him to them even more.
The game is against Villanova, a team that boasts their own NBA-projected talent in Darrell Whitley, and his match-up with Samuel has the media excited. Until this point, Samuel had been shooting a remarkable 51% from the three-point line, a number unheard-of in college basketball. Against Villanova, he comes back to Earth and has his first poor shooting night of the tournament. This, along with an injury to another key player, is too much for NC Central to overcome, and they lose the game 71-50. Samuel finished the game with just 22 points, much below his average. Having experienced real tragedy, he is not upset by the loss and does not cry. Tired of basketball and not wanting to watch the final, the team heads home to the NC Central campus.
Part 2, Chapters 36-50 Analysis
This section of the text focuses mostly on basketball and pushing the narrative forward, as there are far fewer scenes in the refugee camp and only snippets of what is happening off-court. Grisham’s whirlwind prose allows one game to blend into the next and mirror the experience the team is having on their historic run. Yet, despite this relentless pacing, Grisham plants thematic seeds that become important later.
The short scenes of Beatrice and the refugee camp while Samuel rockets to fame and stardom in America reinforce Grisham’s theme of the Absurdity of Global Inequality without having to draw direct attention to it. When swept up in the fast-paced action of Samuel’s sports victories, readers can almost forget about the situation in South Sudan. The prose places all the focus on the moment-to-moment excitement of Samuel’s play. Then, reality comes crashing back in with narrative glimpses of life in the camp. Beatrice is robbed. She sees pictures of Samuel and nearly weeps. While Samuel’s life becomes demonstrably better with nearly every chapter, Beatrice’s remains static. Contrasting these two elements exposes the relative frivolousness of Samuel’s massive success in the face of the political upheaval in South Sudan. Similar frivolousness is highlighted when the beer magnate donates huge TVs to the camp so the refugees can watch Samuel’s game. While Beatrice is thrilled to see her son succeed, there is the tacit question of how much rice the TV money could have bought, how many tents or bandages the camp won’t get because they watched Samuel’s game instead.
As NC Central progresses through the tournament, and Samuel continues to have breakout performances, the role that profit plays for everyone involved becomes increasingly foregrounded, casting the reader’s eye to the theme of the Land of (In)opportunity. The further NC Central advances in the tournament, the more money they bring in for the school. This completely changes the relationship Lonnie has with the school’s athletic director. One of the AD’s responsibilities is ensuring the player’s academic responsibilities are being upheld, but once the team is bringing in millions of dollars, that goes out the window. The long-term well-being of the players is cast aside for the short-term promise of massive profit for the school. This shows the way in which even the greatest of opportunities—Samuel coming to Durham and playing for the Eagles—can be perverted by the profit motive. The same can be said of the sports agents that begin swarming around Samuel. The prospect of millions of dollars often encourages student athletes to make bad decisions, which is partially why the NCAA banned agents from reaching out to students. But this does not stop Arnie Savage sending Reynard to talk to Murray, which circumvents the rules and allows him to try to get first dibs on the potential contract Samuel is soon to earn.
The media also begins to swarm around Samuel in these chapters, turning his story in South Sudan into nothing more than a segment on ESPN. This underscores the mixed blessing of America: While it is good they raise awareness about the situation, the crisis went ignored until it could be packaged as part of their programming. Now that the crisis in South Sudan gives a rising star a compelling underdog story, it is worth presenting to the American public. Samuel seems pleased by the media attention in some ways, but Lonnie and Ida keep him from giving interviews, which shows the adults in his life understand better the threat the media represents to Samuel’s future.
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