The Great Andrew Gaze

Andrew Gaze is a six-time winner of the Gaze Medal, the award given to the top player on the Australian National Team, and a seven-time winner of the Andrew Gaze Trophy as the NBL’s most valuable player. That should tell you everything you need to know about Drewy’s status in the world of Aussie hoops: the man is absolute royalty.

A six-foot-seven shooting guard, Gaze averaged 30.9 points per game over his 22-year NBL career (yes, you read that correctly). He scored 30-plus points per game for sixteen consecutive seasons between 1985 and 2000, including an NBL-record 44.1 points per game in 1987. He won fourteen scoring titles and made the All-NBL First Team a record fifteen straight times. He spent his entire NBL career with the Melbourne Tigers — who were coached for that duration by his legendary father, Lindsay Gaze — and led them to two NBL Championships in four Grand Final appearances. He played in five Olympics — 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 — and is the second leading scorer in Olympic basketball history and number three in the history of FIBA.

In an attempt to describe Gaze’s popularity and standing as a basketball player on his home continent, Jerry Bembry of the Baltimore Sun in March of 1994 wrote, “He’s Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird rolled into one.” And while Bembry’s bold employment of those iconic names was done mostly in an effort to convey Drewy’s fame in Australia, it may also be possible to begin to paint the overall picture of the Down-Under GOAT using those legends as easily recognizable starting points. His career unfolded contemporaneously with that of Jordan, as both entered their respective professional leagues in 1984. Also, in both his scoring ability — although entirely different in character — and level of fame within his home nation, Gaze most closely resembled Jordan. The comparison to Magic exists in Drewy’s charisma, his likability. His was a different species of charisma — less flashy, less cool, but equally gregarious; more humble, more goofy; just a good bloke — but like Magic, he was someone you had to love. Like Bird, athleticism was far from Gaze’s greatest strength. His conditioning was always excellent, but he lacked quickness, and his game was largely confined to the ground. Much like Larry Legend, he dominated his league with all-around savvy, good positional size, and otherworldly shooting ability. And while his reputation was always primarily that of a shooter, Drewy did a lot of things well on offense. He was an excellent passer, leading the NBL in dimes in 1989, and a very capable finisher.

The reason behind the Baltimore Sun assigning Jerry Bembry to write that article which birthed the eye-opening quote at the heart of the previous paragraph was that Andrew Gaze was about to make his NBA debut with the Washington Bullets, becoming just the second Aussie (after Luc Longley) to play in the NBA. As Gaze tells it, he received a surprise "call-up" from the Bullets while preparing to begin the Australian season. After ten years as the NBL’s best player, he was keen to find out what the NBA experience had to offer. Jumping from the NBL preseason directly into an NBA team’s 60th game is a difficult adjustment, but Drewy did his best to fit in. He may even have overprioritized fitting in, as he lacked his typical assertiveness during his time in Washington, often appearing somewhat gun-shy upon catching the ball. The fact the he was allotted just ten minutes per game certainly didn’t help his rhythm, nor did the fact that the Bullets were dreadful, and dysfunctional, with head coach Wes Unseld on the brink of being sacked. Drewy signed back-to-back ten-day contracts with the Bullets and appeared in seven games. His season-high was six points, and it came on March 15th, in a road loss to the Warriors, when he drained two triples on four attempts in seventeen minutes of action. While that game represented a legitimate flash of what Gaze could offer in the NBA, he got torched by Latrell Sprewell on the other end of the court. "I had the feeling I was pretty well at his mercy," admitted Gaze, later, in characteristically humble fashion.

Drewy’s first NBA stint was a bit of a disappointment, but his lack of success that season in Washington had significantly more to do with his being thrust into a dysfunctional environment than it did with his ability as a player. After all, he’d already proven himself on American soil five years earlier when he helped lead Seton Hall to within one bad call of an NCAA championship. He’d joined the Pirates as a 23-year-old after several huge individual seasons in the NBL and immediately following the 1988 Olympics, where he averaged 23.8 points per game while powering Australia to a third-place finish in Group A before falling to Drazen Petrovic and Yugoslavia in the Semifinals and then again to the US in the Bronze Medal game. Two years earlier, in 1986, Gaze had scored 46 points for the Boomers in an exhibition game against Seton Hall. His performance caught the eye of Seton Hall’s head coach, PJ Carlesimo, and heavy, persistent recruiting efforts ensued.

Two years later, Gaze was in New Jersey, classified as a junior, and ready to take the floor for one of the top programs in the country. In the third game of the season, the Melbournian scored 18 points as the Pirates handed Roy Williams his first loss as a head coach. In a February win over Providence, a red-hot Gaze poured in 17 points in the game’s first ten minutes. At 25-6, Seton Hall entered the NCAA Tournament seeded third in the West Region. After easily dismissing Missouri State and Evansville, they faced Bobby Knight’s second-seeded Indiana Hoosiers in the West Semis. Gaze scored 16 points and Seton Hall won by double digits. In the Elite Eight round, the Pirates took on Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, led by sophomore sensation Stacey Augmon. Gaze not only helped hold Plastic man to 4-of-12 shooting, but he scored 19 points on 6-of-9 from the field as Seton Hall won by 23, with Gaze being named MVP of the West Regional. Next up were Coach K, Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner, and the Duke Blue Devils. Drewy dropped a game-high 20 points including four three-pointers and the Pirates pulled off the upset victory in resounding fashion, winning by seventeen.

Seton Hall faced a juggernaut Michigan squad in the championship game. The Wolverines featured five future NBA players and were led by Glen Rice. Despite Rice going ballistic and Drewy being held to 1-of-5 shooting, the game went into overtime. A ticky-tack foul (which the whistle-blowing ref later admitted was a bad call) with a few seconds remaining sent Rumeal Robinson to the line where he drained two free-throws to give Michigan the win. Gaze finished his lone season of college basketball with a scoring average of 13.6 points per game – second on the team – and shot 51 percent from the field and 43 percent on threes, establishing himself as one of the best shooters in the country. Two days after that Championship-game loss, Gaze was on a plane back to Melbourne. It could be said that he was college basketball’s first true one-and-done.

After going unselected in the 1989 NBA Draft, Gaze returned to the U.S. in September for a tryout with Seattle. He expressed awe at the level of athleticism he witnessed, and also an honest, non-pessimistic uncertainty as to whether he could succeed at the NBA level. He seemed genuinely curious about how a product of the Australian system would stack up against NBA competition. Gaze ended up being the last player cut from Seattle’s training camp roster.

Falling short of the NBA by no means crushed Drewy’s dreams, as his lifelong goals awaited his return to the other side of the world. Gaze had grown up in Melbourne, in Albert Park, with Albert Park Stadium and its adjacent seven outdoor courts as his literal backyard. Lindsay Gaze was general manager of the Victorian Basketball Association, so the Gaze family, in the way a lighthouse keeper lives in his lighthouse, resided in the home attached to the stadium. The Tigers, then of the Southeastern Basketball League, were coached by Lindsay and played at Albert Park, so it makes sense that Gaze grew up the biggest Tigers fan imaginable. When he joined the Tigers in 1984, their first year in the NBL, it was a dream scenario. But for all the individual success Gaze produced in his first five seasons with the club, the team struggled mightily. In 1987, when Gaze averaged 44.1 points per game, the Tigers finished just 3-23 on the season. They failed to qualify for the playoffs in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988; but then, in 1989, six-foot-nine American import Dave Simmons, father of Ben Simmons, signed with the Tigers. Simmons proved to be the running mate Drewy needed, and the team proceeded to make the playoffs for the first time since joining the NBL.

In 1992, Lanard Copeland, a 26-year-old American who had starred for Georgia State and played briefly for the Sixers and Clippers, joined the Tigers. A true high-flyer, Copes added an element of world-class athleticism and brought a stylistic flair that the team had previously lacked. He also represented another lethal scorer, and the trio he formed along with Simmons and league-MVP Gaze propelled the Tigers to their first ever NBL Grand Final. In those days the Grand Final was a best-of-three series, and the Tigers fell to future multi-time Gaze Trophy winner Robert Rose and the South East Melbourne Magic 2-1. The following season, Mark Bradtke, better known as “Hoges” and formerly of the Adelaide 36ers, joined the Tigers. Drewy, Simmo, Copes, and Hoges were a force to be "reckoned" with, and they marched all the way to a second consecutive Grand Final, this time facing Andrew Vlahov, Scott Fisher, Ricky Grace and the Perth Wildcats. What followed is considered by many to be the greatest Grand Final series in NBL history. The teams split games one and two, and the third and Final game came down to the final seconds, with Vlahov barely missing a three to tie the game. That win was Melbourne’s first ever at Perth, and it brought them the first NBL championship in team history.

Led by Gaze’s tournament-leading 23.9 points per game, the Australian Boomers went 5-3 at the 1994 FIBA games in Toronto. That best-ever FIBA finish kicked off an NBL run which saw Gaze win five consecutive MVP awards between 1994 and 1998, a span of time which included a succession of Grand Finals similar to that of 1992 and 1993, with Melbourne losing to the Magic in 1996, and then, following the departure of Simmons and a 3-9 start to the season, defeating the Magic in 1997 for the team’s second championship in four Grand Final appearances. Marcus Timmons, who, thanks to a tip from North Melbourne Giants head coach Brett Brown, was signed mid-season (after being released by Illawarra) to replace Simmons on the interior, deserves a lot of credit for that massive Tiger turnaround.

In 1999, Drewy, now 33 years old and prematurely grey, returned to the NBA, this time to play for another silver-haired legend, Gregg Popovich, and the San Antonio Spurs. Pop offered no illusions in terms of Gaze’s role with the Western Conference powerhouse. That role, as Gaze later recalled through his trademark grin, was described to him by Pop as "insurance." The Spurs went 37-13 in the lockout-shortened regular season, and Drewy appeared in nineteen games, averaging just 1.1 points in 3.1 minutes per game. He simply wasn’t going to take minutes from guys like Sean Elliott, Mario Elie, and Jaren Jackson. According to David Robinson, "Andrew was a phenomenal shooter but our team was built on defense, and so I think Pop tended to put in guys that made stops, and Andrew’s specialty was putting the ball in the basket."

Despite his lack of playing time in San Antonio, Drewy never complained, and that says a lot about him. He was the greatest player in the history of his country — a fourteen-time scoring champ, a seven-time MVP — and without question one of the best international players of all time; and yet he remained humble, remained realistic. It was clear that he was good enough to be on an NBA roster, but the truth is that he lacked the speed and quickness to defend NBA wings, and because of that he couldn’t stay on the floor long enough to establish himself as the all-time great offensive player he was. Had he come to the NBA in the early 90s, he would’ve been a solid contributor, and maybe more; but at that time he was occupied with winning the championships that mattered to him most. The Spurs went on to win the 1999 NBA title, and Drewy, though he didn’t appear in a single playoff game, received a ring. It seemed a well-deserved reward for a lifetime of devotion and contribution to the game of basketball.

Gaze returned to Australia and played seven more seasons which took him from age 34 to age 40. Despite his advanced age, he averaged better than 24 points per game across those seven seasons, a silver-haired assassin raining bombs from the perimeter. Upon his retirement from basketball, which coincided with that of his father as coach, Gaze and his colorful personality entered the world of broadcasting, calling games for the NBL. He went on to coach the Sydney Kings for three years, from 2016 to 2019. He's been inducted into both the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame and the FIBA Hall of Fame, and one would assume it's only a matter of time before he joins his legendary father in Springfield.

According to Urban Dictionary, in Australian slang, to "have a drewy" means to 'gaze' at the stars. If that’s true, it’s fitting beyond the wordplay, because Andrew Gaze was the star to whom every young Aussie hooper looked up. In recent years the NBA has seen an influx of Australian players — Andrew Bogut, Patty Mills, Joe Ingles, Dante Exum, Delly, Ben Simmons — but Andrew Gaze was the first true Aussie superstar. He may not have found great success in the NBA, but that’s okay, because the NBA was never the most important thing to him, was never his ultimate goal. Drewy grew up in the NBL, and he went on to define that league for more than two decades. A few years ago, in an interview with ESPN, Gaze said the following when asked about his time in the NBA: "If you look up the most irrelevant players in the history of the NBA, there would be a picture of me." He’s funny, he’s humble, he’s self deprecating. He’s also the greatest player in Australian history and one of the most lethal scorers ever to walk the earth. It’s no wonder everybody loves Drewy.