Drew Gooden had already gone through two hours of physical tests at the Chicago Bulls’ practice facility last month during stop No. 3 on his pre-NBA draft tour.
He had already had everything from his vertical leap to his percentage of body fat measured and logged. He had already gone through on-court basketball drills for nearly 90 minutes.
Now he was sitting at a table, face-to-face with a psychologist, trying to piece together a puzzle made of blocks.
“They put you through all these tests,” said Gooden, a first-team All-America forward from Kansas University and a former El Cerrito High School standout from Richmond, Calif. “There was some crazy stuff.”
NBA teams scouted Gooden the past three seasons while he was at Kansas, watching his every move on the basketball court.
But now that Gooden is projected to be a high first-round draft choice June 26, teams that own lottery picks want an even closer look at him, especially off the court.
“They want to get to know me as a person,” Gooden said. “There’s a lot of one-on-one meetings to see what type of person I am.
“They take me out to eat. We sit down and talk. You go through psychological testing.”
In one hectic 10-day span late last month, Gooden worked out for the four NBA teams that own the top four picks in this year’s draft.
His tour started close to home on May 22 with the Golden State Warriors, who own the draft’s third pick. Two days later, he worked out for the Houston Rockets, who own the No. 1 pick. The next day he worked out for the Bulls. Six days later, he visited the Memphis Grizzlies, who draft fourth.
When the Warriors picked him up at his home in a black luxury car that looked like it belonged in a “presidential” motorcade, Gooden realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
This was serious business, a point he fully understood when the Warriors put him in a room with sports psychologist Dr. Tom Mitchell, the team’s basketball counseling specialist.
“He asked me about 20 questions,” Gooden said. “About leadership, my role as a basketball player. Some of them were pretty tough questions.”
For example?
“‘What do you fear most on the court?”‘ Gooden said. “You usually don’t think about that. I don’t fear anything.
“I told him, ‘The fear of injury, getting hurt.”‘
‘Nervous at first’
When he began his on-court workout for the Warriors, Gooden said he wasn’t afraid, but the butterflies definitely were working overtime in his stomach.
“I was a little nervous at first,” Gooden said. “It was my first workout. I really wanted to impress them a lot. I started out shooting (poorly).
“Everything else was good. Everything else was great. The only thing was, I couldn’t finish it with the jump shot. I was trying to shoot too perfect, basically not being relaxed.”
Gooden said he settled down when he finished individual drills and began playing one-on-one and two-on-two games, along with three other draft prospects: Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen, Fresno State’s Melvin Ely and Southern Mississippi’s Elvin Mims.
That night, Gooden went to dinner with Warriors general manager Garry St. Jean, coach Brian Winters, two assistant coaches and a scout.
“With a kid like him, rated as high as he is, what they’re trying to do is get a feel for him as a person, his personality, how he interacts with the staff and how he carries himself,” said Calvin Andrews, Gooden’s agent and former Amateur Athletics Union coach.
“I think people are going to see a side to Drew they haven’t seen. He has a fantastic personality. Believe it or not, that weighs heavily on these GMs.”
Hello, Houston
Next stop, Houston. He arrived the night before his scheduled workout. This time he worked out with Kentucky’s Tayshaun Prince, Oregon’s Chris Christoffersen and high school sensation Amare Stoudemire.
The Rockets didn’t give Gooden a psychological test. But coach Rudy Tomjanovich and his assistants put him in a room and started firing questions at him.
“I was on the hot seat,” Gooden said.
At one point, those coaches showed Gooden a poster listing skills such as leadership, ball handling, rebounding, passing, defense, offense and shot blocking. Then he had to rank those skills in order, starting with what he does best.
“No. 1 was my rebounding,” he said. “No. 2 was my leadership. Last was my shot blocking. I can block shots. That’s not one of my weaknesses. But you have to list them in order. I think I’m good at them all.”
Gooden flew to Chicago that Friday night. Coach Bill Cartwright and general manager Jerry Krause picked him up at his hotel and took him out for a steak dinner and more questions.
“Coach Cartwright and Jerry Krause were asking me the same type of questions, how am I as a player. They asked me about my family background, just trying to get to know me as a person.”
That’s definitely not a problem, he said. According to Gooden, the more teams learn about him, the higher his draft stock will rise.
“I know how to get along with people. I’m a communications major. I know how to speak to people and get along,” Gooden said. “I know how to work with people.”
‘It’s an investment’
The next day, Gooden went through two hours of psychological and intelligence testing for the Bulls.
In part, the tests were designed to see whether Gooden had any type of learning disability, he said.
At one point, the psychologist showed him a picture with a group of people doing different things.
“Ten minutes later, they’d ask you, ‘Where was this person in the picture? What was he doing,”‘ Gooden said.
During another test, he had to solve math problems.
“It was like an IQ test. The reason they do that is it’s an investment,” Gooden said, referring to high draft picks.
“The Chicago Bulls said they’ve drafted players in the past who had learning disabilities.”
Those players, he said, had trouble learning the plays. At Chicago, Gooden worked out with Maryland’s Lonny Baxter, Notre Dame’s Ryan Humphrey and Brazil’s Maybyner Hilario.
At each of his workouts, Gooden said he had tried to show teams he is a better outside shooter, a better ball handler and a better perimeter player than they might have thought. At Kansas, coach Roy Williams wanted Gooden to do most of his work inside.
“They see I can shoot the ball better than they thought,” Gooden said. “As far as my quickness and being an athlete, they’re starting to see that more. I’m starting to open up some eyes.”
It was Gooden who had the wide eyes when he went to Memphis, the final stop on his workout tour. He grew up a Los Angeles Lakers fan, and in Memphis he went out to dinner with Lakers legend Jerry West, the Grizzlies’ new general manager.
“He was cool, too,” Gooden said. “He was real cool.”
Gooden worked out for West and the Grizzlies and took a “quick” psychological test nothing like the Bulls’ lengthy exam.
Late last week he headed to Chicago for the NBA’s pre-draft camp basketball’s answer to the NFL combine.
Gooden underwent a physical examination. He was weighed and measured. And, of course, he answered more probing questions from NBA coaches and general managers.
