It was Saturday afternoon, and the sunlight was thin.
The Pittsburgh Hill District had once been a gray smudge on the city map, a place deliberately ignored.
At the heart of the neighborhood, the street basketball court—once overgrown with weeds and littered with discarded needles—had been transformed.
A brand-new synthetic court surface, painted red and blue, gleamed under the sun. The white boundary lines were crisp and sharp.
Two new basketball hoops stood at either end of the court. The backboards were made of transparent, high-strength tempered glass, and the nylon nets on the rims had hardly even begun to darken.
The air was thick with the scent of youthful hormones.
"Pass! Over here!"
Six or seven boys, fifteen or sixteen years old, were racing across the court.
They wore baggy jerseys and heavily worn sneakers, but their movements were swift and fierce. Every change in direction, every jump, was explosive.
Leo Wallace sat on a metal bench at the side of the court.
