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[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Dedicated to the memory of Tony Travis, Roy Stanley Miller, Lacy Banks, L. J. Beaty, and Ed McPherson, brothers one and all Prologue THE DEFENDER’S EYES grow wide, as they well should. He’s about to face the kind of kinesthetic brilliance that first motivated humans to invent slow- motion technology—something, anything, that would allow them to review exactly what happens when movement plays tricks on the mind. The setting is painfully familiar. Something in the offensive structure has broken down at the other end of the floor, igniting a fast break. The entire defense is retreating. The defender has sprinted back down the floor and, as he turns, he sees the blur. The dark form in red has the ball, dribbling and winding his way through the chaos at great speed. He crosses the ball over from right to left and draws it up in two hands just off his left hip in midstride. At this exact moment, the tongue falls out of his face. Sometimes, it shows just slightly between the teeth, but at this moment, the full tongue drops grotesquely, like some comic doll silently mocking the defender.