t’s Friday night just off South Pulaski Road in 1997, and if it’s Friday night in mid-January that likely means that the gym at Brother Rice is full.

Friday nights are game nights and this is Chicago—where game nights at high schools mean something, where the local network affiliates and cable outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, everybody) devote weekly half-hour chunks of air to prep legends and pro prospects, where driving home some nights you’re as likely to hear a high school basketball star make an appearance on sports radio as you are a Chicago Bull, even though Michael Jordan is still playing and looks like he could keep winning championships forever.

This is Chicago and high school ball rules the sports landscape, to the point where the names stay with you if you’re anything close to being a fan of anything. Recent memories of Antoine Walker and Donovan McNabb (yes, that McNabb) on fast breaks while Kevin Garnett flies downcourt to stop the play are still vivid in the minds of Second City hoops junkies, and new legends being born with new names every week, and the whole neighborhood and then some all come out to places like Brother Rice High School on Friday nights to witness each potential birth.

There’s one now—he’s Fenwick’s 6’6 junior prep All-American named Corey Maggette, and right now he and his teammates cling to a two-point lead against their conference rival. Those folks who felt that tonight’s game would have held much more promise had Brother Rice’s Quentin Richardson—another legend in diapers—not transferred out have found the game to be one of the best of the year anyway.

Maggette has been electric, dropping 26 despite constant double teams. But right now Maggette is away from the play as Rice, down two points, desperately searches for a score and the clock flashes past 00:13. The guy with the ball right now is one of nine mere mortals on the court not named Maggette, a quiet 5’10 white kid who hasn’t called for the ball much but has come off screens effectively and gotten open looks for much of the night. Right now, however, he gets the ball and creates for himself, driving down the lane and throwing up a layup that falls to tie the game, 68-68, with six seconds left, and the building explodes.

But the uproar soon hushes—Fenwick doesn’t even call for time and the All-American doesn’t even have to call for the ball. Maggette pushes the ball the length of the floor, a devastating blend of intensity and cool as the clock ticks on, and finally pulls up for a 10-foot jumper from the right baseline that sucks the life right out of a throng that could smell overtime. Fenwick wins, 70-68, and the media hordes descend upon Maggette. (Did we mention that this is Chicago?)

“It was an easy shot,” Maggette tells the Chicago Sun-Times. “Before the game, they were chanting my name—that pumped me up a little. I was ready to play.”

Maggette will go on to say a lot more in newspapers and magazines and eventually commit to Duke. And then he’ll say a few more words Blue Devils fans don’t want to hear when he abandons Mike Krzyzewski for the NBA after one year and a loss in the 1999 NCAA Championship game. And then he’ll eventually grumble to the press when he finds trouble getting consistent playing time under Alvin Gentry as a Los Angeles Clipper in a longjam of wingmen that also includes Quentin Richardson.

But what about that quiet guy? He walks off the court, disappointed about the loss, not saying much like always. What happens to him?

The Quiet Guy

“It’s fun now,” Patrick Harvey says. “Looking at the college game and even the pro games and seeing names you played against.” Harvey shrugs and grins politely, waiting for the next question. He still doesn’t say much.

But Harvey, now a senior guard and the leading scorer for the Harvard Crimson, has seen his overall vocal presence evolve since his days on the Chicago hardwood. It had to. Harvey was a coach’s dream at Brother Rice—non-flashy, unselfish, fundamentally sound—but in at least one respect made his coaches cringe.

“He was one of the quietest kids I’ve ever known,” Pat Richardson says. Richardson went through a lot of kids in over a decade coaching Brother Rice, but few as dazzling and as puzzling as Harvey, who captained the team his senior year.

“It seemed like he’d only talk on two occasions—when he was making some sarcastic remark or when he was mad at himself,” Richardson says. “Whatever he said must’ve been funny. His teammates thought he was hilarious. But he just didn’t talk—hardly called for the ball or anything. He led by example.”

Harvey’s example included setting single-game and school records for both three-pointers and steals, and making the All-Chicago Catholic League team twice. He had a complicated role with the Crusaders—spot shooter, occasional ball-handler and—on a team with no post players taller than 6’2 his senior year—sometimes had to mix it up in the paint as well.