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It isn’t until after the ball goes up on the board that this multiwinged monster, this Goodison/Colliden thing, comes into focus. The one sets his body around the key just so -- footwork by Savion Glover, elbows by Bruce Lee -- applying textbook fundamentals learned from a father who demanded he not draw attention to himself. Tough? He’s overcome a small-town lack of confidence and a coach’s-pet rep that had his college teammates calling him Junior.
The other one, the raw big-city streetballer, eschews the low paint for the high lights, slicing, dicing, leaping up, over and clear through the traffic. Early on, his father, feeling the kid wasn’t getting the ball enough from teammates, preached the importance of jumping over everybody to get it himself. Tough? He’s overcome big-city temptations and the initial doubts of a coach who labeled him Hurricane Andrew because of his devastating effect on team discipline.
Together, Kansas’ 6'9", 250-pound Nick Collison and 6'10", 230-pound Drew Gooden are the best frontcourt duo in the nation, a two-headed Ahab willing and able to pierce the vulnerable inside hide of the fearsome Moby Duke. "The perfect combination," says Jayhawks boss Roy Williams. "I sometimes feel guilty taking a paycheck to coach these guys."
It’s not the first time the pair has laid a guilt trip on their Carolina-bred mentor. They may not have directly begged him to stay in Lawrence, but Gooden’s father did get down on his hands and knees to thank Williams after he decided not to leave for Chapel Hill. The coach says it was expressly because he relished the chance to guide KU’s wondrous junior class of Gooden, Collison and Kirk Hinrich. ("Jason Williams may be the best player in the country, but Hinrich is the best point guard," says one NBA scout.) With Kansas marching into another Tourney as a short-odds favorite, this trio is the NCAA’s Axis of Evil.
"In ’97, we had three eventual All-Americas on a team that coached itself,” Williams says of his best-known squad, the one led by Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz and Jacque Vaughn -- the one that was upset by Arizona in the Tourney’s third round. "That one might have been more skilled, but this one is very, very special." That’s because of Gooden and Collison, a pair of center-forwards whose widely diverse personalities and backgrounds and games have melded into a mechanism of beauty.
"Basically, we’re two big, goofy kids who feed off each other,” says Oakland’s own Gooden. “I rag Nick because he’s a quiet, awkward farm kid. Big Sloppy, I call him. Sometimes, I hype him up; sometimes, he calms me down. I can’t see us ever letting stats or touches or competition or bad stuff come between us. It’s not like either of us are a-holes or anything."
That’s not quite how Collison, the pride of Iowa Falls, puts it. “The stereotypes fit to a point,” he says. “I’ll never forget when we first met [at a prep all-star game]. He had his hair all long and curly and parted, like the class clown. He had no idea of structure or system. His game was all risk and flare and perimeter stuff. He was way out there. Big Sloppy? He was Tragic Johnson.”
An odd couple, to be sure -- but maybe the most versatile high-low post combo to hit college in two decades. Gooden leads the Big 12 in scoring (20.8 ppg entering March) and rebounding (11.2 rpg) in a late bid to wrest some Player of the Year awards from Duke’s Williams. Collison quietly averages 15.4 and 7.9, shooting above 60% from the floor. “Being a star, with the headlines and the numbers, that stuff affects Nick probably less than anybody I’ve ever known,” says his coach. “And as solid as Nick’s been, Drew has gone stretches -- three, four, five games -- where he’s been better than any player I’ve been involved with.” Both race the court with the ferocity of a Kansas windstorm. Both take people off the dribble, post up, jump hook, flush the turnaround. Both defend down low and possess lateral quickness to match. And each keeps an eye on making the other look good. Gooden and Collison move like they’re rubber-banded together: If the former slants through a defensive seam inside, the latter seeks space nearer the perimeter. If Collison posts up, Gooden slides away on autopilot, looking to hit him with a pass or hoist an occasional three.
"It’s amazing there’s never any friction between them," Hinrich says. "They’ve done a good job of understanding how to make each other better." While portraying a lean, mean power forward at Central Washington and in Europe in the mid-’70s, Andrew Gooden II, Drew’s father, met the former Ulla Pellinem at a discotheque in Aanekoski, Finland. It was love at first paycheck: Ulla was the local bank clerk who dispensed the Huima team’s payroll. (When Mom returns to Finland with her son every other summer, Drew III hits the disco while “I sit in a rocking chair and do my knitting,” Ulla laughs. “Very weird.”)
The young marrieds moved back to the Gooden family stomping grounds near Oakland. There, Drew I, an Air Force engineer who did some real stomping as a judo instructor, dispensed self-defense lessons to his young grandson -- as good an explanation as any for the latter’s balance and fearlessness. Drew II and Ulla divorced before their only child was 6, but though both soon remarried, they retained a close friendship that centered around their boy.
Gooden stayed with his father up to junior high, along with his new step-mother and half-brother and sister. “I knew how it felt to be dead broke,” he says. “Five of us staying in a one-bedroom place just trying to get by. I had hunger pains in Oakland." Getting by often involved ducking drug traffic and street thugs.
When Drew moved in with Mom in Richmond, Calif., it was a different kind of lifestyle: “She was squared away with some money and a nice house.” There was a third lifestyle, too, on his maternal grandfather’s tree and dairy farm in Finland. It was a place so vast his father calls it “Ben Cartwright’s Ponderosa.” (Pauli Pellinem, the family’s beloved “Papa,” went into the Finnish-Russian War as a teenager and later went on to become one of the richest landowners in the territory.) There was fishing and swimming in Lake Keitele, and afternoons spent tending the trees and ogling the chickens. “The first time I saw a chicken lay eggs, I thought it was so amazing,” Gooden says. “I’d only seen eggs in a grocery store.”
After landing in Lawrence, Gooden was out of his element again. "The first day of practice was like a shock," he says. “I came from streetball, shoot it up, go get it. In Northern Cal, we ran house. Here we had hella-X’s and O’s, a team deal, a system. I was like, 'Whassup?'" That’s the kind of question that doesn’t sit well with coaches. “Drew had no concept of a post game, no appreciation for the ball, no consistency, no focus,” Williams says. “He just didn’t buy into what we had to do.” The coach benched the budding star and ridiculed him. “They pay me enough money to ship your ass back to Oakland on a bus!” he screamed at one practice.
Last season, after Gooden gave up on a defensive play in a game against Texas, an enraged Williams ripped off his jacket, then ripped his star worse. The message got through. Last summer, Gooden worked on his handle and his move to the hoop. “I’ve gone from a basketball IQ of basically zero to knowing I could be a coach some day,” he says. “Coach Williams’ knowledge, learning to compete, all that rubs off on you.”
He still aches to show off his perimeter game, but credit the golf-loving Williams for making Gooden see that taking his hops away from the glass is like Tiger Woods leaving his driver in the clubhouse. In a game against Missouri, Gooden made a play his coach calls mind-boggling: He shot -- or was it passed? -- the ball off the board to the other side of the rim, then caught it himself and rammed it back home. "I guess it’s God’s gift," Drew says. "I have a quick way of leaping, simultaneously going up and down." Adds Williams: "This guy is the best offensive rebounder I’ve ever seen."
Gooden loses focus only momentarily these days. Against Kansas State, he got into a leg-whipping, trash-talking tangle with a couple of Wildcats, which led to T’s for him and foe Pervis Pasco. “I told the guy what was on my mind,” Drew chuckles.
For all he’s learned from Williams, Gooden gives just as much credit to Collison. “Fundamentals, IQ, attitude, competitiveness -- I’ve spent the whole time at Kansas trying to catch up to Nick,” he says. And to think he almost had to find another role model. Collison left for Lawrence only after upheavals rocked his home state’s two major programs: Tom Davis was a lame duck at Iowa and Tim Floyd left Iowa State for the Bulls just about the time Collison had to pick a college.
Coming from a high school with only 400 students in an undistinguished prep league, he wasn’t exactly a sure thing. In fact, Dave Collison seriously wondered whether his son could hack it at Lawrence -- never mind that Coach K wanted him in Durham. "I think we’ve gone up against Duke eight times for kids," Williams says. "He’s the first one we got. But he still doesn’t have any idea how good he is."
Well, he may have some idea. "Before we played Duke my freshman year [a 69-64 near-upset in the second round of the Tourney], I had my doubts I’d come to the right place," Collison says. "Now? I really want them again." His toughness has taken a lifetime to forge. He’s spent four summers playing on six teams representing the U.S. all over the world, often under the eye of Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim: “Nick must be the only guy who could stand me three different times.” Before that, he braved a sixth-grade sex education class taught by his own mother.
Some of it may be in the genes. Collison’s late grandfather, Arden, was an Army tailgunner shot down in World War II. "He was the only survivor, and when he went back into the flames to save the rest of his crew, the fire got him," Nick says, his voice cracking. "Caught onto that furry collar and burned his face up. They had to take skin from all over his body and graft it onto his face."
While Collison’s meat-and-taters game reflects his heritage, his off-court tastes are surprisingly eclectic. A movie buff, he owns more than 60 DVDs, including two recent additions: The Thin Red Line and The Graduate. He listens to Miles Davis, but also favors the comic stylings of Tom Green.
Of course, the landscapes of Lawrence were much more friendly for him than for Gooden. "Coming from a small town, I was used to all the attention," says Collison, a McDonald’s All-American (Gooden was not). "But Drew couldn’t believe the people around here staring at us, asking for autographs while we were eating. It was a real culture shock for him. I might have helped him adjust to basketball and the area, settle him down when he got too excited. But what he does for me confidence-wise goes way beyond that. If I’m passive, he’ll fire me up to take my man. He’s like: 'Kill this punk -- you’re better than him! Let’s blow these guys out!'"
They’ve done that with drum-roll regularity, laying waste to the nation's toughest conference. But no matter what happens this month, Gooden and Collison could be on a collision course next fall. "Drew will make tons of money in the NBA," says Indiana Pacers assistant coach Mel Daniels, "because he can play the 3 or 4. He runs like crazy, has great hands. He’s a relentless offensive rebounder -- beats you every which way. The other guy is almost a secret. But he’s so smart, efficient, productive. He’s a solid first-round pick, and he’ll play 10 years in our league."
Once more, Williams gets right to the point: "I can’t remember a better pair of big men on the same college team." He should know, having helped coach the last large combo to be this productive -- James Worthy and Sam Perkins. Those two won an NCAA title at North Carolina. Now Kansas’ pair of military grandsons expects to march to the same drummer.
This article appears in the March 18 issue of ESPN The Magazine. |
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