LAS VEGAS — When Moses Moody was growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, he’d tell people he wanted to play in the NBA and the NFL. He followed his older brother’s footsteps onto the basketball court. Always the tallest kid in his class, he played quarterback until middle school. He even tried baseball, but that ended quickly.
“I looked weird out there,” Moody, 19, said Saturday from a chair outside a conference room at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. “My pants going all the way up to my knees.”
Playing multiple sports isn’t rare, especially for an extraordinarily athletic child. But Moody’s interdisciplinary interests didn’t stop there. He was curious about computer programming, got into Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School on the merits of his acting chops (he says he nailed a scene from the August Wilson play “Fences” in which he played the same character as Denzel Washington) and considered a career as a lawyer.
One day when Moody was in middle school, he shadowed a judge in a Little Rock courtroom. Some of the day was spent watching the judge complete the routine tasks of signing court orders and scheduling hearings. But later he was shocked when a man was sentenced to 45 years to life in prison. The preteen Moody watched as this man came to terms with the end of his life as he knew it.
“The dude was in there screaming and arguing. They had to drag him out,” Moody said. “That was the end of my legal career.”
Truth be told, Moody was never as serious about being a lawyer, computer programmer or quarterback as he was about playing in the NBA. But he mostly kept that goal private, keenly aware of what people may think of his far-flung dream.
“I actually got to the point where I didn’t say it because it was so stereotypical for a young Black boy to say he wants to go to the NBA,” Moody said. “I was exploring other things, but that was definitely what I wanted to do.”
Last month, the Warriors selected Moody with the 14th pick in the NBA Draft. Moody’s background reflects his versatility and his relentless pursuit of perfecting the finer points of the game. It’s also the reason why Golden State believes he could be a future building block for the franchise.
Skeptics aren’t so confident. Moody wasn’t a flashy player in high school at Montverde Academy in Florida, where he transferred after his freshman year, or in college at Arkansas. He preferred to focus on nuances such as coming off screens, spacing the floor and rebounding. Though he received plenty of college offers, some questioned if he had the athleticism to play at the highest level.
“I wasn’t chasing the mixtapes,” Moody said. “I’m trying to do what I need to to help my team win and play that professional game… I just stay true to it and stay strong in my mind knowing once I get to the point when real basketball minds are evaluating my game, they’ll recognize what I’m doing out here.”
This mindset dates back to Moody’s earliest basketball-playing days. Arkansas’ AAU circuit is headlined by the Wings and the Woodz. Those clubs had all the perks: the Nike sponsorships, the nice jerseys, the shoes. But Moody never played for them.
Instead, Moody played for the Hawks. From sixth grade to ninth grade, he and his teammates wore their own shoes and raised money for new jerseys and for travel to tournaments.
“That’s the mindset that I had — it was always us against the Wings [and the Woodz],” Moody said. “They were gonna come in with their backpacks and everything, and we were straight out the mud.”
But Moody can also do the super-team thing. As a senior at Montverde, he played with three other first-round picks in last month’s draft: Cade Cunningham (No. 1 to Detroit), Scottie Barnes (No. 4 to Toronto) and Day’Ron Sharpe (No. 29 to Brooklyn). They went 25-0 and were the consensus No. 1 team in the nation.
Despite the team-wide success, scouting services cooled on Moody’s game. Cunningham, Barnes and Sharpe were all five-star recruits while Moody, who had been ranked a five-star recruit as a sophomore and junior, finished his senior year as a four-star prospect.
“Not an overly explosive athlete,” read a 247Sports.com scouting report.
“I didn’t get a lot of love from rankings and all of that because I wasn’t flashy, cross-cross-cross, go dunk on somebody type things,” Moody said. “But over that time I’ve been perfecting the whole running the floor, making open shots, and the game that I know translates to the NBA.”
Moody chose Arkansas over offers from Ohio State, Kansas and others. He strongly considered Michigan because of Juwan Howard’s NBA ties but felt Arkansas’ Eric Musselman, who has nearly a decade-worth of NBA coaching experience, could best prepare him for the pros. As a freshman, he averaged 16.8 points and 5.8 rebounds while shooting 35.8% from 3-point range. He was named SEC Freshman of the Year and, in April, declared for the NBA Draft.
“We liked him for a lot of reasons. He has great size, great length and has good skill and good feel for the game,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said. “He’s got kind of an old soul about him.”
To most, Moody’s draft night is likely to be remembered for when ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins butchered his name on the broadcast. After the Warriors selected Moody, Perkins stumbled over his name and then proceeded to flub through several variations of “Mosey,” “Modey” and “Moosy.”
Mosey — erm, Moody — has no hard feelings.
“I don’t think I have that difficult of a name,” Moody said. “But I’m not mad. Everybody makes mistakes.
“I do really like Kendrick Perkins and his analysis,” Moody made sure to point out. “He’s being his authentic self up there. He doesn’t switch up who he is and he can just be up there and be genuine and I do like that.”
Moody is one of two lottery picks on Golden State’s Summer League team. Along with seventh-overall pick Jonathan Kuminga, the rookies will play four games in Las Vegas that serve as their first taste of the NBA. In a recent practice, Moody was pleasantly surprised when the Warriors’ coaches ran some of the same drills Musselman ran at Arkansas.
In his first Summer League game in Sacramento, he had 19 points on 7-for-18 shooting, seven rebounds and two assists.
“I like that he doesn’t need the ball,” Summer League coach Kris Weems said of Moody. “A lot of guys that have been counted on to score over the years, in high school or whatever, they just aren’t used to playing off the ball. So I think he’s actually going to thrive in that.”
When Moody first arrived in San Francisco, he walked into one of Klay Thompson’s shooting drills. Thompson, who is recovering from a torn Achilles, is one of the players Moody grew up watching the most. But when he saw Thompson in person, Moody was struck by the efficiency of his shooting.
“It was cash, cash, cash, cash, cash,” Moody said. “He might have hit rim three times. Not missed. Just hit the rim. It was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
The 6-foot-6 Moody will serve as one of Thompson’s primary backups at shooting guard. The Warriors will task Moody with doing exactly what he’s done through AAU, high school and college: Run the floor, make open shots and defend. In the lead-up to the draft, Moody targeted Golden State as his preferred location because it would allow him to play that role, learn from veterans such as Thompson and Stephen Curry and develop at his natural pace.
But make no mistake, Moody isn’t content at topping out as a role player. When he lists his goals, they include multiple All-Star appearances, a gold medal and an NBA championship. One day he hopes to win the 3-point shootout on All-Star weekend.
“I’m gonna have to make it through practice first though,” Moody says with a smile. “I have to get through Steph and Klay.”
