Cavs.com wanted to know what life was like in their pre-professional days on the schoolyards, backyards and playgrounds. We decided to start with forward Drew Gooden …

I went to grade school at ... Allendale Elementary in Oakland, California. I went there up until high school. Then I moved to Richmond, California.

My best coach growing up was ... my father. In any sport – basketball, football and baseball. Because those are the sports that we both played. Being out there on the field and coming home and getting coached was like the double-whammy -- your coach is your father.

But he was definitely my best coach, coming up.

The other sports I played were ... football and baseball.

In football, I was a linebacker when I was a kid. I’m not built like a linebacker now. In baseball I played pitcher and first base. When I was young I was a shortstop and a second baseman. But then I got taller and they moved me to pitcher and first base.

And in basketball, I was a guard pretty much until my freshman year at Kansas. By senior year I had grown to 6-9.

When I had my growth spurt I went from ... a point guard to a center.

I have a brother who's ... six years younger than me, he's 19. He played basketball in high school and he's like a stocky guard. I could almost compare him with a David Wesley-type player. He's a real big-bodied shooting guard. That’s what my dad was like.

My sister is ... nine years younger than me. She can't stand basketball, because between my father, me and my brother she says she’s witnessed enough war stories and backyard brawls.

On the playground ... I was always first pick. I just remember those days of playing basketball every day. Guys' backyards, during lunchtime, after school. Wherever we could get a game in, we’d get a game in.

The guy I looked up to on the playground was ... a guy named Dominique. That was the guy my age that I looked up to and said "Wow, that guy can play!" But he ended up playing football for the University of Washington.

The older guy that everybody looked up to was Hook Mitchell, who was a playground legend. He once did a 360 dunk over a car.

My first dunk was ... in ninth grade. And I have it on tape.

The rims we were going at in the second half were lower than the ones in the first. So I knew if I got a breakaway in the second half that I was going to try it. And that’s where I got my first dunk. I think it was a 9 ½-foot rim, though.

The whole team went nuts. It was a freshman game and if you could dunk, you should at least be playing JV, maybe Varsity.