64 pages • 2-hour read
Rez Ball
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Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and substance use.
Chapter 1 Summary: “March 10”
Fifteen-year-old Tre Brun watches his high school’s regional championship basketball game from the stands of the Bemidji State gym alongside his parents and best friends, Wes and Nate. The Red Lake Warriors trail Bemidji High School until the final minutes, when they mount a furious comeback playing a wild, run-and-gun, flashy style of basketball known as “rez ball.” Tre’s father remarks that the team would be doing even better if Tre’s brother, Jaxon, were still alive to play. Half the crowd wears memorial shirts bearing Jaxon’s image.
With the score at 97-93, Mason (the Red Lake point guard) hits a three-pointer, bringing Red Lake within one point. After Bemidji misses a crucial free throw, Mason grabs the rebound and races downcourt, heaving a desperation shot from half-court as the buzzer sounds, but misses. Red Lake loses 97-96. Nonetheless, the team leads the crowd in one final cheer.
As the gym empties, Tre freezes in grief, remembering how Jaxon would ride home with them after games. Wes comforts him. In the parking lot, Tre’s father says Jaxon would have been proud of his teammates.
Chapter 2 Summary: “July 11”
Tre practices basketball at an outdoor court across from the cemetery where Jaxon is buried. His best friend, Wes, films him for a documentary about Tre’s journey toward the NBA. Dallas, a varsity starter, arrives and shares how Jaxon once spent a month training him when he struggled as a shorter player. Dallas notes that Tre shoots exactly like Jaxon and is now Jaxon’s height. He encourages Tre to keep working hard because the team needs him, and then invites Tre and Wes to a party at his house that evening.
Chapter 3 Summary: “July 11”
At Dallas’s party, Mason questions why Tre and Wes are there and insults Tre, saying he’s “no Jaxon” and lacks the experience to break into the team’s long-running core. Hurt, Tre leaves with Wes. Dallas follows them outside and apologizes for not intervening sooner. He explains that Mason had a difficult childhood and uses meanness as a shield, urging Tre not to take it personally. Dallas encourages Tre to prove himself through his play, saying that having Tre on the team will feel like having a piece of Jaxon back.
Chapter 4 Summary: “July 12”
Tre and Wes film a documentary interview in Wes’s basement. Tre outlines his goals: making varsity, winning the school’s first regional and state championships, playing Division I basketball, and reaching the NBA. Nate interrupts and teases them about the project.
The three friends drive to the Bemidji mall in Nate’s father’s old van, as only Nate has a driver’s license. At the bookstore, Tre talks with Sam (a cashier he has a crush on) about comics, particularly Spider-Gwen. She mentions attending a beach picnic and a movie with friends, but Tre fails to ask for her number despite the opening.
On the drive back, along a lakeside road lined with mansions, a white police officer, noticing the van’s reservation license plate, pulls them over for allegedly swerving. The officer questions whether they’ve been drinking or using drugs and makes disparaging comments about Red Lakers. A second officer arrives. Nate performs field sobriety tests while the officers search the van, finding nothing. The three friends are eventually released and drive home in shaken silence.
Chapter 5 Summary: “August 1”
Tre completes a grueling predawn workout, running sprints until he nearly vomits. He recalls racing Jaxon as children and always winning, which frustrated his brother. At home, Tre learns that his mother has enrolled in a master’s program in social work while continuing her job. During breakfast, Tre’s father adjusts a framed photo of Jaxon holding a trophy and reminisces about Jaxon breaking his scoring record. Tre feels invisible, wishing his father would acknowledge him.
Later, Nate convinces Tre to play pickup basketball. During a close game, on a team with Dallas against a team including Mason and Kevin, Tre misses the game-winning shot. Mason scores immediately after and talks trash. Back home, Tre flips through Slam magazine, pausing on an article about a seven-foot blond point guard from Crestview Christian Academy nicknamed God’s Son. That evening at dinner, Tre’s mother describes a traumatic day at her social work job, and Tre reflects on the pressure he feels to succeed and escape the hardships of the reservation.
Chapter 6 Summary: “August 25”
On the first day of his sophomore year, Tre feels anonymous without his brother’s social standing. He accidentally spills a Red Bull on a new student, Khiana, who wears cat-eye sunglasses, a Nirvana shirt, and black jeans. She asks for directions to their shared first-hour class. As they walk, Khiana plays a game of truth or dare with Tre. He dares her to hang out with him sometime, and after class, she passes him a note with her phone number, social media handles, and hearts drawn around the edges. For the first time since Jaxon’s death, Tre feels seen as himself rather than as Jaxon’s little brother.
Chapter 7 Summary: “August 25”
After school, Tre meets Khiana and drives his old Impala to a lakeside beach (his and Jaxon’s favorite summer spot). As they pass the commodity hall, Khiana points to graffiti and asks about the Red Death Mafia; Tre explains that they and their rivals, the West End Mob, operate on the reservation despite its rural appearance. They drive past the memorial at the tree where Jaxon crashed and died on New Year’s Eve. Tre tears up, and Khiana comforts him.
At the beach, they share their passions and dreams. Khiana shows Tre photos of elaborate cosplay costumes she made, including Link and Samus. She says her dream is to move to Los Angeles and work as a costume designer or makeup artist for films. Tre shares his basketball ambitions. They sit together as the sun sets, leaning against each other in comfortable silence.
Chapter 8 Summary: “August 25”
When Tre arrives home after curfew, he finds his father and his uncles, Ricky and Donovan (nicknamed “Liver” because of his drinking prowess), sitting around a campfire. A freshly killed deer hangs nearby. Tre’s father confronts him about missing curfew, ignoring texts, and lying about playing basketball when Aunt Lisa saw him driving to the beach with a girl. Tre apologizes. His uncles joke with him and ask about his basketball progress, including whether he can dunk and if he’ll start on varsity. When Liver praises both Tre’s father and Jaxon as great players, Tre’s father grows quiet. He then tells Tre to go inside, eat the walleye and wild rice his mother left for him, and get to bed since he has an early-morning workout.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The novel immediately establishes The Burden of Family Legacy as a central theme, showing how others view Tre primarily in light of his deceased brother, Jaxon, rather than as an individual. This external pressure shapes Tre’s identity from the novel’s outset. During the regional championship game, Tre’s father remarks that if Jaxon were playing, “[t]hey’d be doing even better” (2), dismissing Tre’s presence. Visually reinforcing this sentiment are the memorial T-shirts bearing Jaxon’s image that many in the Red Lake crowd are wearing. The comparisons are inescapable: Teammate Dallas notes Tre’s similarities to his brother, and the novel frames Mason’s antagonism entirely through this lens when he tells Tre, “[Y]ou’re no Jaxon” (19). This legacy is most acute within Tre’s home, which he perceives as a shrine to his brother, making him feel invisible. This dynamic explores how grief can function within a family and community, as the living may become vessels for the memory of the dead, favoring a collective, idealized identity over individual ones.
The rez ball style of play symbolizes Indigenous cultural identity and resilience, developing the theme of Resisting Oppression Through Community Bonds and Pride. The text introduces rez ball as a “wild, run-and-gun, flashy” style of “beautiful chaos” that mirrors the spirit of the Red Lake Nation itself (1). This expression of pride contrasts with the behavior of the opposing Bemidji fans, whose actions represent a hollow appropriation of Indigenous culture. Through this juxtaposition, basketball becomes a microcosm for the broader cultural conflict between Indigenous communities and a dominant society that often misunderstands them. Rez ball is thus an assertion of cultural distinction—improvisational, defiant, and deeply communal. It provides a vehicle through which to assert and defend identity, connecting to a wider tradition of sports as a space for marginalized groups to challenge dominant narratives and express communal pride.
The author uses juxtaposition to contrast the communal, if fraught, world of the Red Lake reservation with the hostile, racist environment of the white-dominated nearby city of Bemidji. The physical journey between the two locations marks a transition between worlds. On the reservation, Tre and his friends navigate internal conflicts and community pressures, but they belong. In Bemidji, their very presence evokes suspicion, culminating in a humiliating traffic stop. The officer’s prejudice is explicit in his use of racial profiling when he states, “I know how you Red Lakers are” (35), suggesting that their identity makes them immediate targets. This scene highlights the systemic racism that exists just beyond the reservation line, reflecting the lived reality for many Indigenous people who must navigate the dualities of relative cultural safety at home and prejudice in mainstream society.
Tre’s introduction to Khiana initiates a pivotal shift in his development, marking the beginning of The Process of Grieving and Healing Through Connection. Her arrival provides Tre an opportunity to be seen as an individual separate from Jaxon’s legacy. Before meeting Khiana, Tre feels either anonymous or defined solely as Jaxon’s “little brother.” Tre’s first interaction with Khiana, centering on a spilled drink and a game of truth or dare, is spontaneous and personal, entirely disconnected from his family history or basketball. When they drive past Jaxon’s memorial, Khiana’s quiet compassion allows Tre to articulate his pain in a new context, outside the familiar conversations of his family. His subsequent reflection is telling: “She’s the only person I’ve ever met who didn’t think of me as Jaxon’s little brother first. I get to be me for once” (61). Khiana catalyzes Tre’s individuation. Her validation of Tre for his own qualities is crucial for an adolescent navigating such a significant loss.
The novel’s physical settings reflect Tre’s internal conflict between honoring his brother’s memory and forging his own path. Tre’s primary training space, the outdoor basketball court, is situated directly across from the cemetery where Jaxon is buried, forcing Tre to constantly confront his brother’s death and legacy. His athletic ambitions are inextricably linked to his grief: He uses the cemetery for motivation yet also tries to ignore its presence, revealing his deep inner conflict. The family home operates similarly, functioning not as a sanctuary but as a “never-ending memorial” (44). His father’s act of straightening a photo of Jaxon while Tre is physically present and craves acknowledgment shows how the family’s focus remains on preserving the past. These settings aren’t passive backdrops but active symbolic landscapes, creating a visual metaphor for the psychological weight of Tre’s grief and the immense pressure to fill the void his brother left behind.
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