Gordon still growing into his game

Originally a football player, Lightning centre Andrew Gordon didn’t play hoops until his senior year of high school. His teammates love his football mentality — and his coach thinks there’s untapped potential in the big man.

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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Andrew Gordon was born for the game of football.

The Clearwater, Fla., native stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 235 pounds his senior year of high school. Slap pads onto the shoulders and cleats on the feet of that frame and he nearly blocked out the sun. He also wasn’t beyond a quick lift before the game, an extra pump for intimidation.

“I put a lot of fear in people.”

But when it came time to transitioning from the gridiron to the hardwood, Gordon felt something new, something only those unfortunate enough to line up opposite him had felt for years.

“Honestly, it was one of the scariest decisions I’ve had to make. Football was my whole life. I woke up and breathed football. I went to sleep with a football in my bed. So, to put the football down and pick up that basketball, that was pretty scary.”

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“I’m from Florida. Football is in the blood.”

Gordon played both sides for Dunedin (Florida) High School – wide receiver and defensive end. He was a decent pass catcher for his size, but it was on defense where he thrived, tearing through opposing offenses. He lined up at end opposite his younger brother, Kane, who, turns out, was a higher ranked football prospect. That meant teams avoided Kane and opted to challenge Andrew – for a bit.

“I used to just destroy people because they would run away from his side, not knowing how good the other end is. I made so many highlight plays just because they wouldn’t run to his side. Eventually, they started trying to run up the middle, but we ended up just crashing down on them.”

Gordon didn’t just love football; he was a standout performer at it.

“Football was my whole life. I was a beast. I loved everything about the game, the cleats, the field, being able to hit somebody. I loved the physicality of the game. I loved putting on that helmet and getting under the lights. There’s nothing like football. It’s different. Basketball is a harder sport to play. But putting on that helmet, knowing you’re about to go to war and lay your body on the line, it’s something.

“I had a lot of problems as a kid, honestly. I didn’t talk too much, so it was kind of a relief to be able to go and hit somebody and not get in trouble for it. I loved hitting people.”

Gordon accepted an offer to play junior college football at Garden City (Kan.) Community College once his high school career was over. Prior to his senior year, however, long-time friend Jeremiah Brown tried to coax him onto the basketball court.

Just play one season together, Brown begged, a last hurrah, before Gordon headed off to college.

His friend was so determined to get Gordon out for basketball that he made a deal – if Gordon agreed to play basketball that season, Brown would don the Falcons mascot suit for the entire football season.

“That was the deal – and he did it. Home games. Away games. Rain. Whatever. He was there the whole season – acting a fool and doing mascot things,” Gordon said. “I was still hard-headed. I don’t really play basketball. I was only doing it because I owed somebody.”

But a deal, as they say, is a deal. So, when the football season came to an end, Gordon took to the court.

(Photo: Barry Field Photography).

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Those first few games, yes, they were weird. And awkward. Even unnatural.

“I felt like a baby deer learning how to walk,” Gordon laughed. “It was crazy. I had played basketball before. I played pickup with my friends for fun. We didn’t take it seriously. We would shoot halfcourt shots and stuff in the middle of pickup games. But to be on an organized team, where we run plays and gotta be in this spot at that time, you have to think the game – and then do it in front of people. It was a wild feeling.”

Even at the prep level, the transition between sports can be a tricky one for even the best athletes – everything from game strategy, to game prep, to game action is wildly different.

“Basketball is so much more mental and physical,” Gordon said. “In football, if you’re fast and you’re strong, you can get away with a lot of things. You don’t even have to be that smart, because if the ball goes up in the air, and if you are fast enough to get to it, can jump high enough to nab it, and are strong enough to keep it, you can make the play. You can get away with being just a great athlete on the football field.

“On the basketball court, however, that dude might not be as strong as you are, or as fast as you are, but he knows if he gets you to lean in this way, he will go back this way, lean back a little bit, get the shot off, and get the foul. There’s so much more that you have to think about.”

What challenged him most was the shift from the short bursts of energy and rage of football to the endurance and focus of basketball.

“I’ve struggled with my conditioning. My body is so conditioned for spurts. That’s how I have conditioned my whole life. When I started playing basketball, I struggled because it’s so up and down. That’s why, to me, basketball is a way harder sport to play because it’s nonstop. You have to just go. You’re not just on the offensive side or the defensive side. You have to constantly think, if I’m on offense, I have to do this, this, and this, and we’re turning right around and then thinking on defense, I have to do this and this.”

(Photo: Barry Field Photography).

In his prep hoops debut season, Gordon averaged 9.8 points and 2.5 rebounds and led the Falcons to the school’s first postseason win since 1968. It was a taste for the game that lingered.

Around that time, research about the lifelong impact of football on the brain was everywhere. Movies like Concussion, starring Will Smith, and the documentary League of Denial were front and centre; media outlets ranging from Sports Illustrated to the New York Times were diving deep into the issue.

“That all spooked me,” Gordon said. “I started doing a little bit of research, about how long careers could go in football and basketball. I realized there were a whole lot of avenues for basketball that pay decent to good money that weren’t the NBA. You don’t have to make it to the NBA to play professional basketball. So, I decided to give this basketball stuff a shot.”

Despite the logic, and the blessing of a worried mom who also understood the risk, it still wasn’t the easiest decision, as you might guess. He had to make up for a lot of lost time.

“I felt behind. I didn’t know anything about basketball. For real, I knew two players – LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. I knew (Michael) Jordan was great back in the day, and I liked wearing his shoes, but that was pretty much it.”

With the gridiron behind him, he joined Team Speights on a national travel circuit, after which he received offers to continue his hoops career at several schools. Starting at Northwest Florida State College, he played one season before a torn ACL cost him his sophomore season.

Despite the injury, Gordon transferred to West Virginia, where he played 34 games (starting four) in 2018-19 under head coach Bob Huggins, averaging 2.3 points and 1.7 rebounds. After one season with the Mountaineers, he transferred to Louisiana Tech where he averaged 4.8 points and 3.6 rebounds over two seasons with the Bulldogs.

After college, he went pro, with stops with BC Spartak Pleven (Bulgaria) and KB Trepça (Kosovo), before arriving in London this season.

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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As the game moves away from the big man, he’s a big man still moving into the game.

Now 26, Gordon is ready to take the next step in his career – and he sees no better place for that than the Forest City. Fans have taken to him quickly thanks to a hard-to-miss floor presence and several satisfying dunks.

Lightning head coach Doug Plumb knows the 6-foot-10 centre is still raw, but he believes the best is yet to come.

“There is so much more to Drew that we haven’t seen yet,” Plumb said. “Nobody in the league can match his physicality. He needs to play – be more aggressive, more active on the boards, be a better screener. He just needs to keep working on all the little things that are under his control.

“In terms of his demeanor and what he brings to the team, he has been great. He is a huge body who can help us with the league’s bigs. He moves his feet well for his size. When he gets the ball, he has good offensive positioning. He’ll dunk on anyone in the league.”

Gordon has scored in double digits in two of his last three games, including a career high 15 points against the Windsor Express on Feb. 4. More important than points, however, he’s clocking more and more minutes on the floor, including 16 against the Pontiac Pharaohs on Feb. 7. He’s eclipsed the 20-minute mark twice to date.

Look for those minutes to increase as the season progresses – and maybe sooner than later, as the Lightning recently released fellow big man Amir Yusuf. That move left Gordon as the only true centre on the team.

Gordon views the Canadian game as more skilled than what he experienced in Europe. There, teams could always find a couple of guys on the floor they didn’t need to worry about. But here, he says, everyone is dangerous.

He’s also working on his conditioning – something that has been a challenge his entire basketball career. First conditioned for the short bursts of football, then later for the 10-minute quarters of Europe (vs. the 12-minute quarters of the BSL), he knows that will be key to success in other areas.

For his overall game, Gordon has learned a lot watching fellow Bolt big man Billy White go about his business in practices and games. The veteran has served as inspiration about what a big man can be in the modern game. Gordon watches everything from how White uses his body, to the moves he uses to break down fellow bigs.

“He’s great on and off the ball – you have to always watch him. What I learned from him is that I can’t be too eager to get off the ground and try to block someone’s shot. Stay down. Be patient. Know when to be fast, when to go slow, when to be aggressive in the right moments. Billy knows how to use his hands with his feet at the same time.”

Like many of his teammates (and even his head coach), Gordon is also trying to figure out exactly what constitutes a foul in this new league.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to play without fouling. I’m physical. In Europe, that’s what they want – they want you to bang and hit to stop somebody. They don’t call as many fouls as they do over here. For me, it’s just being new, and they’re not used to me and how big and strong I am. I need to figure out how these refs are going to call the game.”

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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Don’t let the jersey and Pumas fool you – that’s still a football player at heart on the court.

“The physicality of football is still with me. I’m not scared to get hit. I’ll be the first to the floor. I’m not worried about running into anybody. Setting screens is super easy to me. I will let a guy run straight into my chest and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if you run full speed at me. I’m going to meet you right there. I don’t care about getting hit or anything,” Gordon explained.

“That’s the biggest thing that’s translated from football to basketball for me. Getting hit, bumps, bruises – they don’t matter. Give me your best shot. I want to see it.”

Teams have tried. Windsor, for example, posted Paul Harrison against Gordon. The 6-foot-8, 270-pound Express centre tried to send a few messages early on – banging Gordon on both ends of the floor.

For fans of 1980s hoops, when the bigs roamed the Earth, the Gordon-Harrison matchup was a welcomed reprieve from tiny sharp-shooters pulling up from the logo before anyone could run into someone else. For Gordon, it was an exciting challenge to test himself.

“He tried. But, dude, that’s not going to do it. I went up against linemen 360, 370, and all game we would run into each other, face first, headfirst,” he laughed. “I invite that in basketball. I actually enjoy that. I like seeing and playing against bigger bigs. I like the challenge of them trying to bully me or trying to muscle me up. Let’s see how this goes.”

For Gordon, that kind of matchup is about more than size and strength, but a mental toughness, as well. It’s a style of play that football forged in him and basketball now brings out.

“Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Everybody says what they are doing until they get hit and then you see what they’re made of or what they will really do. So, I like hitting people first, seeing what they’re going to do after that. It’s fun to me. It’s just a game, at the end of the day, and I love it. True competition.”