Dan Grunfeld tried other sports as a kid, he really did. He even went out for the soccer team as a sixth-grader. That experiment lasted one day.

"When the ball came to me, I caught it like I was going to shoot a jumper," Grunfeld said. "I don't quit things, but I stopped playing soccer. I only made it through one practice and was like: 'This is not for me.' "

Baseball? "They didn't call me Babe Ruth, put it that way," Grunfeld said. "Basketball was my thing."

Grunfeld, who recently graduated from Stanford and participated at the NBA pre-draft camp in Orlando last week, is the son of Washington Wizards President of Basketball Operations Ernie Grunfeld, so it should come as no surprise that he has always been drawn to hoops.

Ernie Grunfeld was a college star at Tennessee, where he once made the cover of Sports Illustrated with teammate Bernard King. He played with three teams during a nine-season NBA career that concluded in 1986 with the New York Knicks, and he is running his third NBA team after previous front-office stops with the Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks. Dan Grunfeld has been immersed in the game from the day he was born in 1984.

Ernie Grunfeld and his wife, Nancy, never pushed their son into basketball. They didn't have to. "He was always around it," said Grunfeld, who watched Dan play in Orlando last week along with representatives of every other NBA team. "He was at practices, he was around the locker room, he was at big playoff games. So basketball just came natural to him. He loves the game and he's worked hard to get where he is."

That would be on the verge of making an NBA roster.

Dan, a 6-foot-6, 220-pound shooting guard-small forward, averaged 12 points and 4.8 rebounds as a senior but was slowed because he was recovering from surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee he suffered 22 games into his junior season. At the time of the injury, Grunfeld was averaging 17.9 points on 50 percent shooting and was projected as a potential first-round draft pick.

A crafty player with an excellent shooting touch and solid defensive skills, Grunfeld wore a bulky knee brace that limited his mobility and explosion as a senior. He has steadily worked to get back to where he was before the injury.

As a junior, Grunfeld scored 20 or more points in eight games and gained national attention after scoring 29 points on 10-for-12 shooting in a victory over Arizona. That and summertime pick-up games with NBA stars such as Sam Cassell, Ray Allen and Gilbert Arenas convinced Grunfeld that he had a realistic shot at a professional career.

The knee injury has been a setback, though. Grunfeld played without the brace for the first time last week and showed no signs of favoring the knee.

"I feel like I'm getting back to where I was before I got hurt," said Grunfeld, who went through an arduous eight-month rehabilitation program. "My aggressiveness is coming back and I'm not thinking about the knee as much, I'm just playing my game. It takes time. People always say that that first year is the toughest part. I rehabbed very hard and it's feeling great."

Grunfeld had his moments in Orlando but struggled to fit into the disjointed, often sloppy style that is prevalent in such camps. He shot 31.8 percent from the field while averaging 6.6 points in three games.

"This is not an ideal setting for a player like him," said one Western Conference scout who saw Grunfeld play at Stanford. "At Stanford, he excelled in a system, cutting, moving without the ball, screening and playing off other players. Here, it's a lot of one-on-one. Guys, especially the guards, are looking for their own shot every time down the floor. Danny needs to be in a situation where he can use his skills as an all-around player. The important thing is that his knee looks good. That's the first thing teams want to see. You know he has good basketball instincts and you know that he can shoot the ball."

Grunfeld has worked out individually for Golden State, Milwaukee and the Knicks, and he has more workouts planned before the June 28 draft.