OAKLAND — In his first Warriors practice, JaVale McGee, trailing from near halfcourt, galloped back in transition, caught Kevin Durant from behind and blocked his shot. There are few humans in the world capable of this feat. About an hour later, McGee couldn’t even recall the exact play.

“I blocked like six shots today,” he said.

McGee is more nimble than most NBA centers and bouncier than nearly all of them. He’s a true 7-footer with an incomprehensible 7-foot-8 wingspan, which Durant, a fellow pterodactyl, confirms is real: “Yeah, that’s legit.”

Even as the league trends smaller, physically gifted bigs like McGee remain valuable. They don’t need a substantial track record. Potential gets them paid. McGee’s NBA résumé actually has some meat to it. But this offseason, all he could sniff out was a non-guaranteed, make-good minimum deal with the Warriors.

At the age of 28, he’s clawing for a 15th roster spot, trying to resuscitate his career. How did it get to this point?

“You know,” Steve Kerr shook his head. “That’s a good question.”

The pain started in November 2013. The three seasons prior, in Washington and then Denver, McGee’s averages hovered around 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocks. Those were good Nuggets teams. McGee opened the 2013 season as their starting center.

But five games in, he was feeling too much pain in his left leg. An MRI revealed a stress fracture in his tibia. Rehab didn’t work. So eventually, in February 2014, he got surgery.

McGee returned the next season, but soreness persisted. His impact and opportunity shrunk. The Nuggets traded him to Philadelphia in February 2015. He appeared in six games for the Sixers, but was cut on March 1. No team reached out to him down the stretch. He admitted to fearing his career was over.

But the Mavericks took a flier on him before last season, signing McGee to a one-year minimum deal. Lingering soreness in that left tibia forced him to miss training camp and the team’s first 12 games. He returned and had moments – 10-rebound nights, 14-point games, four blocks in 19 minutes against the Pelicans – but mostly sat on the outside of the rotation.

Then July came and the phone was quiet again, even as the Timofey Mozgovs of the world racked up big deals in a market flush with money.

“It’s definitely the injury,” McGee said. “Because I haven’t done anything else in this league to not be on a team. I haven’t had any drug cases, I haven’t had any DUIs. I’m not a bad guy. You can’t go to one person in the league and they’ll say ‘JaVale is a bad guy, a bad influence.’ You know what I’m saying? I don’t go out. I don’t drink. It has to be the injury. That’s the only logical thing.”

McGee’s reputation is a bit more complicated than that. Before the 2011 season, TNT started a segment that turned into an NBA TV show called Shaqtin’ a Fool. Shaquille O’Neal hosts. They uncover bloopers from across the league and then showcase them, while Shaq dogs the victims. McGee became a regular target, even winning the show’s ‘MVP’ its first two seasons.

Shaqtin’ a Fool became popular. McGee was its unwilling star. It morphed into a label he couldn’t shake. Strangers chided him about it in public. McGee privately seethed, most upset, he said, that it was on the league’s network.

“Fans think it’s real, like that’s real life and they think I’m a dumb person,” McGee said. “It’s just really disappointing that grown men, 50, 40 year olds are having America’s funniest home videos of a player. And then making it a hashtag and really just trying to ruin someone’s career over basketball mistakes.”

McGee is quirky but intelligent, those around the Warriors say. Andre Iguodala knows him best. The two played together in Denver and Iguodala was the one who convinced the Warriors to give McGee a look. They have similar interests and have bonded over their love of the tech world.

“We have the same type of humor,” Iguodala said. “He’s into like geeky things. I think people don’t realize that he was kind of nerdy, geeky before he played basketball… He has this funny line: ‘You can be smart and act dumb, but you can’t be dumb and act smart.’”

It’s unfair to translate McGee’s bloopers to the real world. But it’s unwise to ignore them in a basketball context. They highlight a lack of focus and feel.

McGee once ran back on defense while his team still had the ball. In his third season, he finished off his only career triple-double with a dunk and then hard slap of the backboard, which earned him a technical. His team was down 18. There were 18 seconds left in the game.

Perhaps McGee’s game was best summed up back in 2010. At Team USA camp, he was wowing some of the league’s greatest players with his rare athletic feats. McGee could jump up and touch the rim with his head. But he didn’t make the cut for the team.

“This is basketball, not run and jump,” Lamar Odom told then Washington Post NBA writer Michael Lee.

But nine years into his career, the Warriors feel they can still tweak McGee’s game. Defensive guru Ron Adams has been harping on him to maintain proper position. McGee has a tendency to lay back and try to set up highlight blocks. Adams is trying to break him of this habit.

“The spontaneity of the game will dictate that,” Adams said. “You can’t script a game. So he kind of likes to do this. We’re trying to get him to be an early thinker, an early positioner, so that the jumps he has to make are much more simple and also the defensive context that we want to keep is more intact.”

Before camp, there was a sense that McGee might be a roster longshot. The Warriors like to go small and have a ton of other guys who can play center. Perhaps a guard or wing, like Elliot Williams, would fill a bigger need.

But not all big men are equal. The Warriors don’t have another rim protector. McGee once blocked 12 shots in a game. Last season, Zaza Pachulia didn’t block 12 shots in any month. Anderson Varejao only blocked 10 shots all year.

Players and coaches sound hopeful he’ll grab that 15th spot, which could go a long way come camp cut time.

“He’s a different kind of player than we have on our squad,” Adams said. “There’s a cheerleading side of me that wants him to do well.”

“I’ve talked to some different people, GMs, front office people,” Iguodala said. “It’s funny, he’s so much better than a lot of these guys that got paid this past year. Like so much better. Hopefully he’ll get a chance to display that.”