Education
Elizabeth High School.
Elizabeth High School.
Gatling played for many National Basketball Association teams from 1991 to 2002. He played for the United States national team in the 1990 International Basketball Federation World Championship, winning the bronze medal. Chris Gatling played three years at Old Dominion University after transferring from the University of Pittsburgh.
He is ODU"s sixth all-time scorer with 1,811 points.
He also hauled down 859 career rebounds which rank him ninth all-time. Gatling is the school"s all-time field goal percentage leader at.606 (697-1150), and is second all-time at ODU with (12) 30-point games.
He shot.620 (251-405) from the field in 1991. Gatling scored 36 points in a game against University of North Carolina Charlotte in 1991 and against Alabama-Birmingham in March 1989.
He earned honorable mention All-American honors in 1990 and 1991.
In 1991, he was named the Sun Belt Conference tournament Most Valuable Player as he led the then seventh seeded Monarchs to the finals before losing to South Alabama. Gatling was drafted 16th overall by the Golden State Warriors in the 1991 National Basketball Association Draft. He spent the first four years of his career with the Warriors, and averaged 13.7 points and 7.6 rebounds per game in his final full season with the Warriors, 1994-1995.
That same year, Gatling led the National Basketball Association in field goal percentage at 0.633-one of the ten highest percentages in National Basketball Association history.
Gatling was traded, along with Tim Hardaway, to the Miami Heat halfway through the 1995-1996 season, and also played for the Dallas Mavericks and New Jersey Nets during the 1996-1997 season (representing the Mavericks in the 1997 National Basketball Association All-Star Game only a few days before being traded to the Nets). He played 78 games in slightly more than two seasons with the Nets before requesting a trade.
He played next with the Milwaukee Buckinghamshire for the final thirty games of the lockout-shortened 1998-1999 season. He split the 1999–2000 season with the Denver Nuggets and the Orlando Magic.
His final two National Basketball Association seasons saw him with the Cleveland Cavaliers and again, the Heat.
Gatling retired from professional basketball following the 2001-2002 season with career averages of 10.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, and a.513 field goal percentage. After his National Basketball Association career ended in 2002, he played one season in Russian League with CSKA Moscow. Gatling is known for his frequent use of the headband as an accessory to his National Basketball Association uniform.
In 2001, he claimed to have started the practice as a reminder that he is lucky to be alive after suffering a serious head injury as a teenager.