"It was so cool, like, this is my gym," he said. "Then the next morning I got up and worked out, it was a full workout. I was so sore the next day. I shouldn't have worked so hard, but I was excited, like a little kid in a candy store."
In this particular gym, the early bird gets 20 and 10, or close to it. From Monday through Friday starting in late June he was in his gym every morning, making the most of his investment.
Some people find it hard to work out of the house, I mentioned.
"Distractions," he said, nodding. "We have TVs in the gym too, but I'm disciplined. I want to use the skills, the gifts I've been given. Some days I'm tired, but you try to not be so weak mentally. You just keep pushing yourself."
The big goal was to develop his jump shot, for which Kaman has long held deep feelings of ambivalence. This dates back to his boyhood in Michigan when he didn't want to be a center. "I didn't -- until I realized I could make an awful lot of money being a center," he said. "But before, when I was younger, I always wanted to be a guard. I always was dribbling, and my coach was like, 'Don't dribble the ball!' Even Mike [Dunleavy, the Clippers coach] says, 'Don't dribble the ball,' and I've got to get that out of my head. But now I realize what I'm good at, and I just try to focus on what I'm supposed to be doing."
As a center, he figured he was supposed to be playing close to the basket. Dunleavy implored him to mix things up, to occasionally step out for a midrange jumper -- without dribbling excessively, of course -- but the message didn't sink in. "Really, it's all about his head," said Dunleavy. "He's always been able to do these things, and we've been trying to pull it out of him and getting him to do it while making good decisions. His mindset has always been to get closer to the basket: How do I get in closer to get layups and dunks?"
But why limit yourself to layups and dunks? That was Dunleavy's question. "You can go left or right and score, and you can make a 17-footer," Dunleavy would say. "You can make that shot. So if they don't play you, shoot it. If they do play you then drive hard, and if he stops you then spin back and you'll score it the other way. You can do that with your left hand or your right hand better than almost anybody in the league.
"You," the coach would tell Kaman, "should be unstoppable."
Ian Thomsen,
Sports illustrated
