As beards go, it has to rank among the best we’ve ever had around here.

Honestly, it is up there with Honest Abe Lincoln’s … and Papa Hemingway’s white one … or Rick Sutcliffe’s red scrub brush … or Matt Clement’s billy-goat goatee … or Bobby Jenks’ blond chin strip … or Kyle Orton at his grizzliest.

It is a wizard’s whiskers, mystical and fanciful and (best of all, if ever a wiz there was) three-pointed.

For art’s sake, Drew Gooden believes, “Sometimes you’ve got to sacrifice your good looks.”

Wouldn’t it be cool if the Bulls could give away 10,000 fake Gooden beards for tonight’s season opener?

Two years ago, the first 10,000 customers 21 or older who came to the team’s first home game were given a free Afro wig for “Ben Wallace ‘Fro Night.”

Unhappily, that wig thing turned out to be a bigger success here than Big Ben did.

So it came to pass on Feb. 21 of this year that Wallace and the Bulls parted ways. In exchange, the Cleveland Cavaliers gave up guard Larry “Smooth” Hughes and a stylish gent by the name of Andrew Melvin Gooden, who goes by Drew and who definitely has an artistic side, including his skill at playing the piano.

Gooden is a good fellow. He helped take Kansas to a Final Four. He helped take Cleveland to an NBA Finals.

Upon becoming a Bull, he did many productive things. A 31-point, 16-rebound game against Atlanta was proof of how good Gooden could be.

He brought something else to Chicago with him, meanwhile: a beard that just kept on growing and growing like ivy on an outfield fence.

“I want to do something different every year,” he explained Monday at one last Bulls practice before the season begins.

“Two years ago I wore a ducktail down the back of my neck. I guess some people called it a patch. Then last year’s was a beard contest I had with DeShawn Stevenson to see which one of us could go the longest without cutting it.”

Stevenson is a Wizard-a real one, the Washington NBA team’s kind. By the time the contest came to a halt, Gooden looked like a cross between an Amish farmer and an old man of the sea who had spent months trying to hook a marlin.

Ah, but this season’s beard is not untended and bushy. It is landscaped like topiary. It is a look that makes you ask if Gooden’s new barber is Edward Scissorhands.

“I use the Magnum Clippers,” he revealed.

He probably means a brand of beard trimmers by that name and not that he gets his cheeks shaved by large L.A. basketball players.

Wait a second … you do this yourself?

“Oh, absolutely,” Gooden said. “It’s all my handiwork.”

Maybe this look of Gooden’s will be lucky. Maybe everybody on this team will decide to grow one exactly like his. That includes baby-faced guys like Kirk Hinrich and Luol Deng and the kid Derrick Rose, if he can grow one at his age.

A mere 27, Gooden is practically an elder statesman on a team with a head coach and point guard who are about to make their NBA debuts.

Whatever prospects the Bulls have do not appear clear-cut.

But a certain player’s beard sure is, so let’s see how fast his young coach and teammates can grow.