What happens when Arnold plays Rowdy in basketball for the first time in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian?

The Wellpinit vs. Reardon basketball game comes just two weeks after Junior makes the Reardon varsity team. Junior knows it will be bad, saying, "Do I have to tell you that I was absolutely sick with fear? I vomited four times that day" (pg 142). 

When the team enters the gym, they are met with an organized stance against Junior. The crowd greets the team by chanting "Ar-nold sucks!" (pg 143). This is particularly important because the crowd is using Junior's "Reardon name" rather than his rez name, demonstrating that they view him as a totally traitor and outsider now. Junior considers not playing, but the sight of his family in the stands, ready to "walk through the crap" (pg 143) with him, gives him strength.

Still in a unified protest of Junior, the crowd falls silent when the team enters and all turn their backs on Junior. The only one still looking at him (aside from his family) is Rowdy. Junior knows why, saying,

"He wanted to play. He didn't want to turn his back on me. He wanted to kill me, face-to-face" (pg 144). 

Junior is scared and mad, but ready to follow his coaches advice and use the anger to play well. He gets put in the game, runs out to the court, and gets beamed in the forehead with a quarter someone threw from the crowd. Since the quartered drew blood, Junior has to get it fixed up before he can play again. Luckily, his dad's best friend Eugene agrees to give him three stitches right there and Junior can go back out on the court again. 

He does, ready to earn back all the points Rowdy had scored in his absence. As Junior tells it:

"I jumped in the air, heard the curses of two hundred Spokanes, and then saw only a bright light as Rowdy smashed his elbow into my head and knocked me unconscious" (pg 146).

This hit incites something of a riot in the crowd and on the court. Players start shoving one another, adults from the crowd surge on the court, tribal cops need to intervene. The refs give Reardon two free throws for Rowdy's "technical foul." Terrified of the angry Indians in the crowd, the refs also give Wellpinit ten free throws for Reardon players leaving the bench and "unsportsmanlike conduct" from Reardon's coach. Wellpinit wins the game by 30 points and Junior gets a minor concussion. 

This games deepens the chasm between Junior and Rowdy. Ever since Junior's decision to attend school at Reardon, Rowdy has been furious with him. His attack on Junior shows that his feeling have only deepened. The friend who used to protect Junior from beatings is now attacking him himself.